EXCLUSIVE — Oklahoma Republican state Sen. Nathan Dahm is jumping into the special Senate race to replace Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe, shifting direction after originally embarking on a primary challenge to junior Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford.
He announced the move with a fiery take: Dr. Anthony Fauci “belongs in federal prison,” Dahm told the Washington Examiner in an interview over the weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, pointing to Fauci’s denials of knowing about gain-of-function research in a Wuhan, China, lab before the coronavirus pandemic.
“He is the prime poster child for government bureaucrats not being held accountable for their actions. I believe he has caused deaths,” said Dahm, 39. “If you look at his record, during the AIDS epidemic, he was wrong about almost everything that caused that epidemic to grow even worse, caused even more deaths, And I think he’s actually caused deaths in America, and I think he should be held accountable for that and he should go and he should rot in a federal prison for the rest of his life.”
‘AWAKE NOT WOKE’ CPAC PUSHES ASIDE TAXES AND FISCAL POLICY FOR CULTURE WARS
Though Dahm speaks in a calm and measured tone, he is no stranger to throwing out headline-grabbing signals. In 2014, he named a bill to allow citizens to obtain a gun without a license after gun control advocate Piers Morgan, then a CNN host. Morgan invited him to a debate on his show, during which Dahm recited the Second Amendment at Morgan’s prompting and cited Oklahoma laws on militias.
Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul sent him a note after the appearance complimenting him on his debate performance. If elected to Congress, Dahm said, he could see himself getting along with Paul, as well as with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Utah Sen. Mike Lee.
He is also friends with Colorado Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert and Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, who happen to be co-chairs of the Second Amendment Caucus.
First elected to his seat in 2012, Dahm is ranked the most conservative state senator in Oklahoma by the American Conservative Union.
Dahm saw the appeal of this year’s CPAC theme, “Awake not Woke,” and its focus on social issues.
“So many Republicans have been unwilling to engage in the culture wars because we want to be left alone. But we’re dealing with literal Marxist socialist communists that want to control every area of our lives. And you cannot just take the leave-me-alone position and hope that they will leave you alone because Marxists will never leave you alone,” Dahm said. “But the focus needs to be on the individual rights and protecting the individual. That’s what my main focus has always been on.”
He would have objected to the 2020 election results in certain states, he said, arguing that judges’ changes to election rules, many of which were meant to cope with the coronavirus pandemic, were not constitutional.
Dahm was born in Oklahoma, but the son of missionaries moved with his family to Romania at age 11 and grew up there. Now, he has an app development company in Tulsa and helps manage his family’s cleaning company.
He is also a newlywed. He proposed to his wife Christina, who joined him at CPAC, at the White House — the Trump White House, he noted — in 2020. They were married about nine months ago.
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Inhofe, 87, announced last week that he will vacate his seat and retire by the end of the year, triggering a special election to fill his seat for the remaining four years of his term.
Dahm joins what is shaping up to be a whirlwind campaign before the Republican primary on June 28. The winner of that contest is highly likely to win the general election in the Republican-leaning state.
Inhofe endorsed his chief of staff, Luke Holland, to replace him in the upper chamber. Oklahoma Republican Rep. Markwayne Mullin announced his candidacy for the open seat this weekend.
One of Lankford’s primary challengers is pastor Jackson Lahmeyer, who received an unusual endorsement from Oklahoma Republican Party Chairman John Bennett. Lahmeyer announced over the weekend that he would continue with his challenge to Lankford rather than switching to run in the newly open seat.
