LAWTON — Incumbent Sen. Dusty Deevers finished third in June’s Republican primary election for Senate District 32, meaning the southwest Oklahoma seat will have a new senator for the next four years — one who will likely depart from the firebrand Elgin pastor’s two years of convoluted Freedom Caucus rhetoric.
Nonetheless, if SD 32 Republicans want to be represented by a conservative Elgin pastor, they still have an option: Curtis Erwin, who received 33.1 percent support (1,627 votes) to advance to the Aug. 25 GOP runoff.
While sitting in his office at Elgin’s Crossroads Baptist Church, Erwin explained his decision to challenge Deevers.
“I was very unhappy with our current senator, just with his lack of support for southwest Oklahoma. I thought he was very — you know — had a very special interest,” Erwin said. “I think he represented the Freedom Caucus more than he did southwest Oklahoma, and so that was the biggest reason I ran.”
The Freedom Caucus is a subset of the most conservative Republican senators who have clashed with Senate Republican leadership. First elected without majority GOP support in a 2023 special election, Deevers (R-Elgin) became the Freedom Caucus’ vice chairman, and his third-place finish in June was hailed as a victory for pragmatic Republicans in state business circles.
In 2023, Deevers narrowly eclipsed Dr. Jean Hausheer, a board certified eye surgeon, to win the special Republican primary. This year, Hausheer challenged Deevers in a rematch and bested him with 37 percent support (1,816 votes) in the primary.
“I just prayed for him the whole three years, hoping he would just represent us well,” Hausheer said
But according to Hausheer, her disappointment in Deevers spurred her to run again.
“(I) started asking myself, do we really want four more years of this? And he means well. It’s just, I don’t align with his ways, his methods, his belief system,” Hausheer said. “We’re both conservative people, both Christian people, but I just didn’t align with a lot of his thinking and his ways of doing things.”
Hausheer said the Freedom Caucus has been very divisive, and from what she could see, it is not something she would want to join.
“I am not a left-handed caucus or a right-handed caucus or a blue-eyed caucus or a brown-eyed caucus. I’m none of those things. I am a Republican,” Hausheer said. “I feel that Republicans are way better when we unite, versus when we’re divisive toward one another, chaotic toward one another, and not unified.”
Senate District 32 encompasses the northwestern half of Comanche County, including Lawton, the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge and the Fort Sill military installation, which has a total population of 53,000 people. In 2020, 20.5 percent of Lawton’s population aged 18 and older were civilian veterans of the military, according to the Fort Sill website.
The ultimate Republican nominee for Senate District 32 will face Democratic candidate Booker Newton and independent Valentin Peña in the Nov. 3 general election.
Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 25. Early voting is set to take place from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Aug. 20 and 21, as well as from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 22.
Erwin: ‘Bring in jobs to protect Fort Sill’
Erwin, who previously worked for the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company for 21 years, said economic development is necessary for southwest Oklahoma to survive.
“Southwest Oklahoma needs economic development more than any other district in Oklahoma, and we have a unique opportunity with our partnership of Fort Sill,” Erwin said. “We have already started those opportunities in STEM with the FISTA building.”
The FISTA is an a 650,000 square foot “innovation center” established in 2022 in a decommissioned part of the downtown Lawton mall. An economic development group’s partnership with Lawton and Fort Sill has renovated the building to house defense contracting companies.
“Lawton is trying to brand itself as the STEM capital of Oklahoma, and anything I could do as a senator to help with that, to improve with that, to bring in jobs to protect Fort Sill, will be one of my top priorities,” Erwin said. “There are so many things that improve when you do have better opportunities with jobs that pay well and have really good benefits, especially health care.”
Hausheer also noted the impacts of the district’s large military population during her interview at a coffee shop just a few miles south of the base. She said veterans are frequently impacted by health care accessibility issues.
“When you talk to all of them at the doors, which is what I’ve done, there’s tons of unrecognized, untreated PTSD. The PTSD also goes into our police and fire and EMS,” Hausheer said. “We’re also ranked very, very low in health care (…) In that realm, our health care, our telehealth, our psychiatric health, is really our biggest problem here because of the PSTD, and in general, we have drug, alcohol, addiction issues as well.”
Hausheer, who previously served on the Oklahoma Opioid Overdose Fatality Review Board, said health care issues extend to people experiencing homelessness in the district.
“It needs to also be free for people like our veterans who served our country with valor, and yet they are now on the streets, untreated with bad PTSD,” Hausheer said.
Erwin agreed that Oklahoma’s health care system needs reform. His daughter is a registered nurse, who he says made him aware of issues involving scope of practice.
“Scope of practice is a big deal for nurse practitioners, where they want to be able to practice in a way where they don’t have to pay a doctor for some of the things that they do,” Erwin said. “We need to give nurse practitioners more opportunity to practice without a doctor to oversee them. There are some things that absolutely a doctor needs to oversee, but I think there are some opportunities to lower those costs if we allow nurse practitioners to continue to expand that scope of work.”
In three different instances, Erwin said his son has been diagnosed with cancer and has subsequently entered remission. Erwin said his son received “world class” health care each time.
“The reason we were able to do that is because the company that I work for provided excellent insurance, and so we were basically able to go anywhere we wanted to get world-class health care,” Erwin said. “One of the best things we can do for health care is to continue to provide better opportunities for people.”
Hausheer: ‘These kids are our future workforce’
Hausheer said she and her husband have knocked on nearly 20,000 doors since February. Similar to her opponent, the biggest concern she hears is the economy, including cost of living and tax concerns.
“Property tax, if you own your home, you shouldn’t be paying it. If you, on property tax, have fixed income retired or you’re fixed income disabled, you shouldn’t be paying it,” Hausheer said. “Our veterans who are 100 percent disabled currently don’t pay any property tax, and that’s not who I’m talking about. I’m talking about the non-veterans type of people.”
Hausheer also voiced support for Gov. Kevin Stitt’s call to eliminate Oklahoma’s personal income tax.
“That needs to be gradually eliminated,” she said. “That would make a difference.”
Hausheer identified education as another big concern of hers. Although she referred to Fort Sill as the “crown jewel” of SD 32’s economy, she also discussed the challenges faced by local educators.
“I’ve been to voters’ doors, and the teachers acknowledge openly that some of our issue is they suddenly have a military family, boom, a grade schooler has just arrived who’s been moving a lot because they’ve got parents in the military, so we’ve got those issues,” Hausheer said. “We need a community that respects and honors them (…) and we do a very good job of that.”
Oklahoma’s public education system has struggled in recent years, regardless of whether students are new to a community or have been there for their entire lives.
Erwin said public schools and universities, such as Cameron University in Lawton and Duncan, need to be able to pivot quickly into STEM education.
“With all the jobs we see now, they’re going to be STEM jobs, and so we don’t have a choice. We have to pivot,” Erwin said.
Similarly, Erwin said vocational schools must be able to adapt.
“We have to have that science, technology, engineering (and) math be taught in our public schools, to be taught at our universities, and to really be working with our vo-techs to prepare our students to leave our high schools, our vo-techs and our universities prepared for those type of jobs,” Erwin said.
Hausheer is a retired educator, and she worked at the University of Oklahoma Dean McGee Eye Institute for more than 40 years. She agreed that changes need to be made in education, saying parents are tired of schools lacking uniform disciplinary standards. She also said Oklahomans want to see their school age children reading at grade level.
“Those two issues matter because children cannot get good learning environments without good, structured discipline,” Hausheer said. “Parent involvement is critical. I am for school choice.”
Hausheer said all teachers should be paid at least the national average, and she said the Oklahoma Legislature should keep per-student spending at or above the national level.
“We’re way below that on our per-student spend here,” Hausheer said. “These kids are our future workforce, they really need to be able to succeed, and we’ve fallen short. (…) I do support better funding for our teachers, and I think that’s critical.”
Hausheer said she is the better SD 32 runoff candidate because she knows how to listen and learn.
“I learn more from my mistakes than my successes. I believe we all do. I really bring experience that’s in a different realm than what [Erwin] can do, and I wish him well in this endeavor, I really do. But I know I’m best suited on day one, and not just day one, but for the whole four years,” Hausheer said. “I do value listening to a person’s perspective, whatever it is, it’s important that I listen to them, so I do.”
Erwin also argued he is the better candidate, saying he knows what it’s like to be from southwest Oklahoma.
“I know what it’s like to get a paycheck and try to make that stretch week to week or month to month. I know what it’s like when my kids are getting ready to go back to school,” Erwin said. “I understand southwest Oklahoma better than any other person in this race, and because of that, I think I can represent southwest Oklahoma better than anybody else.”
