TULSA, Okla. — May 29, 2026 (The Oklahoma Post)
Kelly Walsh spends his days deciding whether the cannabis that Oklahomans consume is poisoning them. He tests it for pesticides at a Tulsa lab, about a hundred samples a day, and on the afternoon we spoke he was troubleshooting his third mass spectrometer. He is also running for Congress, a decision he describes with the cheerful detachment of a man who ran an experiment and was surprised by the result. “This whole experience has taught me how easy it is to just run for office. It’s exciting.” he said.
Walsh is a Republican candidate for Oklahoma’s 1st Congressional District, the Tulsa area seat that Kevin Hern is leaving to run for the United States Senate. He is one of roughly nine Republicans in the June 16 primary, and he is not pretending the math favors him. He calls himself a long shot. What separates him from the rest of the field, by his own account, is a single word he keeps returning to: he is the one who is not MAGA.
An analytical chemist by training, Walsh grew up in Cassville, Missouri, and earned a chemistry degree from the Missouri University of Science and Technology in 2014. He went to work for a Springfield pharmaceutical manufacturer making the active ingredients for medications, running drug assays on the midnight to eight shift for three years before fleeing to daytime production work. From there he took a chemist job at the CVR Energy refinery in Coffeyville, Kansas, where he was promoted to senior chemist over about four years. For the past three years he has been an associate lab director at an Oklahoma cannabis testing laboratory, screening the state’s medical marijuana supply for contaminants.
That last job is the engine of his campaign. Walsh argues that Oklahoma Republican leaders are working to dismantle the medical marijuana industry that voters created at the ballot box with State Question 788 in 2018. He points to the director of the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics, Donnie Anderson, whose public statements about pressuring marijuana businesses Walsh says are now cited in a recently filed class action lawsuit. He notes that Governor Kevin Stitt, now in his final term, has openly said he wants the program gone. Walsh worked the other side of this fight himself, collecting what he estimates was around 3,500 signatures for State Question 820, the recreational measure that voters defeated in 2023. He believes Republicans have used that loss as license to come after the medical program too.
He is unsentimental about why the most recent legalization push, State Question 837, never made the ballot. Asked whether its collapse told him something about where voters stand, he rejected the premise. “I think there’s a lot of apathy,” he said. “They think it’s so deeply entrenched there’s no possibility of it going away.” The dispensary on every corner, in his telling, has lulled consumers into assuming the fight is already won.
His critique of Hern is blunter. Walsh says the incumbent spent his tenure “enriching himself” and that he cannot name anything Hern did for ordinary people. He notes that Hern’s Oklahoma ads feature Donald Trump more prominently than Hern, evidence to Walsh that the congressman “is seeking power for someone else and not his constituency.” That, he says, is what makes the seat forgettable. He also mentions, almost in passing, that he reached out to Hern’s office about his own constituent issues and got a response he found “pretty generic and unhelpful.”
Beyond cannabis, Walsh names affordability and accountability as his priorities, and his foreign and economic policy positions place him well outside the Republican field. He opposes American military involvement against Iran and he opposes Trump’s tariffs, pointing to the Supreme Court’s February ruling that struck the tariffs down as an unconstitutional use of presidential power. “Terrible foreign policy and terrible economic policy,” he said. He volunteers that he was never much of a Trump supporter and is baffled that others still are.
His theory of the race rests entirely on that distinction. Walsh expects the eight or nine MAGA aligned Republicans in the primary to split the conservative vote among themselves, leaving room for a candidate running explicitly against the movement. He is asking for votes rather than money, his campaign funded so far out of his own pocket, and he says he has filed with the Federal Election Commission with another report due in the coming days. In 2024, he notes, fewer than 35,000 people voted in this primary. If he can pull ten to twenty thousand votes, he thinks he can force a runoff, which for a long shot would count as an upset.
That accountability streak extends to the institution itself. Prior to our interview, Walsh happily signed the U.S. Term Limits Amendment Pledge, the commitment circulated to congressional candidates by the nation’s largest term limits organization. The pledge is not a promise to limit his own tenure but a commitment to cosponsor and vote for a constitutional amendment capping service at three two year terms in the House and two six year terms in the Senate, the same measure introduced this Congress by Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Ralph Norman. For a candidate whose central charge against Kevin Hern is that he overstayed his usefulness, putting a hard ceiling on congressional careers is the logical extension of the pitch.
He is, by his own description, a contrarian, and he seems to regard that as a qualification. Asked how he would guard against the temptation toward self dealing that he accuses Hern of, Walsh almost laughed. “I don’t really see government as a way to enrich myself. I don’t know how that would occur,” he said. “I’m such a contrarian that if I did try to do something shady, they would shine a light on it so quickly.”
Win or lose, he is not going anywhere. He will keep testing cannabis for pesticides, he says, and expects he will run for something again, probably at the state level. Among the current Republican candidates for governor, he has been quietly promoting Jake Merrick on Reddit, preferring him to a field Walsh describes as competing to see who can promise the harshest crackdown on the marijuana growers whose legal product crosses his lab bench every day.
When he is not running for Congress or troubleshooting a mass spectrometer, Walsh can usually be found on the sand volleyball courts at a brewpub near Tulsa’s Blue Dome district, a place he calls his third home. He has not signed up for a league this season. The campaign, he explained, has become a priority.
Writing By: Robbie Robertson | Editing by Robbie Robertson
Editor’s Note:
Sources
Interview with Kelly Walsh, conducted by The Oklahoma Post, May 29, 2026
Politics1, Oklahoma 2026 candidate directory: https://politics1.com/ok.htm
Oklahoma Voice, 2026 Oklahoma Primary Election voter guide: https://oklahomavoice.com/voter-guides/2026-oklahoma-primary-election/
KOSU, full list of Oklahoma’s congressional candidates in 2026: https://www.kosu.org/oklahoma-congressional-races-2026
NonDoc, statewide and federal races, 15 file for governor: https://nondoc.com/2026/04/03/statewide-federal-races-15-file-for-governor-oklahoma-auditor-wins-by-default/
Kelly Walsh campaign site: https://walsh2026.com
Kelly Walsh LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-walsh-tulsa-oklahoma/
BallotReady, Kelly Walsh candidate profile: https://www.ballotready.org/people/kelly-walsh-00b1da1c-9c07-4fdc-a17e-68a8940a835e
SCOTUSblog, Supreme Court strikes down tariffs, Feb. 20, 2026: https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/02/supreme-court-strikes-down-tariffs/
Ballotpedia, Oklahoma State Question 837 (2026): https://ballotpedia.org/Oklahoma_State_Question_837,_Marijuana_Legalization_Initiative_(2026)
Marijuana Moment, Oklahoma activists withdraw 2026 legalization initiative: https://www.marijuanamoment.net/oklahoma-activists-withdraw-2026-marijuana-legalization-ballot-initiative/
Gibson Dunn, DEA downschedules state medical marijuana to Schedule III, April 2026: https://www.gibsondunn.com/dea-downschedules-state-medical-marijuana-to-schedule-iii-expedited-hearing-set-to-consider-broader-rescheduling/
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