(Update: On Tuesday, June 16, Chuck Hall won election to represent Senate District 20.)
For Senate Appropriations and Budget Chairman Chuck Hall to secure a final four-year term in office representing Oklahoma Senate District 20, he faces only a one-on-one matchup with pastor and former Mayor Mark LeMarr on June 16.
No Democrat, independent or third-party candidate threw their hat into this year’s SD 20 race, so the winner of Tuesday’s primary will be elected senator of the north-central Oklahoma district that runs around the Stillwater area from the southwest to the northeast. Both Hall and LeMarr agreed to discuss their candidacies in interviews ahead of the election.
Hall, 59, is the CEO of Exchange Bank. He received 63 percent support in the 2018 Republican primary — and then 70.1 percent support against a Democratic opponent — to win SD 20’s open seat and succeed Sen. AJ Griffin (R-Guthrie). Before that, he had experience in municipal government and banking industry advocacy.
“I’ve spent my whole life, in some form, in public service. I mean, let’s not forget that I served as city treasurer for the City of Perry, two terms as a city council member, two terms as mayor of the City of Perry,” said Hall (R-Perry). “I will never forget where I come from. I come from Perry, Oklahoma. That is my hometown. I love it, and I’ve fought for it my entire life, and that affords me the experience and the opportunity to be able to fight district-wide for the needs of rural Oklahoma.”
LeMarr, 63, has served as pastor at CrossPointe Assembly Church in Crescent since 1989. Like Hall, he has experience as a mayor. He governed in Cimarron City and has served on the board for a rural water district.
“I could, I guess, maybe coast out to some kind of retirement, of whatever that looks like for a pastor — I’m not even sure that’s possible — but instead I would use the last part of my very active life here to influence and to represent the people of District 20, because I believe we’re in the reddest of red,” LeMarr said. “Oklahoma is a red state, and when you speak about the five counties that consist of District 20, I believe the people here are very conservative.”
LeMarr’s challenge of Hall underscores the broader movement to force a leadership change in the State Senate, with conservative activist groups helping Oklahoma’s chapter of the Freedom Caucus movement challenge incumbent senators who support President Pro Tempore Lonnie Paxton (R-Tuttle). Two years ago, similar dynamics led to the defeat of two incumbent senators, Greg McCortney and Jessica Garvin, as well as the ousting of Hall’s budget chairman counterpart in the House: Kevin Wallace.
Now, Freedom Caucus forces have designated Hall and six other incumbents “The Swamp 7.” While LeMarr’s policy priorities and rhetoric generally align with Freedom Caucus leaders and other candidates challenging leadership Republicans, he claimed he has not decided the faction with whom he would throw in as a senator.
“I’ve kept my head down and ran my own race, and have kept silent, and have not thrown my support in any direction like that,” LeMarr said.
SD 20 contains all of Noble and Pawnee counties, a significant portion of Logan County, and parts of Payne and Kingfisher counties. Guthrie and Perry are its biggest cities, with Crescent, Hennessey, Langston and Coyle also represented. Early voting began Thursday and will continue through Saturday before polls reopen from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday, June 16.
Hall: ‘Access to health care is vital for all communities’
LeMarr said the issue that originally got him interested in running for office was the government’s response to COVID, when mandates interfered with the operations of his church — and its affiliated food bank.
“There was an attempt to close our food bank. It didn’t work, because we’re a small town and connected to our local police department, and so the police chief came down and made sure our food bank stayed open,” LeMarr said. “But it was a real wake-up call for me that churches or food banks or any number of things could be considered nonessential, while bar saloons, dance halls and medical marijuana places could all be considered essential and stay open.”
Now, one of LeMarr’s primary concerns involves promoting rural interests through measures like eliminating water meters on irrigation and, according to his website, a “moratorium on green energy.”
“What I’m hearing on the doorsteps of people, as there’s becoming a real pushback to this, it’s not turned out to be the way that it was promised,” LeMarr said of wind and solar projects in Oklahoma. “Whether you talk about the low frequency or the rumble of wind turbines, whether you talk about the shedding of blades, and now the little fibers are down into the fields, and it’s just, there are some very unhappy people throughout District 20 concerning this.”
Additionally, LeMarr advocates “pulling back on the ropes” on Oklahoma’s rampant data center development, citing lack of community involvement over decisions and the need to protect natural resources.
“To have no voice at all, and all of a sudden it changes your utility bills and your resources, and listen, that’s not right,” he said.
Noting his responsibility to serve all Oklahomans through his powerful role as chairman of the Senate Appropriations and Budget Committee, Hall said his more personal focuses involve rural issues, including infrastructure construction and improving education outcomes.
“If you’re 50th in anything, that’s just not acceptable for Oklahomans, and so I want to continue to do what we can to improve the outcomes for our students in public education,” Hall said.
In general, Hall wants to focus on “kitchen table” issues, such as affordability of food, housing and insurance. Another issue of particular importance to Hall is rural access to health care.
“I think the access to health care is vital for all communities in Oklahoma, but particularly in rural Oklahoma,” Hall said. “We saw the Rural Health Transformation dollars come in from the federal government, being administered by the [Oklahoma State Department of Health], and I just think that I’m really looking forward to being a part of that process to make sure that those very generous dollars that are coming in are spent appropriately, where we do have better access to health care here in Oklahoma.”
LeMarr also mentioned health care as a priority, although he said he would have to acquaint himself with the Legislature more before offering specific policy ideas.
“It’s a big problem, it’s a big situation, and there’s going to be some shuffling, no matter who gets in, and whatever legislation is coming up, because there’s a real deficit in the area concerning health care taking place, and so those are some things that’s going to have to be looked at and dealt with,” LeMarr said.
One final rural issue important to Hall, niche as it may seem to city residents, is better land management practices regarding eastern red junipers — known to most Oklahomans as red cedars. While ubiquitous in the cross-timbers, they grow aggressively and can disrupt prairie habitats when overgrown.
“You might find it boring, but I am waging war on red cedars in Oklahoma,” Hall said. “They’re matchsticks for fires. It devastated parts of my Senate district, coming up through Langston and Coyle and the southwest side of Stillwater. Devastated. And the second thing is, it sucks our groundwater. So if we can do everything we can to eradicate those, it’ll help with our fire ratings, it’ll help with our water availability.”
LeMarr: ‘A great amount of influence from out-of-state money’
Like other candidates challenging members of the Senate Republican leadership team, LeMarr is not accepting money from lobbyists. He acknowledged he may be referred to as a “silent candidate,” but he said he did not want to “sell his birthright for a bowl of beans” by accepting money from interest groups.
“There seems to be a great amount of influence from out-of-state money that flows in to make decisions here in the state of Oklahoma,” he said.
LeMarr has criticized Hall for “voting toward the blue side” of the political spectrum, although he stressed he has no personal animosity against his opponent.
“I believe Sen. Hall has voted in an area that not always represented the values of the people being so red,” LeMarr said. “There is nothing personal I have against Sen. Hall. In fact, anybody who would enter this realm and want to do even what I’ve done, door to door and sending out and making contact, I mean, I say nothing but God bless them.”
LeMarr said he met Hall’s mother while knocking doors, and he characterized their conversation positively.
“She was a very classy, gracious lady, and thanked me for being concerned about the citizens of Perry. I really appreciate that. So, there’s not an animosity, there’s not a contention there,” he said. “I believe it’s more of an overall [record] of voting liberal or voting toward the blue side.”
One bill LeMarr disagreed with Hall over was SB 1591, a 2022 measure which would have allowed undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses. Hall voted for the bill on the Senate floor. Proponents at the time included Gov. Kevin Stitt and the Oklahoma State Troopers Association, the latter of whom said the law would make tracking undocumented immigrants easier. LeMarr said he supports legal immigration, but he could not support giving out licenses to people violating immigration laws in the name of catching them.
On his website, LeMarr also criticized Hall for co-sponsoring HB 2765 in 2025, a component in the year’s annual budget agreement that created the state’s new Invest in Oklahoma Board to oversee venture capital project investments from state pension funds and savings accounts. The bill allowed Paxton, the Senate president pro tempore, to appoint one member to the board, and he selected Hall’s brother, banker Zack Hall, for the position in January.
Hall disputed the idea that his co-authorship of HB 2765 included any sort of intent to pave a path for his brother’s board service, and he denied any involvement with the appointment. He noted his brother’s background working for an investment firm, experience Paxton sought when making his decision.
“Apparently the pro tem felt like that he was well qualified,” Hall said. “Those monies are not being invested in any business that my brother and I have, there’s just simply no way for him to have any financial gain out of this, other than having the satisfaction of serving the state of Oklahoma in a non-paid advisory position.”
Like LeMarr, Hall made a point to talk about his opponent in respectful terms, although he noted LeMarr’s lack of legislative experience. Hall said he understood how, out of his “hundreds and hundreds” of Senate votes, an opponent would find a few areas of contention, but he also said his votes may reflect his desire to rework a law, not necessarily a blanket approval or disproval of the policy therein.
“I feel like on the surface, it may be a bill or a piece of policy that an opponent might take issue with, but when you get down into the root of why the vote was cast the way it was, it might make more sense,” Hall said. “My opponent’s never cast a vote in the state Legislature. We don’t really know what kind of a legislator he would be. We are doing our absolute best to campaign on a good, positive note, talking about the things that I’ve done and the things that I want to do in the future, and I’m just not going to get bogged down on the negative.”
