CANDIDATE PROFILE: House District 34 challenger Baughman wants reform that crosses aisles

Oct. 21—Republicans have voted for a fresh face in this year's race for representative in House District 34. After winning the Republican primary and a tight run-off, Michael Baughman will face Democrat incumbent Trish Ranson in the upcoming general election.

In a Studio Stillwater Grassroots podcast interview, News Press editors sat down with each HD 34 candidate to learn more about them and discuss the issues. To hear the full interview, go to www.studiostillwater.net and subscribe for free.

Michael Baughman grew up in Bartlesville with his mother, a school nurse, his father, a packaging salesman, and his younger brother. Both of his parents attended Oklahoma State University but did not graduate. Last year he became the first in his family to graduate from OSU, where he studied marketing.

"I just really like the idea of selling and making sure that I present the best care possible for selling different products," Baughman said. "I guess that's why I took an interest in politics because frankly, it is like a marketing job."

Baughman is taking a different path toward a potential career in politics. He believes his education in sales and marketing can help him better connect with policies to the people he represents.

"I think a lot of people go into politics do political science (majors) and study mainly policy but they don't study how to market it or how to sell it to people," he said. "I think that's really lacking in the political sphere, having that soft skill injected into it."

Baughman got his first taste of civics when he volunteered for the 2020 primary campaign of U.S. Representative Stephanie Bice.

"I absolutely loved door knocking, talking to people, getting to know their issues, either they were Republican, Democrat, independent," Baughman said. "It showed me that no matter what your political affiliation is, we can have disagreements, but in the very end we have common ground on a lot of issues."

In the time Baughman has spent talking to constituents, he hears many concerns for our education system that doesn't teach kids how to live in the real world. Instead, teaching them how to take tests.

"They were basically teaching our kids how to take a multiple choice test," Baughman claimed. "I want to make sure that we completely reform the education system and the curriculum. It's not the teacher's fault, but they get the blame for it because they're the face of public education."

Baughman shared that he graduated high school not knowing how to write a check. When asking his peers, he found he wasn't the only one who lacked basic financial literacy.

"It's the curriculum's fault teachers are given. So I want to actually change not only a financial literacy course but all life skills classes," Baughman said. "Like a mandatory cooking class."

The pay gap between school district administration and teachers is also a concern he's heard from talking to people.

"But what's equally important to me is the teacher pay gap ... they feel like there's a massive gap between educators and administrators, especially in rural communities," Baughman said. "Whenever there are 50 kids in the superintendent's district, and they're still making that much money, they know that's unfair."

Baughman has ideas to help rural schools be more effective with their resources. One is consolidating superintendents and some school administrations to cover more rural school districts.

"I don't know if this could work or not, or how many people disagree with this, but say four (rural) school districts combine, they keep one superintendent, and they keep their local school boards to legislate and keep in check what their districts are doing," Baughman said.

But unlike some in his political party, Baughman is against giving public tax dollars to private schools. He is for school choice among public school systems.

"I think having school choice for public schools is a good compromise for people," Baughman said. "I think that's what the majority of Oklahomans wants, especially in rural communities."

On the issue of gun control and school shootings, Baughman favors background checks for young adults that would include the ability to look into juvenile records.

"I don't think once you turn 18 your slate is automatically clean," Baughman said. "I think that's one, completely unfair. Two, its completely bonkers that if you committed an atrocity whenever you're 16 or 17 and you go to buy a gun, they can't open it up."

Baughman wants Oklahoma to pass a law that would expand background checks to anyone under 21. He says background checks can prevent potential bad actors from purchasing guns where red flag laws are ineffective at stopping someone who plans to harm.

"They could get a knife and kill somebody ... instead of talking about red flag laws, we can have programs to help people who are mentally ill and actually going through institutionalizing people," Baughman claims. "It is more rigorous to do ... you have more steps, you have to have more evidence. You're not solving the problem because you're just taking away the firearm and leaving them without any help."

Baughman recognized that this problem isn't something lawmakers at any level can completely fix and that our culture needs to stop stigmatizing mental illness.

Regarding issues like school bathrooms or controversial books in school libraries, Baughman believes we need to stop vilifying the other side and come together to compromise on reasonable solutions.

"That's the rhetoric that is really destroying not only our community but our country," Baughman said. "We can have a conversation about all this material inside schools. Now, there shouldn't be any pornography in (school) books.

"Like the book Gender Queer that was found in Tulsa. Actually, Joy Hoffmeister demanded that that book be removed because it had obscene material," Baughman said.

Baughman also favors removing straight-party ticket voting on Oklahoma ballots and wants people to research a candidate before they are at the ballot box.

"I actually want to get rid of the down ballot option," Baughman said. "We have a republic everyone is supposed to participate in but you can have the option to blindly vote for political parties. It was built on people representing us, people are not a political party."

When it comes to inflation relief, Baughman is in favor of eliminating the sales tax on groceries.

"I just think it's wrong that you tax groceries because you need to eat to live," Baughman said.

He also finds it troubling that most politicians are not talking about the Chinese Communist Party and Russian Federation buying farmland in Oklahoma.

"These are Chinese Communist party officials that have ties to land purchases," Baughman claimed. "I think it's extremely troublesome that we have lax laws and cannot prosecute people in mass because this is a national security issue."

Baughman would like to increase funding to law enforcement to focus on foreign land ownership. Possibly even seizing the land to be auctioned off to farmers.

According to Baughman, the Republican Party platform is outdated and needs updating to reflect the views of younger members.

"I feel like I'm a new generation, not only of Republican leadership because I have a lot of ideas that kind of differ from the party," Baughman stated. "I think a lot of people want a new voice for this state."