BETHANY, Okla. — May 10, 2026 (The Oklahoma Post)
There is a particular kind of politician who, when asked a question he does not know the answer to, says so. This is rarer than it should be in a state where the governor’s office has spent the better part of two decades occupied by folks who confused an inflated ego with competence and gamesmanship with the actual work of governing people who did not ask to be gamed.
Oklahoma voters have returned these folks to office repeatedly, which says something about the voters or the alternatives or possibly the state of political ambition in a place where the bar for entry appears to be a firm handshake and a willingness to say the word “freedom” without visible irony.
This was a rushed interview. Jake Merrick had somewhere to be he is running across the state of Oklahoma on foot, which is either a campaign strategy or a calling. The Oklahoma Post had questions that did not lend themselves to a quick answer. What emerged anyway was a conversation with a candidate whose platform reads more Ronald Reagan than Donald Trump, a distinction that matters more than it might appear in a primary field where the two have become, for some voters, interchangeable. Merrick is an impressively learned character with a gentleness of temperament that Reagan himself might have envied on his better days, and a building confidence that has not yet fully arrived but is clearly on its way and appears to be taking the stairs rather than the elevator. That observation about a man who knows what he does not know and is willing to say so out loud, in an interview, while it is being written down.
In Oklahoma in 2026, that alone puts him in a category of one. His campaign is built around a promise voters have heard before principle over politics, beholden to no one, the system is broken and I alone see the exit, but the 52-minute conversation The Oklahoma Post had with him on May 8 revealed something that press release language rarely survives contact with: he appears to mean it.
The former state senator from District 22, seminary graduate, pastor, small business owner, radio host, advocate, adoptive father and man on a mission. He does not stretch for an answer, nor seem too eager grab at low hanging fruit in the conversation. Genuine mannered behavior. Something we should all at least attempt to revisit, after election season I say.
He talked about Synagro, the Goldman Sachs-managed company spreading toxic municipal sludge on Oklahoma farmland, and said he would ban it by executive order if the law allowed. He talked about dams built in the 1960s that are now past their design life with no maintenance plan and no money and no plan by the current leadership to get either. He talked about the corruption embedded in Oklahoma’s family courts; not as a talking point but as a documented reality he has watched play out in the lives of people he knows personally. He talked about parental alienation and child withholding and the attorneys and judges who profit from both. He said mandating Christianity would undermine it. He named Smithfield Foods in the Oklahoma panhandle unprompted. He said if there is a law on the books, it gets enforced.
He also told The Oklahoma Post what he does not know yet. On gaming reform, on the specific mechanics of aquifer recharging, he said, plainly, that he has not spent enough time on these issues to give a responsible answer. He said he would learn. He said the best way to learn is to go straight to the people living the problem. He plans to have good relations with the Native Nations of Oklahoma.
A candidate who knows what he does not know is a candidate who will not govern by bluster and alone. Oklahoma has had enough of the other kind.
What He Said Publicly Before We Asked
Merrick submitted answers to a candidate questionnaire published by The Daily Oklahoman and those answers establish the baseline from which our interview built. They are worth examining because they reveal a candidate who is, at minimum, thinking about the right problems.
On education, Merrick identified five priorities: reducing administrative bloat through a county superintendent model, redirecting those savings to teacher pay, shifting to teacher-led assessments rather than standardized testing, reducing student screen time, expanding CareerTech and vo-tech integration, and moving school board elections to November for higher voter turnout. Oklahoma fell from 17th nationally in education rankings in 2011 to somewhere in the vicinity of 49th or 50th today, depending on which set of metrics makes you feel worse about it. The county superintendent model is the most consequential piece of Merrick’s framework because it is the structural precondition for everything else. You cannot redirect money to teachers if you are still paying for the administrative infrastructure of 500-plus school districts, many of which have no high school, declining enrollment and no plausible path to sustainability.
On taxes, Merrick supports Governor Stitt’s path-to-zero income tax elimination and goes further, stating he will begin the process of phasing out property taxes through expanded homestead exemptions and caps on increases. This is an ambitious fiscal position. The Oklahoma Post intends to ask, in a follow-up, where the bridge revenue comes from during the phase-out period, and whether eliminating both income and property taxes simultaneously is a governing plan or a campaign promise. These are not hostile questions. They are the questions a $13 billion state budget demands.
On Oklahoma’s insurance crisis home insurance in this state runs $5,000 to $7,000 annually against a national average of roughly $2,500. Merrick proposes market-friendly mechanisms: stricter claims processing deadlines, roof age protections, expansion of the Strengthen Oklahoma Homes mitigation grant program, tort reform modeled on Texas, regulatory audits to attract competing insurers and anti-fraud enforcement. The tort reform component is the piece with the most legislative path and the most opposition from the trial bar, which is generously funded in Oklahoma and does not typically enjoy being modeled on Texas.
On tribal relations, Merrick stated clearly in his public answers that he does not support Stitt’s confrontational approach, which produced unnecessary lawsuits, strained relations and jurisdictional confusion that harmed public safety. He proposes a permanent Tribal Liaison Office in the governor’s Cabinet, collaborative compact negotiations and a unified state-tribal congressional delegation to pursue federal legislation clarifying jurisdictional boundaries. Whether this translates to genuine sovereignty respect or a more sophisticated version of leverage is a question The Oklahoma Post will continue to ask. The prior administration demonstrated that sounding reasonable about tribal relations and governing reasonably about tribal relations are different skills.
On what else Oklahomans should worry about, Merrick’s public closing statement is worth quoting in full because it contains the phrase that opened our most substantive exchange. He wrote that he would end “human bio-sludge dumping” on Oklahoma land. Three words that every other candidate in this race has carefully avoided saying, because the people who profit from bio-sludge dumping have lobbyists and the families whose wells are contaminated generally do not.
What He Told The Oklahoma Post
On Biosolids, Synagro and Goldman Sachs
The Oklahoma Post asked Merrick to name the specific regulatory mechanism he has in mind for ending biosolid land application. He was direct.
“If possible and I know there’s a possible conflict with an executive order if I was able to through an executive order ban the land application, I would,” Merrick told The Oklahoma Post. He described the documented contamination pathway: “You are taking pathogens and heavy metals and toxins that are poisoning our land.” He cited the Maine precedent thousands of acres no longer farmable due to PFAS contamination and described the airborne dispersal mechanism, the damage to neighboring lungs and property values, the runoff and aquifer seepage. Then he said the thing that should be hung on a banner in every town in rural Oklahoma that has had this material spread on land nearby: “If it were just human manure it may be gross, but all manure is gross. It’s not about the gross factor. If it’s good fertilizer, it’s good fertilizer. But it’s not good fertilizer. It’s actually toxic and it’s impacting many people neighboring that land where it’s being applied. I think it has to end.”
Here is what Merrick may not yet know, and what The Oklahoma Post has confirmed: the company spreading most of Oklahoma’s biosolid material on rural farmland is Synagro, owned by a Goldman Sachs-managed investment fund. Oklahoma City contracts with Inframark to manage its wastewater system. Inframark then sells the biosolid material to Synagro, which transports it to farmers who receive it free of charge. More than 80 percent of Oklahoma’s wastewater sludge ends up on farmland. A 2026 legislative investigation found PFAS levels in land-applied biosolids sites are more than 183 times higher than what would be found at a wastewater lift station. The Oklahoma Legislature blocked a bill this session that would have banned the practice by 2027. The prior administration fired its energy and environment secretary for attending a federal court hearing in a water pollution lawsuit against poultry companies. We also received proper edible fish reports prior to the current administration.
Goldman Sachs has an investment in the continuation of this practice. The Oklahoma Legislature has, so far, protected that investment. Merrick said he would end it. He is the first candidate in this race to say so.
On Water, Mercury and the Dams Nobody is Discussing
Oklahoma DEQ has issued a statewide mercury advisory recommending that pregnant women, women of childbearing age and children under 15 eat no more than one meal per week of predator fish caught anywhere in Oklahoma waters. As of the 2023 DEQ update, 73 Oklahoma lakes carry specific mercury advisories. Ten years ago it was 64. The number is moving in one direction. The contamination comes from air pollution. Something businesses can control with proper investment and design. The state must encourage industry growth while ensuring the highest standards in our energy and manufacturing infrastructure and ecology.
Merrick raised something The Oklahoma Post had not anticipated. While running through western Oklahoma he is literally running across the state, which the campaign has branded as the kind of grassroots outreach strategy that would make a normal political consultant lie down quietly in a dark room he stopped to speak with a farmer near Clinton who flagged a problem The Oklahoma Post has not seen addressed in any other candidate’s public statements.
“He said we have to address these dams across the state that were erected in the 60s,” Merrick told The Oklahoma Post. “They are beginning to deteriorate and there’s no plan to restore them. They were 50-year dams. But we’re beyond 50 years now. And if we don’t invest in them then we could have massive flooding and disruption of farming operations and loss of food supply.” He cited towns including Miami that have experienced flooding and said the failure of these structures is not a hypothetical future problem. It is a documented present one that no one in the capitol has a funded answer for. Payne County’s Lake Carl Blackwell also has a failing damn in which University, City, and State partnerships must start developing before disaster strikes the area through flooding.
Canton Lake in western Oklahoma has been drawn down to supply Oklahoma City reservoirs while agricultural users in the region face declining groundwater. The Garber-Wellington Aquifer faces saltwater intrusion from horizontal well blowouts. Merrick acknowledged his knowledge on aquifer recharging is limited, then said the thing that matters anyway: “Last year we had record rainfall and we let all that water just wash away. We could have captured that and re-injected it and recharged our aquifers.” He expressed openness to public-private partnership structures for small-scale hydroelectric generation on restored dams.
No other candidate in this race has raised the dam infrastructure issue. It will affect Oklahoma families before most of the issues being argued about at candidate forums will.
On Foreign Land Ownership, Smithfield and TikTok
The Oklahoma Post asked Merrick whether his stated opposition to foreign land ownership extends to foreign-owned agricultural operations and mining near water resources. He named Smithfield Foods in the Oklahoma panhandle without being prompted.
“Big question around Smithfield, you know, up in the panhandle, Chinese state owned, and obviously the state of Oklahoma gave them a carve-out because they have American executives,” Merrick told The Oklahoma Post. “Anytime you have a foreign company that is in charge of our food chain, our food supply and our dependence on that, not only are you talking about land ownership, but you’re also talking about food production.” He extended the concern to aquifer-adjacent zones: “To allow foreign ownership there just opens a gaping hole in security.”
The United States government moved faster on a Chinese-owned video app teenagers use to learn dances than on a Chinese-owned company producing food in the Oklahoma panhandle and drawing from the same aquifer Oklahoma farmers need to survive. Merrick does not yet have a legislative vehicle for this. He has the instinct and he named the right target. In Oklahoma politics, that is a more meaningful starting point than it sounds. He plans to have citizens and other experts advise on these important issues. His words.
On Tribal Sovereignty and the McGirt Question
Merrick confirmed his commitment to a Tribal Liaison Cabinet office and a non-confrontational approach to compact negotiations. He was direct on McGirt in a way that tribal sovereignty advocates will find unsatisfying and that he deserves credit for stating plainly rather than evading.
“I don’t consider the Supreme Court opinions to be settled law,” Merrick told The Oklahoma Post. He contrasted the 5-4 McGirt decision with a recent 9-0 ruling on tribal hunting rights, which he said he supports without reservation. On the jurisdictional complexity McGirt revealed who can prosecute whom on what land he said: “I don’t think it’s settled law at all. I think we have to continue to fight for more clarity and for clear jurisdictional lines.”
The Oklahoma Post’s own view, informed by legal expertise in native rights representation that informs our coverage, is that the jurisdictional complexity McGirt revealed was always present. The decision did not create it. It named it. The state had been exercising authority it was never legally entitled to exercise. Merrick’s framing continued pursuit of federal clarity is a more cooperative posture than Stitt’s, but whether it produces genuine sovereignty respect depends entirely on execution and good faith. His Tribal Liaison Office commitment and state-tribal congressional delegation proposal are the mechanisms that distinguish his approach.
On Hospital Accountability, Mandatory Reporting and the Invega Psych Med Question
The Oklahoma Post shared with Merrick the circumstances in which a family member of this publication’s editor was administered drugs at a medical facility while treating physicians failed to flag and report methamphetamine that had been given to the minor patient by an adult third party, a failure that contributed to a psychotic episode as a juvenile and permanent, life-altering consequences, followed by a prescription for the antipsychotic Invega as a juvenile that this publication believes was administered to cover institutional liability, the disastrous consequences of child abuse combined with a dangerous rebounding drug, rather than treat a genuine psychiatric condition. The judge, the doctor, the drug dealer, Georgia DHS, and a medical facility failed to accept that drugs to a minor is a crime that can do harm. Sad.
Merrick said there has to be accountability and that he would examine whether the governor’s authority over the OSBI could be directed at institutional cover-ups. Then he said something that goes beyond the specific question: “I see a massive problem with our court system, our judicial system, our family courts and their collaboration with state-funded hospitals and their tendency to protect them. I’m not sure as we peel back the layers of that onion what all we’ll find, but I think there’s layers of corruption there that have to be dealt with.”
That is not really a policy answer. It is also accurate. The pattern The Oklahoma Post has documented across multiple investigations courts, hospitals and state agencies protecting each other while families pay the price is a system functioning as designed, for the benefit of the institutions that designed it.
On Cockfighting, Animal Cruelty and the Law Already on the Books
Merrick was candid about the limits of his current knowledge on this issue in a way that will frustrate animal welfare advocates and should not.
“I have to be honest, I haven’t spent a lot of time processing and investigating kind of what is on the books there,” Merrick told The Oklahoma Post. He described growing up in rodeo and ranching culture, acknowledged the genuine tension between agricultural and urban perspectives on animals, and said he does not want to tolerate animal abuse. He noted that his family watches over the animals on his property with great care, loves and wants healthy wildlife, and intervenes when he sees animals going without care. He is not indifferent. He is uninformed on the specific legislative landscape, which is a different problem and a fixable one.
Then he said the sentence that matters most for anyone who cares about enforcement: “If we have a law in place, we have to enforce it.” Merrick is anti-corruption and says he enforces existing law. The Oklahoma Post will hold him to that formulation.
On School Consolidation and the County Model
Merrick confirmed his county superintendent model and clarified his position on voluntary high school consolidation clearly and without hedging. “Two key things for me in that statement is voluntary and local,” Merrick told The Oklahoma Post. “If local school districts want to consolidate and it’s voluntary, and that’s what they want to do and they think it’s what’s in the best interest for their kids, then yeah, for sure. If it’s not a heavy-handed state mandate, if it’s voluntary and the public, that’s what they want to do, then for sure.”
This is the correct position stated cleanly. Lowndes County, Georgia built a single county high school beginning in 1959 that today enrolls more than 3,200 students, fields state championship athletic programs across five sports, sustains a 400-member nationally recognized marching band and offers Advanced Placement coursework that no small rural high school in Oklahoma can currently sustain. The key distinction Merrick drew voluntary and community-driven versus top-down state mandate is exactly the distinction that separates a policy that helps rural students from one that destroys the communities they live in. The towns keep their small town feel at every k-8; the older kids go to centralized schools. Interesting, and not fully understood on our end, but seems to be a great concept to consider in Western Oklahoma.
On Qualifications the Honest Answer
The Oklahoma Post asked Merrick directly: what in his record, not his character, makes the case that he can manage a $13 billion budget and lead the executive branch? His tenure in the State Senate lasted approximately 18 months before he lost his primary in 2022. He has not held elected office since.
His answer reframed the question rather than dodging it. “My record is a record of service,” Merrick told The Oklahoma Post. “I’ve been in ministry most of my life.” He pushed back on what he called the false notion of the CEO-governor, arguing that business and money management is not the primary role of executive office. He then described a governing approach built entirely on listening to people who actually know things: citizen advisory boards drawn directly from affected sectors, farmers advising on farm policy, doctors on health policy, teachers on education.
“I had a wheat farmer in Fairview say, ‘What are you going to do to improve wheat prices in Oklahoma?’ And I said, ‘Well, you’re the wheat farmer. I need to sit with you and you need to tell me what you need,'” Merrick told The Oklahoma Post. “The best research is to go straight to the people living this out and they’re the true experts in this field.”
This is either the most honest answer a gubernatorial candidate has given about executive qualifications in recent Oklahoma history, or it is an elegant way of saying he will govern by delegation and hope the people he delegates to are better than the current advisory. The difference between those two outcomes is entirely in the quality of the cabinet. He has staked his candidacy on the claim that he will appoint the right people. That claim deserves scrutiny he should expect to receive.
On Parental Alienation, Child Withholding and the DHS Age-Out Crisis
Merrick called Oklahoma’s family courts corrupt in his public statement. The Oklahoma Post asked him to be specific.
He said he supports elevating willful child withholding to a felony. He said he needs to examine the issue further, and then said the thing that matters more than the qualifier: “I couldn’t imagine being in that position. It is extreme injustice. And I hate that.”
He identified the DHS age-out crisis independently, without prompting, and demonstrated familiarity with a statutory requirement that is routinely violated. “According to state statutes, if a child is in the system 15 of the last 22 months, they have to either be adopted or returned. But we violate that all the time,” Merrick told The Oklahoma Post. “You have kids spending five, ten years aging out. We’ve got to enforce the law.” He advocated for a special panel of judges empowered to clear the DHS placement backlog. He was unsparing about what the system does to the children it is supposed to protect: “The system is trauma. Oftentimes it’s perceived that to remove the child from an abusive situation and putting them in the system is getting them out of trauma. But it’s not. It’s removing them from one trauma to another kind of trauma.”
The Oklahoma Post notes for the record that Merrick is an adoptive father. He is not speaking abstractly. He knows what this system looks like from inside it. That matters.
On the Biblical Worldview Question and the Establishment Clause
This was the question The Oklahoma Post most wanted to ask and, it turns out, the question Merrick was most prepared to answer.
His campaign’s language about a biblical worldview and governing by biblical principles has drawn concern from people who understand that phrase to mean the Mosaic code and Levitical civil law applied to a plural constitutional republic. Those concerns are legitimate. The Oklahoma Post put them directly to a seminary graduate with a Master of Divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, which is the relevant credential here, and got the relevant answer.
“As a Christian, I would never want a mandate for Christianity,” Merrick told The Oklahoma Post. “Because to do so would undermine Christianity. As soon as you mandate it, then you do away with it. God wants their heart. Wants them to freely choose Him.” He cited Christian historian William Federer’s formulation: the most important thing is to share the gospel; the second most important thing is to protect the freedom to share the gospel. “As a governor in an elected position representing all people,” Merrick told The Oklahoma Post, “my role is to protect freedom. And as a Christian, I should celebrate that and use that as an opportunity to show the love of God.”
That is a New Testament answer. It is also a constitutionally sound one. The Great Commission is an evangelical imperative, go and make disciples, not a mandate to reconstruct civil government on Levitical principles. The Apostle Paul wrote in Galatians that the law was a tutor leading to Christ and that Christians are no longer under that tutor. Merrick clearly knows this. He articulated it without being asked to name the distinction. That matters in a race that also features candidates whose relationship with theocracy is somewhat more enthusiastic and considerably less theologically informed. We prayed together.
What He Has Not Answered Yet
In the interest of full disclosure, the following issues from The Oklahoma Post’s questionnaire remain open and will be pursued in follow-up coverage.
The Oklahoma horse racing industry, its regulatory decline, the OHRC’s failure to protect Oklahoma-bred owners against competitive displacement from out-of-state ownership interests and the prohibition on syndicate and passive investor structures that states like Florida permit, was raised. Merrick acknowledged Walter Merrick of Sayre as distant kin, not close relations, but the legendary Oklahoma horseman who bred Easy Jet, winner of the 1969 All American Futurity, and became the first horseman inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame before his death in 2006 at 94, but said he has been around the industry and not in it and deferred. The Oklahoma Post deferred with him. We started talking about horses and cattle.
The campaign finance question, who is funding operations, what out-of-state support is in conversation, and what disclosure commitment he will make beyond Ethics Commission minimums, was not addressed in this interview. I hope Mr. Merrick will pursue this topic independently.
The specific Invega legislative mechanism; removing it from approved protocols for minors and vulnerable populations absent strict monitoring and mandatory reporting; requires a follow-up with both Merrick and medical professionals. That reporting is underway.
Jake Merrick is Not a Finished Candidate. So what.
His legislative tenure was short. His knowledge of some policy areas is thin in places and in others simply unformed, which is different, unformed can be educated, thin is structural. He will need a cabinet of genuine experts and he will need to listen to them the way he says he listened to the wheat farmer in Fairview. His fiscal positions raise revenue questions he has not yet answered. His McGirt framing will require more nuance than he brought to it in this conversation.
What he is, in this publication’s assessment, is honest. He answered questions that other candidates in this race have not been asked and will not answer. He said he does not know things he does not know. He said he would enforce the law when the law is being ignored. He said he would end the practice of spreading toxic sludge on the farmland feeding Oklahoma families. He said he would treat the state’s tribal nations as partners rather than adversaries. He said he would look at the corruption embedded in Oklahoma’s family courts and not look away. He said he would never mandate Christianity because doing so would undermine it. He said parental alienation and child withholding are extreme injustice. He said the state’s dams are failing and nobody has a plan. He is for campaign finance reform.
That last one is true, and no one else is saying it.
In Oklahoma in 2026, saying true things nobody else is saying is a reasonable definition of leadership. The bar is low. The need is real. The candidate appears to mean what he says. He speaks well, he listens, he is educated, his family thinks he is the greatest…. He deserves consideration.
Writing By: Robbie Robertson | Editing by Robbie Robertson
Editor’s Note:
Sources
Jake Merrick campaign website — jakemerrickforgovernor.com
Jake Merrick, Daily Oklahoman candidate questionnaire — aol.com/news/ok-gov-candidate-jake-merrick-100158635.html
Jake Merrick, Ballotpedia — ballotpedia.org/Jake_Merrick
Jake Merrick campaign announcement, KOSU — kosu.org/politics/2025-05-01/former-lawmaker-jake-merrick-joins-race-for-oklahoma-governor
Oklahoma DEQ mercury fish consumption advisory — deq.ok.gov/state-environmental-laboratory-services/environmental-public-health-information/healthy-fish-consumption-in-oklahoma
Oklahoma DEQ 2023 mercury lake update, 73 lakes confirmed — deq.ok.gov/2023-news-releases/deq-updates-fish-consumption-advisories-for-some-oklahoma-lakes-5
Oklahoma DEQ 2023 mercury in fish PDF — deq.ok.gov/wp-content/uploads/deqmainresources/2023-Mercury-in-Fish.pdf
Synagro/Goldman Sachs biosolids investigation, Investigate Midwest, August 2024 — investigatemidwest.org/2024/08/07/fertilizer-from-human-waste-faces-scrutiny-but-remains-a-profitable-industry
Oklahoma biosolids PFAS investigation, Investigate Midwest, April 2025 — investigatemidwest.org/2025/04/23/sewage-fertilizer-can-cause-illness-and-harm-the-environment-why-are-some-oklahoma-officials-resistant-to-a-ban
Oklahoma biosolids legislative debate, OKC Fox 25, 2026 — okcfox.com/news/local/state-lawmakers-debate-biosolids-use-on-farmland
Oklahoma Voice biosolids commentary, February 2026 — oklahomavoice.com/2026/02/18/oklahoma-lawmakers-can-no-longer-afford-to-ignore-the-risks-associated-with-sewage-spread
Walter Merrick, AQHA Hall of Fame — aqha.com/-/walter-merrick
William Federer, American Minute — americanminute.com
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