Extremist pastor plots comeback campaign in deep-red Oklahoma district
Once a failed Senate candidate, Jackson Lahmeyer hopes to benefit from a party captured by Christian Nationalism
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A right-wing Christian Nationalist pastor is about to announce another run for Congress, but unlike his previous failed attempt, this one could actually be successful.
Jackson Lahmeyer is pastor of the internet-friendly Sheridan.Church, based in Tulsa, but his real job is closing the gap between his religion and the MAGA wing of the Republican Party. An article from Oklahoma Watch last year even noted the guest speakers who have appeared at his church:
FBI director Kash Patel promoted his book in the church. Lara Trump phoned Trump on stage. The lawyer Alina Habba talked about Trump’s New York trial. And this month, Eric Trump met there with some of Tulsa’s top CEOs.
More recently, he founded “Pastors for Trump,” which was organized to get conservative Christians to support Trump’s 2024 campaign, but he’s been on the Trump Train since before the 2016 election.
That’s why he ran for U.S. Senate in 2022. He believed he had built up enough of a base that he could pull off an upset in the Republican primary, but he was trounced by incumbent James Lankford. Lahmeyer only earned about 26% of the vote to Lankford’s 68%.
Part of the reason his campaign never quite caught fire is because Lahmeyer is a full-time conspiracy theorist.
He has said Black Lives Matter was founded by “witchcraft-practicing lesbians,” signed vaccine exemption forms for anyone who became an online member of his church, and claimed Dr. Anthony Fauci was a “mass-murdering Luciferian.” January 6? An “inside job” by the FBI. Alex Jones? He “did nothing wrong.” Lahmeyer embraces QAnon… even though he’s been accused of Satanism by other QAnon conspiracists.
He also seeks the “eradication” of Islam from the country and thinks Black women like Jasmine Crockett are guilty of acting “like a GHETTO fool in Congress.”
He also wondered: “Is @KamalaHarris even BLACK!?”
It’s the kind of broken-brain racist thinking you would expect from a graduate of Oral Roberts University.
And now, Lahmeyer is preparing another run for Congress. While he hasn’t made it official yet, he’s not exactly being subtle about it.
All of this was set in motion after Donald Trump nominated Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin to take over Kristi Noem’s job as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. With that senate seat about to be vacant, a special election would take place later this year to replace him, and Rep. Kevin Hern announced his intention to run for that seat. (Trump has already endorsed him.)
That means Hern’s congressional seat would be vacant, and that’s the seat Lahmeyer is now itching to get.
Which is interesting because two weeks ago, Lahmeyer told his supporters he had no intention of running for anything. When addressing the question of whether he would run for the Senate again, Lahmeyer wrote in an email:
At this season in my life, I have no intentions of running for any particular office in the near future. I am absolutely loving the opportunity to be the Pastor at Sheridan.Church.
A week later, he told his supporters his intentions had changed:
… now that my congressional District is open (CD1). I am considering running for this open seat which covers just the Tulsa Metro.
I am headed to DC for a round of meetings tomorrow at the White House about this decision.
Please pray for me that I will have wisdom and clarity on which path to go.
Gotta love that bullshit rhetoric in which Christians says they’re asking God for “clarity” on the thing they already plan to do. (God never says “No” to those prayers.)
Lahmayer is now teasing a special announcement next Tuesday to formally announce his campaign.
Oklahoma’s 1st Congressional District is a fairly red district where all the real competition occurs in the GOP primary. The Cook Political Report currently rates it a solid Republican district, meaning Democrats don’t stand a chance. As of now, it’s unclear if Lahmeyer will face any real competition for the seat.
It’s scary to think about how someone this extreme has now become a viable candidate for a major political party, but that’s what the GOP has embraced for years. It wasn’t that long ago that someone who trafficked in conspiracies, racism, and bigotry would have been on the fringes of politics; now they’re courted by power brokers and realistically have a chance winning a seat in Congress. That’s not because Lahmeyer has become a better candidate but because Republicans have lost all their guardrails.
If Lahmeyer doesn’t win his primary, whoever does won’t be any better. That’s because Christian Nationalism is now an organizing principle for an ever-growing faction within the party. That’s the danger here. It’s not that Lahmeyer would be a reliable vote for MAGA extremists; any Republican in his position would be. It’s that he will further legitimize a poisonous governing philosophy. He may as well burn the Constitution at his campaign announcement since he doesn’t give a damn about it.
𝐴𝑙𝑒𝑥 𝐽𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑠? 𝐻𝑒 “𝑑𝑖𝑑 𝑛𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑤𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑔.”
So, it's not wrong to slander and libel the parents of dead children? In the same tweet where he said that, he also claims Trump did nothing wrong. Just how skewed is this man's sense of morality? Apparently his sense of right and wrong is dependent on whether or not the action is taken by someone he agrees with politically, not whether or not basic human decency is involved. Lahmeyer seems to think Trump can do no wrong because he is Trump, not because of his character.
𝐻𝑒 𝑎𝑙𝑠𝑜 𝑠𝑒𝑒𝑘𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 “𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛” 𝑜𝑓 𝐼𝑠𝑙𝑎𝑚 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑦
Hey Lahmeyer: the religion clauses of the First Amendment would like a word with you. You are probably one of those idiots who think the Establishment Clause means that Congress is only prohibited from declaring one particular sect of Christianity the official Church of the United States.
𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑠 𝐵𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑘 𝑤𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑛 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝐽𝑎𝑠𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑒 𝐶𝑟𝑜𝑐𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑡 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑔𝑢𝑖𝑙𝑡𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 “𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑎 𝐺𝐻𝐸𝑇𝑇𝑂 𝑓𝑜𝑜𝑙 𝑖𝑛 𝐶𝑜𝑛𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠.”
Your tweet says it's not racist to use racist stereotypes to identify someone you disagree with who also happens to have more melanin than you do. Explain exactly how that isn't racist. Explain it like I'm five, because in every universe i know of, targeting someone with racist stereotypes is pretty fucking racist.
Red districts have already been flipped blue across the country. While my hope for that outcome here is very small, it is still there.