(Update: On Tuesday, June 16, Daniel McClure won election to district attorney for Pottawatomie and Lincoln counties.)
Republican voters in Lincoln and Pottawatomie counties will choose Tuesday between incumbent District Attorney Adam Panter and McLoud Mayor Daniel McClure in a race that has featured allegations of ignored corruption, inexperience, partisanship and political shenanigans.
Both Panter and McClure agreed to interviews ahead of the June 16 Republican primary election, and each lodged his complaints about the other’s record and rhetoric.
Panter, a Cherokee Nation citizen who was born and raised in Stillwell, graduated from the University of Oklahoma and the Oklahoma City University School of Law. After starting his legal career working in Shawnee in 2008 as an assistant district attorney, he ran in the 2018 open District 23 DA race as a Democrat, losing with 45 percent of the vote. He moved to Oklahoma County to work for then-District Attorney David Prater and prosecuted organized crime cases, including ones against “white supremacist gangs and Hispanic gangs,” such as the Universal Aryan Brotherhood.
In 2022, Panter was appointed district attorney for Lincoln and Pottawatomie counties by Gov. Kevin Stitt after David Hammer, who defeated incumbent Allan Grubb to win the election, died before taking office. Grubb later resigned before finishing his term under pressure from Attorney General John O’Connor. Panter said Hammer had asked him to be first assistant district attorney to help fix the “dumpster fire” the DA’s office had become under Grubb, who had defeated him in the 2018 election.
“When I left here, the office was in excellent shape. There was plenty of money. Fully staffed, everything. You name it,” Panter said. “And when I came back, they had lost grants totaling millions of dollars, there were hundreds of thousands of state appropriated funds that were just missing and unaccounted for. The office had staffing restrictions because of those losses so we were about 50 percent staffed when I came out here.”
McClure is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation who grew up in Midwest City and attended the University of Central Oklahoma and the University of Oklahoma. He was elected to the city council of Midwest City in 2014 and started attending the Oklahoma City University School of Law to assist with his ordinance writing. He resigned from the MWC City Council in December 2016. By July 2020, he was serving on the McLoud City Council, where he became mayor in 2023.
“What pushed me over the edge to run — and full disclosure I had no intention of running for DA, I was going to finish off the second term as mayor,” McClure said. “But when I first came into office, we had a public corruption issue with employees doing some illegal activities, illegal purchases and illegal contracts, and so I turned those into Mr. Panter right on three years ago when I came into office as mayor, and he said, ‘Oh, this is incredibly important. I’m going to send this to OSBI to get ahead of it.'”
McClure alleged that Panter never forwarded his complaint to anyone.
“I finally go confront him at his office and he said, ‘Actually, I never turned it in to OSBI. It just fell through the cracks,'” McClure said. “That just pushed me over the edge, and I’ve shared that message across both of our counties in our district, and it’s blown up. I’ve had numerous other city council members, mayors and public employees call me and say, ‘Hey, I have those concerns, too, and I can’t get help either.’ So there just seems to be two sets of rules out in these parts. One for the normal people, and one for important people. I don’t like that.”
Panter said McClure is presenting his version of events like a politician, not like a prosecutor.
“Daniel McClure and the truth have a hard time seeing eye to eye,” Panter said. “McClure came in my office and wanted me to prosecute his city political rival without a proper investigation. I looked at the documents, and I didn’t feel like a crime had occurred, so I didn’t forward that one to the OSBI initially. Then he went around and told the AG’s office and a county commissioner that, if I didn’t file charges against his political rival, then he would run against me for district attorney. And that was when he came in my office and, quote unquote, confronted me.”
Panter said McClure’s vendetta is with fellow McCloud Councilman Phil Solinger, who is currently a candidate for District 1 of the Pottawatomie County Board of Commissioners.
“He handed me some more documents and said, ‘You should file these.’ I said, ‘I’m not going to file these until they are actually investigated,’ and the next day is when he came out and told everybody he was running against me,” Panter claimed. “I forwarded that, actually — because there was some substance to it — to the OSBI, who is still investigating it.”
Asked if he had contacted the Attorney General’s Office about his corruption allegations, McClure said he had, and he alleged an assistant attorney general immediately notified Panter.
“I called the AG’s office to get help on not getting assistance in these cases, and I shared all of the cases I had going back three years. My takeaway from that conversation was that assistant attorney general was going to help me. What happened was he hung up the phone, called Adam and told him everything that we talked about like a tattletale,” McClure said. “He never called me back, and then when I go and see Adam to talk to him about it, he brings it up and says they called me and told me because he’s a friend of mine. Well, that sounds like we have a guy who is biased because he is great friends with you and he never discloses that to me on the phone and then he calls and tells on me instead of referring me to another attorney for assistance. It’s everything that is wrong with government.”
Panter said McClure’s claims are what’s wrong with politics.
“All [the AG’s office] did was call me,” Panter said. “They asked me if I was aware about an issue going on in McLoud. I said, ‘Yes, the mayor called and he wanted something done about this guy he is in a fight with who is a fellow city council member.'”
Panter said the assistant attorney general told him McClure had again stated he would run for DA if Panter didn’t charge Solinger with a crime.
“(He was) basically blackmailing me with a threat of running against me if I didn’t file charges against his political rival, which I found to be extremely unethical,” Panter said. “Honestly, I was really frustrated whenever he told me the whole thing about him running against me if I didn’t file (charges). I said, ‘You just made this issue political, which means I have to forward it on to other people right now to investigate and bring that information to me.’ Because now I’m just going to be accused of, A, I filed it because I don’t want an opponent — which is incredibly wrong — or B, I don’t file it because I’m doing some favor to some guy who I don’t even know who McClure thinks I think is important, which is also incredibly wrong.”
Panter said he had tried not to make his interaction with McClure a campaign issue, but ultimately he said his opponent has made it one.
“I’m trying to highlight why that is dangerous, because he doesn’t understand what the actual criminal investigation process entails. He believes that if someone just walks in and hands you some papers, you just turn around and sign your name on a charge and you charge somebody with a crime. That’s not how it works. He doesn’t understand that things have to be properly investigated either through prosecutors and detectives,” Panter said. “Evidence needs to be gathered properly, and then decisions have to be made, because we have an ethical duty not to file unless we have proof beyond a reasonable doubt. He doesn’t understand that, which is an extremely frightening prospect as a district attorney.”
Partisanship, experience become primary themes
With only Republicans eligible to vote in the June primary, both candidates were asked why conservative and moderate Republicans should back their campaign. McClure argued party affiliation was a major consideration in the race and that Republicans in the county were unhappy Stitt appointed a former Democrat to lead the DA’s office.
“In 2022, a Republican is elected for that position, and he passes away. Adam changes his party nine days later to Republican, and Stitt promptly puts him in office to fill the vacancy, and voters aren’t happy with that. Honestly, that is what they know most about him at the door,” McClure said. “I’ve got a proven record as a conservative who does what he says he is going to do. As mayor, I’ve put more cops on the streets and not raised taxes. We’ve managed well, and we’ve done better.”
Panter, who has criticized the Department of Human Services’ handling of child welfare cases in District 23, argued his past party registration was irrelevant and voters should focus on his record in office.
“You should look at it as who can do this job more effectively,” Panter said. “And I know one of the things they’ve attacked me on is the fact that I used to be registered Democrat — so had President Trump and a lot of people — and I’ve faced criticism, I guess, because I have been such a tough on crime prosecutor. I’ve been a very no-nonsense prosecutor, but defense attorneys generally support me because they know I’m honest and trustworthy and I’m going to treat people correctly and do things the right way. And I think that is why law enforcement support me.”
For voters wanting an explanation of his party flip, Panter said he grew up in Adair County when it was a Democratic stronghold.
“Whenever I turned 18 and graduated high school, I remember you had to be a Democrat to vote in local elections. So I remember hitting 18 and asking my parents what you think I should do because I was undecided, and they said, ‘If you want to vote in local elections around here, you have to be a Democrat,” Panter said. “So that’s what I registered as, and it kind of stayed that way because I never intended to get into politics at any point in my life until these past few years when I’ve kind of been thrust into it.”
Panter said McClure’s criticisms of him are telling because “if people just bring up negativity, that means they don’t have their own accomplishments, experience or whatever to rely on.”
“They just have to attack others,” Panter said. “It’s especially rich coming from somebody who has a very, very short career that has been spent entirely in politics and lobbying who has zero criminal law experience.”
To that end, Panter warned that the problems of the Grubb administration could be repeated under McClure, who lobbied for the Oklahoma Municipal League from 2020 through 2023.
“I don’t want to talk down on my opponent at all, but he’s had a very short legal career, and the entirety of his career he spent pretty much as a lobbyist. He’s got little to no courtroom experience, hasn’t done criminal law, has never tried a criminal case, and so you’ve got a lobbyist/politician versus somebody who has done nothing but spend his entire legal career prosecuting crimes,” Panter said. “If somebody has a heart condition, you go see a cardiac surgeon, right? You don’t go to a podiatrist if you have a heart condition. (…) Using that analogy, how many heart surgeries are we going to allow the podiatrist to have where people die while they learn the job? It’s no different here. How many child molesters, rapists (and) murderers are we going to allow to walk free while somebody who has no experience learns and tries to gain the experience to do his job?”
But McClure, whose campaign has been endorsed by disbarred attorney Ron Durbin, has emphasized Panter’s past political registration in social media posts.
“When I knock doors I regularly get asked ‘isn’t your opponent the guy who ran last time as a Democrat??? The answer is yes. He has also never voted in a Republican primary but wants you to vote for him in this one,” McClure said in a Facebook post Saturday. “The election is Tuesday. I am a lifelong conservative Republican who wont sweep political corruption under the rug.”
Candidates talk attorney donations, tribal relations
While candidates disagreed on questions of partisanship and experience, both candidates agreed on the topics of attorney donations and tribal relations.
According to Ethics Commission campaign finance reports, Panter has raised about $28,000 for his campaign, while McClure has raised $43,100, with $24,400 of that listed as personal loans.
Asked how their office would handle appearances of impropriety or conflicts of interest that could arise from attorneys donating to their campaigns, both candidates said campaign donations would not affect how they do the job of DA. Attorneys historically tend to be most active in district attorney and judicial campaigns.
“That’s a good question, because I can see how there might be an appearance of something there,” Panter said. “The reality is, I think most attorneys donate to these district attorney races because they understand the importance of having somebody in the position they know they can trust and will follow the rules. [Attorneys donate] knowing they are not going to get special treatment, and I think that is the key. That element of, ‘hey, just because I think you’re doing a good job doesn’t mean I want something in return.'”
McClure largely agreed.
“Attorneys and law enforcement are the ones in the court most often, and they are the ones who are most engaged,” McClure said. “If someone believes in my message and wants to support the campaign, I appreciate the help so we can send mailers and spread our message. But I can never be bought. I’ve been in politics a very long time, and there is a reason I’ve never had any questions about my honesty or integrity, because I always hold the line and always do what is right.”
Panter, meanwhile, has irritated members of the bar before. In January 2025, he drew a rebuke from attorneys when he called an Oklahoma County District Court judge a “moron” during a meeting of the District Attorneys Council. Ranting about a Court of Criminal Appeals decision about pre-trial evidentiary motions, Panter also criticized the appellate bench.
“It kind of worries me, because I’m just like, when you get appointed to the Court of [Criminal Appeals], do they ask you to turn in your spine?” Panter said, drawing murmurs from some in the room. “That’s my fear. Are they actually going to do the right thing or not?”
Both Panter and McClure are tribal citizens, and District 23 is also home to five tribal governments: the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, the Absentee Shawnee Tribe, the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma, the Sac and Fox Nation and the Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma. However, none of those tribes has a recognized Indian Country reservation, meaning the post-McGirt decision jurisdictional questions complicating Oklahoma court systems have been far less prevalent.
Asked about his office’s relationship with tribal governments, Panter said he maintains a cooperative relationship with the tribes in the district.
“I would say we have a really good relationship with all of our tribes. We rely heavily on our tribal police departments, and some of them even help us with resources,” Panter said. “We try and keep a really good and close relationship with the tribes and keep everybody on board so we’re all on the same page and helping each other out.”
Asked how he would like the office to work with tribes if elected, McClure also said he preferred cooperation and argued citizens did not care whether tribal or municipal police respond when they make an emergency call.
“In McLoud, we have three tribal nations that we partner with on law enforcement, and I tell people I had to call 911 a few years ago because someone broke into the garage. And when the light is coming over the hill, I don’t care if it says Potawatomi Nation on the side or McLoud PD, I want the help,” McClure said. “We’re all Oklahomans, and we’re better together.”
