Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe has confirmed Thursday’s reports that he’s resigning and endorsing his chief of staff, Luke Holland, in the special election to succeed him in this extremely red state. Inhofe added that he would remain in office for the rest of this Congress, which will prevent Gov. Kevin Stitt from being able to appoint a replacement.
Holland soon held a press conference announcing that he would compete in the June primary, though he said that Inhofe couldn’t attend in person as planned because he was dealing with mild COVID symptoms. Holland rose from a mailroom job in the senator's office in 2009 to chief of staff eight years later, though he does not appear to have ever run for office himself until now. There are numerous other Republicans who could enter the race ahead of the April 15 filing deadline.
Inhofe’s departure will conclude a political career that began all the way back in 1966, a time when Democrats were still the dominant party in the state, when the 32-year-old businessman was first elected to the state House from a Tulsa seat. His deskmate for his brief time there was Democrat David Boren, another newly-elected member who would become a very important to his future career in both unwelcome and welcome ways. Inhofe two years later won a promotion to the state Senate as Richard Nixon was carrying Oklahoma in the first of what would turn out to be an unbroken chain of GOP presidential victories.
Inhofe in 1974 ran for governor in what he thought would be a battle against Democratic incumbent David Hall, whose tenure was overshadowed by bribery and extortion accusations that would later send him to jail, but Hall ended up taking third place in the primary. Inhofe’s general election foe instead was his close friend Boren, who ran a reformed-themed “a new broom” campaign that featured him campaigning across the state with a broom and pledging to reject the $7,500 salary increase the legislature had given the governor.
The Republican tried to frame the race as a choice between a practical businessman and Boren, whom he portrayed as an over-idealistic political science professor, and he tried to capitalize when the Democrat had to clarify that his calls for “across the board" rights for 18-year-olds didn’t include the right to drink beer (Inhofe himself was in favor of allowing them to drink). Boren, however, avoided going after his opponent in favor of emphasizing “the positive,” and he won 64-36 in that Democratic wave year.
Inhofe took over as Senate minority leader following that defeat, but he left the legislature in 1976 to challenge Democratic Rep. James Jones in the Tulsa-based 1st Congressional District. He decisively won the primary 67-25 against Frank Keating, who would later become governor, but Jones defeated Inhofe 54-45 in November. The Republican, though, soon revived his career in early 1978 when he was elected mayor of Tulsa 51-46.
Inhofe used that office to promote, even if sometimes reluctantly, policies that ran counter to his later hardline conservative image. Inhofe pushed a three-penny tax proposal that voters eventually approved, saying, “I’d much prefer, and it would be a lot easier to be against it. But we can’t sit here and let Tulsa rot from the inside.” The future global warming denier also used a Sun Day proclamation to call for residents “to enhance their understanding and dedicate themselves to the development of alternative energy sources.” He narrowly lost his bid for a fourth two-year term 50.5-49.5 in what was seen as a huge upset; on his way out, Inhofe told a reporter his greatest regret was the failure of his monorail project.
This time, though, it was a congressional campaign that resurrected his fortunes: Inhofe ran for the 1st District again in 1986 when Jones left to unsuccessfully campaign for the Senate, and he prevailed 55-43 in the general election. Over the next several years Inhofe would be dogged by bad headlines about his insurance company, Quaker Life Insurance Co., which went into receivership while he was running for the House and which led to him suing his brother. Those stories weren’t enough to stop the congressman from winning re-election, though he turned in unimpressive 53-47 showings in both 1988 and 1992.
Inhofe got the chance to seek a Senate seat in 1994 when a special election took place to succeed Boren, who was resigning after 16 years to lead the University of Oklahoma. Inhofe easily beat a primary opponent who tried to use the Quaker stories against him, and he soon found himself in an expensive race against Democratic Rep. Dave McCurdy. Inhofe was careful to avoid criticizing the well-regarded Boren, and he even denied he was telling voters that they needed to replace him with someone more conservative. The Republican instead tied McCurdy to the unpopular Clinton administration and rode that year’s red wave to a 55-40 victory that permanently gave Team Red control of both the state’s Senate seats.
Inhofe two years later won a full term by beating Boren’s cousin, Jim Boren, 57-40, and he pulled off similar wins during his next two campaigns against former Gov. David Walters and state Sen. Andrew Rice. The senator, who rose to chair the Environment and Public Works Committee became nationally infamous in the 21st century for his opposition to same-sex marriage and climate science (among many other things, he called global warming “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people” in 2010 and threw a snowball on the Senate floor in 2015 to show that it was “very, very cold out”). However, he won his final two terms with ease in a state that, under his watch, had transformed into a Republican bastion.
