(Update: On Tuesday, June 16, Kinsley Jordan won election to represent House District 40.)
An Enid Public Schools Board member and a U.S. Air Force veteran say they want to continue their public service in a different venue as they seek election to Oklahoma House District 40, a race for an open seat that will be decided in Tuesday’s Republican primary.
Torry Turnbow, who has served on Enid’s school board for 12 years, and Kinsley Jordan, a major in the Air Force Reserve after 15 years in the Air Force as a pilot and strategist, are vying for the seat that covers most of Enid, the county seat of Garfield County in north-central Oklahoma. HD 40 is now held by Rep. Chad Caldwell (R-Enid), who cannot run again because of 12-year legislative term limits.
No other candidate filed to succeed Caldwell, meaning winner of the GOP primary will be the next HD 40 representative.
Jordan and Turnbow both appeared at a candidate forum last month sponsored by the Garfield County Hispanic Coalition. They discussed their priorities in interviews last week with NonDoc.
Turnbow, 49, grew up in Tulsa and met her husband at Oklahoma State University. After living in Oklahoma City for several years, she and her husband, who was raised in Enid, moved to the “Queen Wheat City” 16 years ago. She has worked in health care, owned a small business and worked as a property manage. Staying active in her church and serving as a community volunteer. Turnbow said she got involved in public office when a school board member resigned owing to a conflict and she was elected. With children ages 12, 16 and 19, she was encouraged last year to seek the HD 40 seat, she said. If Turnbow wins the legislative post, she will be required to step down from her school board position.
If elected, her top priorities are education, health care and how the state manages its revenue, especially taxes, she said. Those views are reflected when she knocks on doors seeking votes.
“The majority seem to all come back down to the root, which is educating the children and making sure that they have a process and a step forward to succeed and get the education that they need no matter the method (public or private),” she said. “Health care is another thing that is big here in our community that people are very concerned about. We have two great hospitals, but we struggle with a lot of the specialty care.”
Jordan, 41, grew up on a farm in central Kansas and landed in Enid in 2008 as a student pilot at Vance Air Force Base after graduating as a second lieutenant from the U.S. Air Force Academy. He said he met his wife at an Enid church. While he was deployed to multiple combat missions in Afghanistan and Iraq flying the E-3 Sentry (AWACS, his family stayed in Enid. He returned to Enid and served as an instructor pilot at Vance AFB for six years. In 2021, he worked at the Pentagon as a chief strategist for the Air Force’s Strategic Studies Group for the Chief of Staff. He left the Air Force in 2023 and is a major in the Air Force Reserve, which requires him to be on duty 24 days a year. The Air Force Reserve approved his pursuit of legislative office, Jordan said.
Jordan and his wife, who have children age 1, 8 and 12, own a real estate rental business and an aerospace business development company. He also is associate pastor and worship leader at World Harvest Church.
“I’m a strong Christian conservative Republican, I have no shame in sharing my faith of who I am,” Jordan said. “I am tired of looking at the Capitol and seeing policies written and made that don’t reflect our values here in Enid, and I’m excited to not only run to represent that, but also I’m running from a place of concern because Enid has been stagnant in its growth for a long time, and being a businessman, and working and operating in industry, I see an opportunity for Enid to grow, and for District 40 to grow, and for Oklahoma as a whole to have more of a strong stance of growth toward aerospace and defense industries, because President Trump has done a great job growing those industries.”
Early voting will be available at the Garfield County Election Board from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday and Friday as well as from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday. Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Election Day — Tuesday, June 16.
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Turnbow: ‘We have to provide a free and public education for everyone’
Turnbow said she supports the reading literacy legislation passed and signed into law this year that implements stricter requirements, starting in the 2027-28 academic year, for public schools to intervene when students fall behind grade-level expectations in reading. She said the next step is pairing that same requirement with mathematics.
“I’m definitely grateful that we’re going back to focusing on reading,” she said. “I think that is something that we as a state have failed many of our students, my children included, age-wise as they moved through during these years that we backed off of it so I’m excited to see that. I think that we also really have to focus on math, I think that’s another area where our students need more support and growth. If you look at education, reading and math, I mean those are two things that we all use every day.”
Turnbow said she isn’t opposed to Oklahoma’s parental choice tax credit program that provides a refundable tax credit for eligible Oklahomans who pay tuition and fees at private schools. But funding for public schools should not be slighted, she said, especially with the state ranking near the bottom in per-pupil public education spending.
“It doesn’t matter what method you’re talking about, if it’s private or public, but we’ve got to make sure that the funding stays strong,” Turnbow said. “Our public schools are what our communities and our states and our country were founded on. We have to provide a free and public education for everyone, so we’ve got to make sure that we’re maintaining good funding there. … And then as far as moving forward and bringing us up from the bottom, it’s not just a funding thing. There are issues that have to be looked at. You can’t just throw money at something and expect it to correct. We’ve got to make sure that we’re looking deeper than that to grow education overall for all students.”
Jordan said he supports the parental choice tax credit program.
“I’m a huge advocate for putting parents in the driver’s seat of their student’s education,” he said. “I think the state’s done a really good job of expanding out the parent-choice tax credit.”
Jordan said he also is frustrated with reports showing Oklahoma near the bottom in both public and higher education.
“We are struggling and lacking in where we rank in education, and that’s detrimental to our future generations,” he said. “We need to be setting our children and the next generations up for success so they can succeed in the workforce. And sending them into the workforce as high school graduates that are struggling in reading, writing and arithmetic — the big three that we all grew up focusing on — we’re doing our children a disservice, and we have to focus.”
Jordan said teachers aren’t to blame.
“I believe we have to help teachers more, because nobody knows better what needs to happen in the classroom than those teachers,” he said. “In talking to so many teachers that work in public schools and work in private schools, a lot of times the teachers’ hands are tied by policies that are put in place in districts above them. I’ve talked to so many teachers that are paying for curriculum out of their own pocket to teach the classes, because that’s what the students need, and to me that’s heartbreaking.”
Jordan: ‘I’m tired of seeing Enid stagnate’
Jordan said he remains frustrated that Enid struggles to land industries that offer 100 or more full-time job. The area has attracted wind and solar farms, but those investments are not bringing long-term growth, he said.
“When we compare other communities that have seen a rapid long-term growth, I look at Stillwater, and they just got an aircraft manufacturing company, and they’re bringing hundreds of jobs,” he said. “You look at Ponca City and Bartlesville and Owasso and Muskogee and some of these other comparable-size communities that are growing and bringing long-term sustainable jobs in. And I look at Enid and I say, ‘We have to get there.’ And that’s what I’m fighting for. That’s what I will fight for, not only as a representative, but I’m willing to do the hard work of helping to be able to find a pathway of bringing real long-term jobs into this community. Because Enid, if you’re not growing, you’re dying. And I’m tired of seeing Enid stagnate in size. We need to start growing. And I have that same mindset toward the state.”
Jordan said he is leery of data center developments, saying each proposal needs to be reviewed thoroughly.
“You know, water has been a concern for Enid,” he said. “The city just is finalizing the Kaw Lake project to be able to make sure that we have a sustainable source of water. (…) And there are a lot of people within Enid, Oklahoma, who have told me, ‘Please, do not let data centers come here.’ And so, I think part of the responsibility, their concern is one, the power grid; two, the water; three, is it going to bring jobs or are there going to be tax cuts and tax benefits given to the company so that the people have to continue paying the bill?”
Turnbow said citizens need to be told of the consequences as well as potential benefits of a data center being located in their community.
“If you look at it as economic development, I’m not opposed to it because it is economic development, and jobs matter and they benefit those communities in the state. But we need to make sure that the communities that these are going into have the information,” she said. “I feel like a lot of the communities that have had them pop up have felt blindsided (…) so I think we need total transparency and understanding of, you know, what’s being offered.”
Turnbow said that “if there’s tax incentives offered for them,” HD 40 residents need to know “how it’s going to affect specifically the local water and electricity costs.”
“If they’re going to come here to Garfield County, I want to make sure that our county commissioners and our local stakeholders are at the table and understand what this looks like and what the impact is going to be to our community so that our citizens have a full understanding of what it’s looking like,” Turnbow said. “Economic development is great, but what’s the impact to the community? We need to make sure that we’re really looking at it all.”
