On Super Tuesday, March 1, Ted Cruz won the GOP primary in my home state of Oklahoma with 34.4%. Donald Trump was a close second with 28.3%. Disturbingly, the appalling Marco Rubio was only two points behind Trump with 26%. [ OK Primary Results—NYT] All three had visited Oklahoma shortly before. Both Cruz and Trump campaigned as immigration patriots, and I’d venture to say that Rubio has bamboozled some patriots, so it was a blowout. My question: why is Oklahoma’s congressional delegation so bad on immigration?
Oklahoma is a “red state”—perhaps the reddest state of all. In both the 2008 and 2012 Presidential elections, the GOP won every single one of its 77 counties and its congressional delegation is 100% Republican. The congressional delegation have safe seats. Nevertheless, they are useless.
I pointed this out in September 2014. But the situation seems even worse now.
Numbers USA rates all members of Congress on their immigration records. (Check out your own senators and representatives—click here).
Here’s how the Oklahoma congressional delegation is doing:
- Senator James Inhofe has been in Congress since 1987, since 1994 as a senator. In 2014 Inhofe had a grade of B+ but it later fell to a C and has recently risen to a B. Inhofe won’t even consider a reduction in legal immigration. In writing to a constituent, he goes off on the time-honored “nation of immigrants” spiel and talks about his own German immigrant grandparents, none of which is relevant today.
- Senator James Lankford had a grade of B in 2014, when he was still in the House. He’s now a senator, but his grade has fallen to a C-.
- Representative Frank Lucas (District 3)