The Edmond Sun
EDMOND —
Politics can be a dirty business. Just ask James Lankford, one of two GOP contenders on Tuesday’s runoff election ballot for the 5th District Congressional seat.
His opponent, former state Rep. Kevin Calvey, sent out a mail piece to Republican voters across the 5th District this week accusing Lankford of “going negative” in the campaign in a March 9 news story written by this newspaper.
That story was a follow-up piece originally generated out of an ongoing series of press releases issued by Calvey denouncing an Oklahoma City Muslim advocacy group called the Council on American-Islamic Relations. CAIR Oklahoma City is a statewide chapter of a national organization. The story sought to explore the issues raised by Calvey and put the other 5th District contenders on the record as to their stance toward CAIR.
In the 5th District, the July 27 primary election whittled the race from seven GOP candidates down to the top two — Lankford and Calvey. The winner of Tuesday’s runoff will face Democrat Billy Coyle and Independents Dave White and Clark Duffe on the Nov. 2 general election ballot.
Calvey’s literature inaccurately portrays Lankford’s comments to The Edmond Sun in the March 9 story.
The piece also implies that all of the comments, including one saying Lankford is not ready to serve in Congress, came from The Sun. Edmond Sun Publisher Steve Paterson assured readers in the Aug. 19 edition of this newspaper that this is not the case.
“We as a company do not have a problem when persons pull quotes from articles that we have reported in our newspaper and attribute them to us when they are verbatim. What we report becomes part of the public record,” Paterson said. “We as a company do have a problem when they are used out of context and used to make a point or argument, which is not based on the information reported.
“… We want to assure our readers who will be voting in the Republican runoff that these were not quotes from this newspaper and do not in any way reflect the opinion of this newspaper. We encourage our readers who will be participating in the Republican runoff to examine all the facts about the two candidates before they enter the polls,” Paterson said.
Throughout the length of the campaign, the only candidate to repeatedly issue press releases on the topic of CAIR and whether they are Muslim extremists with alleged ties to terrorists has been Calvey. In fact, the Calvey campaign issued a new release at 4:06 p.m. Thursday featuring criticism by Baptist minister Tom Vineyard against Lankford’s comments about CAIR. The release also reiterates Calvey’s stance against both CAIR and the proposed mosque in New York City near Ground Zero.
When running for a federal office, most voters could safely assume that there are multiple issues upon which a candidate should be well-versed and be ready to address them as part of the debate with their opponents. This Editorial Board met with many of the candidates for this office, including Calvey and Lankford, leading up to the primary election. While Calvey is certainly competent and capable of addressing multiple issues, we find it curious that he has chosen not to in his actual campaign.
As to whether Lankford “went negative” in his quotes on March 9, we leave that up to the readers to decide. What we would suggest is that a fair amount of time has slipped by since that story published, and in the waning days before a runoff election, we question if this is really the only topic Calvey can find in an effort to draw a distinction between himself and his opponent. If it is, it suggests that perhaps Calvey is really a one-trick pony with not enough substance to define himself outside of political grandstanding about his military service and his strong stance against terrorism.
Make no mistake about it — the next elected official of the 5th District has an important role to play in the next Congress as America tries to resolve a variety of serious federal issues. Fighting terrorism is one of those top issues, but not the only one we as Americans should be concerned with. Immigration, taxation, health care, a national energy plan and improving the economy also rank pretty high.
Voters deserve a candidate who is willing to be honest and forthright in every aspect of their campaign, including their campaign literature. We call upon Kevin Calvey to apologize for his blatant misrepresentation of both his opponent and the reporting done by this newspaper. More importantly, we’d like to see Calvey address important national issues so that all voters will know where he stands on topics in addition to his views on Muslims and CAIR.
