Annual Meeting 2022 - Congressional Debate Candidate Bios

PRESENTED BY

JUNE 22, 2022 | NATIONAL COWBOY & WESTERN HERITAGE MUSEUM AGENDA 11:30 a.m.

Opening Remarks & Door Prize Drawing

11:35 a.m.

Lunch Service Begins

11:55 a.m.

Champion of Free Enterprise Awards & Outgoing Board Recognition

12:05 p.m.

Legislative Session Achievements Update

12:10 p.m.

Outgoing Chairman Highlights & Remarks

12:20 p.m.

Passing of the Gavel & Incoming Chairman Remarks

12:30 p.m.

1:30 p.m.

Republican Primary U.S. Senatorial Debate

(hosted by State Chamber Research Foundation)

Closing Remarks & Adjournment

SEN. NATHAN DAHM Nathan Dahm spent his childhood in Broken Arrow in the great state of Oklahoma. In 1994, The Dahm family had a calling to move to the former communist nation of Romania in Eastern Europe to serve as Christian missionaries. It was through Christ and mission work that Nathan learned the true meaning of service to others and the true destruction of communism.

After graduating high school, Nathan served as a missionary for several years before taking on his next call to service.

Nathan has seen the effects that communism and socialism can have on a country, which the Radical Left is currently trying to inflict on the United States.

Nathan is one of the few home-school graduates to ever serve in the Senate. He has consistently been ranked the most Conservative Senator in Oklahoma, often being the only Senator to score 100%. Nathan is well known as the “Mr. Bill Reader”, as he has passed over 100 bills all focused on protecting the rights of the people as well as repealing over 200 laws in order to reduce the size and scope of government.

Nathan has seen the effects that communism and socialism can have on a country, he will not let Oklahoma, nor his country, succumb to the same fate.

While in the state senate he has defended the Constitution, fought for tax cuts, expanded our Second Amendment rights, and led the fight to promote Conservative values in Oklahoma.

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LUKE HOLLAND Luke Holland is a conservative fourth generation Oklahoman and has been endorsed by Sen. Jim Inhofe to succeed him.

Luke’s great-grandmother arrived in Muskogee on a covered wagon from Arkansas, and both sides of his family settled in Bartlesville, where Luke grew up and attended school. One of his grandfathers practiced as an attorney for Phillips 66 in Bartlesville after serving in the South Pacific during World War 2. His other grandfather served as a physician in Bartlesville, and Luke’s dad followed in his footsteps.

After high school, Luke got a scholarship to attend the University of Arkansas where he earned a degree in Finance from the Walton School of Business. After seeing the rush toward socialism under the Obama Administration, he was emboldened to get into public service to reclaim the things that make America great: our freedoms and our Christian values.

So he joined Senator Inhofe, starting in the mail room and working his way up to Chief of Staff.

Luke believes America is the greatest country on earth because of our foundations in freedom and Christian values. He believes these are under assault but knows our best days are ahead of us if we get back to the basics that made this country great in the first place. He’s a classic conservative who believes in limited government and individual responsibility. He will fight to have the strongest, best equipped and trained military in the world. He will seek to lower taxes and reduce the regulatory burden on the private sect. He wants to unleash American energy so we become independent and are able to export our excess to our friends and allies around the world. He is unabashedly pro-life, wants parents involved in the classroom, and will stand unequivocally for the Biblical values taught by Jesus.

He’s been fighting in the trenches with Sen. Inhofe for years to get America back on the right track.

Luke grew up attending the Grace Community Church in Bartlesville and is now a member of New Beginnings Church in Bixby.

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SCOTT PRUITT Scott Pruitt is a national leader in defending federalism, advancing free markets and promoting religious liberty. Most recently Pruitt served in President Trump’s Cabinet as the 14th Administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, leading the Trump Administration in spearheading more than two dozen significant regulatory reforms while returning the Agency to its original mission, saving the American economy billions in regulatory savings while also improving environmental outcomes.

Some of Pruitt’s most significant accomplishments as EPA Administrator include working with President Trump to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accords, initiating the process of repealing and replacing the Obama Administration’s so-called “Clean Power Plan” and the Waters of the United States (“WOTUS”) Rule. All told, EPA issued more deregulatory actions than any other federal agency in the first year of the Trump presidency, leading to substantial economic growth and energy independence.

Pruitt’s other significant accomplishments included reforming EPA’s scientific advisory boards to ensure geographic diversity and integrity and ending the EPA’s abuse of ‘Sue and Settle’ practices.

These accomplishments earned Pruitt a spot on the 2018 TIME 100 List, recognizing the 100 most influential people in the world, as well as top 50 influential leaders lists published by Bloomberg and Politico.

Prior to serving in the Trump Administration, Pruitt served as Attorney General of Oklahoma, where he became a national leader of ensuring the proper balance between federal and state interests, protecting state authority against federal intrusion and encroachment and advocating to keep power in the hands of hardworking Americans.

Pruitt quickly became a national leader in fighting against the Obama Administration’s attempts to usurp state sovereignty. Specifically, Pruitt led Oklahoma’s legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act, the EPA’s intrusion into property rights, CPP, WOTUS, Dodd-Frank and Obama’s excessive use of “recess appointments” to bypass Congress.

In addition to his life as a civil servant, Administrator Pruitt is a successful entrepreneur. As a previous co-owner and managing partner of Oklahoma City’s Triple-A minor league baseball affiliate of the Texas Rangers, the Oklahoma City RedHawks, Pruitt took over the team’s marketing operations and helped the team become one of the minor league’s leaders in attendance and merchandise sales.

Since his time in President Trump’s Cabinet, Scott has also been engaged in various start-ups globally in life sciences, energy and block chain technology involving carbon offset markets, LNG, Clean Hydrogen and Lithium development.

After earning his Bachelor’s Degree from Georgetown College and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Tulsa law school, Pruitt went into private legal practice, specializing in Constitutional Law. Scott and his wife, Marlyn, of 32 years, proudly raised their daughter, McKenna, and son, Cade, in Tulsa.

Pruitt has made it a priority to pass on to his children the same principled, family values with which he was raised

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T.W. SHANNON A successful banking CEO, T.W. Shannon led his bank through some of the most historically difficult times in the banking industry, all while growing the bank’s total assets from $130m to just under half a billion in the first five years of his tenure.

Additionally, T.W. has been an entrepreneur in his own public relations consulting operation for over a decade.

A former state legislator, T.W. Shannon made history, at the age of 34, by becoming the youngest Speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, as well as being the first Chickasaw and first African American to hold the post. Speaker Shannon utilized his platform to champion common sense solutions.

His signature legislative achievement was authoring the bill that reformed Oklahoma’s workers’ compensation system to an administrative system. T.W. was successful in Oklahoma’s fight to repeal affirmative action, and he also successfully led the effort to overhaul the State’s welfare system by mandating a twenty hour work week for able-bodied adult recipients.

Additionally, T.W. passed into law legislation which made Oklahoma the first state in the nation to provide a five thousand dollar tax deduction for parents of foster children.

Before serving in the Legislature, T.W. worked as one of five C-level officers in the role of Chief Administrative Officer at the Chickasaw Nation, which boasted annual revenue of over one billion dollars, and employed over seventy-five hundred employees. In his role with the Chickasaw Nation, he led the support functions for the most financially successful tribe in the country.

T.W. has a Juris Doctor degree from Oklahoma City University and a Bachelor of Arts in Communication from Cameron University. He is a Harvard University Kennedy School Fellow and a Rodel Fellow. T.W. has been married for more than 20 years to his college sweetheart, Devon, a college professor at the University of Oklahoma. They are the proud parents of Audrey Grace and Tahrohon Wayne, II.

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