Cathy Cummings may relocate, run for Ok County District 3 Commissioner

After gerrymandering out of district -- "It's not over yet!"

OKLAHOMA CITY (Free Press) — Cathy Cummings may go ahead and run for the District 3 Oklahoma County Commissioner race even after being gerrymandered out in redistricting.

In an interview with Free Press Monday, Cummings said that she is seriously considering moving to the newly-drawn District 3 and running anyway where she believes she has a good opportunity to win.

After the Democrat had already announced her candidacy for the seat and had been campaigning, the redistricting process, dominated by the two Republicans on the three-person Board of County Commissioners, removed The Village from District 3 and placed it in District 1.

Cummings has lived in The Village with her husband Sean for decades and serves on the City Council for The Village.

Currently, the District 3 commissioner is Kevin Calvey.

Anger

When the vote was taken by the commissioners to establish the new district maps, Cummings was visibly angry, an unusual look for the normally-affable restauranteur.

In comments directed to the commissioners, she resolved in that meeting to not fade away. And, by some indicators, she will not.

She told Free Press that the two Republican commissioners who insisted on putting The Village in the new District 1 were like “two grade-school bullies that thought they were gonna go yank my ponytail on the playground … and planned on knocking me out of the race.”

“Well, I grew up with three older brothers who were way tougher than these two,” she said. “It’s not over yet.”

This is the map District 2 Commissioner Brian Maughan submitted and was adopted by the BoCC:

Commissioner-Maughan-Proposed-Map

Precinct by precinct

She said that she met with her campaign committee Saturday and they looked precinct by precinct at the last race for Governor between Democrat Drew Edmondson and the Republican winner, now Governor Kevin Stitt.

What they found was that in that election, Edmondson won the new District 3, said Cummings.

“We’re going through all the phases,” said Cummings. “I’m not just gonna cower down and give up…, I’m going to look at every avenue.”

She told us that if she does decide to run for District 3 Commissioner, she will have to move into the new District 3 boundaries and change her voter identification address by December 31.

Political alignments

District 3 Commissioner Kevin Calvey is a career Republican politician having run for multiple public offices and served in the Oklahoma Legislature before becoming a commissioner for Oklahoma County.

District 2 Commissioner Brian Maughan is also a Republican but has a lower political profile than Calvey who once threatened to set himself on fire during a debate in the Oklahoma Legislature.

Maughan and Calvey have voted as a block in the past and did so in the case of redistricting Oklahoma County.

Current District 1 Commissioner Carrie Blumert is a Democrat and has found herself on the outside of voting before. Only this time, she voted along with the other two commissioners after attempting negotiations unsuccessfully to leave the Village in District 3.

Current District 3 Commissioner Kevin Calvey said in response to objections during the meeting, that he’s not even running for commissioner again and is, instead, running for the open district attorney seat vacated by DA David Prater who has announced he will not run again. However, the filing period is not open yet. He could decide against running or DA and run for re-election in District 3.


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Founder, publisher, and editor of Oklahoma City Free Press. Brett continues to contribute reports and photography to this site as he runs the business.