(Update: On Tuesday, June 16, Wargin Grimaldo won election to represent House District 92.)
Two Oklahoma City attorneys are competing Tuesday in a pair of Democratic primaries to fill the House District 92 seat vacated when Rep. Forrest Bennett became state president of the AFL-CIO labor union.
Sam Wargin Grimaldo, a criminal defense and immigration attorney, and Vicki Werneke, a retired federal public defender who spent more than 30 years representing death row inmates, were the only candidates to file for the central-OKC seat. Voters will see their names on the ballot twice owing to the five months remaining in Bennett’s term and this year’s regular election for a two-year term in the 61st Oklahoma Legislature.
Encompassing downtown OKC, HD 92 runs west and southeast through less affluent communities, broadening at I-35 to include Valley Brook. Bennett (D-OKC) represented the district for nearly a decade.
Grimaldo, 38, grew up in a south OKC working-class family to an immigrant mother and a mechanic father. He has lost races for Ward 4 on the OKC City Council in 2021 and Senate District 46 in 2024. He graduated from the University of Central Oklahoma with a sociology degree, taught at U.S. Grant High School during the 2018 teacher walkout and later earned his law degree from the University of Oklahoma. He now practices criminal defense and immigration law and has worked with the Latino Community Development Agency and the GEAR UP program at UCO.
Werneke, 62, retired from the Federal Public Defender’s office in March 2024 to care for her husband, who died later that year. Since then, she has continued practicing law, taking on pro bono and reduced-fee cases and doing contract work for Pregnancy Justice, a New York-based nonprofit that represents individuals charged with crimes related to pregnancy loss. She first came to Oklahoma in 1982 after graduating high school in North Dakota, following her mother, who moved to Oklahoma City to direct the state’s Equal Rights Amendment ratification campaign.
The winner of Tuesday’s special and regular primaries will carry out the remainder of Bennett’s term as well as a full two-year term afterwards.
Grimaldo: Medicaid expansion ‘took us 10 years longer than it should have’
In interviews, both Grimaldo and Werneke said access to health care is among the most urgent issues facing HD 92 residents, and both pointed to the Republican-controlled Legislature as the primary obstacle to improvement.
Grimaldo tied the issue directly to Oklahoma’s 2020 state question that codified Medicaid expansion in the state constitution. Voters narrowly approved SQ 802 during the pandemic after years of legislative resistance and missed opportunities for a 100 percent federal matching rate.
“Back in 2010, Mary Fallin was on the verge of approving Medicaid expansion and then, because of politics, withdrew that intention,” he said. “For 10 years, Oklahomans who are at or slightly above the poverty line did not have the access they should have had under the Affordable Care Act — all because of political gamesmanship.”
Now, Grimaldo is concerned about the Legislature’s efforts to change the voter-approved Medicaid expansion language from a constitutional provision to a statutory one. Lawmakers ultimately did not propose that question to voters this year, but House Speaker Kyle Hilbert (R-Bristow) has strongly pushed for such a change.
Werneke said attracting and retaining doctors in Oklahoma is central to improving health outcomes and that the state’s broader affordability and education problems are making that harder.
“I know that I’ve had problems getting in to see a specialist because there just aren’t enough of them,” she said. “You’ve got to wait six months to get an appointment with a gynecologist, even in Oklahoma City — I can’t imagine what it’s like in the rural parts of the state.”
She said giving patients and doctors autonomy over medical decisions, rather than legislating those choices, would be a meaningful first step.
On the topic of education, both HD 92 candidates drew on their experiences with Oklahoma City Public Schools. Grimaldo taught at U.S. Grant High School and said he views school funding as an investment rather than an expense.
“Whatever the cost is, we need to bring and retain quality teachers into Oklahoma,” he said. “We need to focus on growing our own here with teacher pipelines.”
He pointed to an OKCPS program that helps paraprofessionals earn teaching certifications through UCO as a model worth expanding, and said elevating the profession’s prestige is just as important as pay increases.
Werneke said the Legislature’s decision to remove classroom size caps — which she said were in place when her own children attended Putnam City Schools — is one of the most damaging changes of recent years.
“In order to fix it, we’re going to have to fund the schools and give them the teachers they need,” she said. “One of the reasons why we have a shortage of teachers in this state is because we don’t pay them like we should.”
Werneke: Equal rights amendment necessary ‘so that everybody is treated fairly’
Asked what voters might not know about them beyond their campaign materials, Werneke said she intends to introduce a resolution to add an equal rights amendment to the Oklahoma Constitution.
“Equality of rights shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex,” Werneke said. “We need to have an equal rights amendment so that everybody is treated fairly in Oklahoma and across the country.”
Grimaldo said he wants to open up the legislative process itself — pointing out that Oklahoma currently has no formal mechanism for members of the public to address committees or speak on proposed legislation.
“I want to make sure we rightfully take our space in the crafting of our laws here in Oklahoma,” he said.
On housing and affordability, both candidates identified rising insurance costs as a major issue for Oklahomans, though they came at it from different angles.
Grimaldo said the insurance commissioner needs stronger authority to cap annual rate increases for home insurers — something the Legislature passed in HB 3781 this session — and he called the Republican majority’s focus on property tax cuts misguided.
“Property taxes are how local jurisdictions derive their funding for schools, for police departments, for firefighters, for roads,” he said. “The effort should be directed more at addressing insurance costs, which have been rising at higher rates than property taxes have.”
Werneke, who said she rented in recent years after moving back to Oklahoma City, described a personal experience with an out-of-state corporate landlord who did not punctually replace a broken air conditioning unit in summer.
“Air conditioning is not considered an essential service in Oklahoma, which seems ridiculous,” she said. “The law in Oklahoma favors landlords, and I want to fight to give more protections to renters.”
Werneke acknowledged she needs to study housing and insurance policy more deeply but said she believes additional legislative levers exist to help both homeowners and renters.
Grimaldo also drew on his immigration law background to address a cluster of bills that Republican lawmakers has passed targeting undocumented immigrants and their families. He said recent laws and proposals have created fear among immigrant families about accessing benefits legally entitled to their U.S.-born children.
“So many measures that just waste the Legislature’s time and don’t solve any of the problems that Oklahomans are actually facing on a day-to-day basis,” Grimaldo said.
