Oklahoma city commissioner faces recall election over ties to white nationalism

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• William Brangham:

  In the rural city of Enid, Oklahoma, there will be a recall election next Tuesday over allegations of racism and white supremacy.

  Commissioner Judd Blevins was confronted at a candidate forum this week by residents who want to oust him for his alleged ties to a white nationalist group. While Blevins has tried to blunt the criticism, it has sharply divided this small town.

  I spoke recently to "NewsHour"'s community correspondent, Adam Kemp, who has been following this closely.

  So, Adam, let's go back to the start here. Judd Blevins has only been in office for about a year. Was any of his past association known before he was elected?

• Adam Kemp:

  Yes, so when he was running for the city commissioner spot, which makes him part of Enid City Council in 2023, the local newspaper there did write a story that detailed some of his relationships with white nationalist groups, including Identity Evropa, which is the main group here that he is alleged to have been a part of.

  It detailed also that he had attended the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. And when confronted by citizens, he had no comment, basically, or wouldn't deny that he was part of one of these groups.

• William Brangham:

  So that was last year. who started this current recall effort to get him out of office?

• Adam Kemp:

  Yes, it started by the Enid Social Justice Committee, which is just a group of citizens that were concerned about his election.

  Specifically, I talked to Connie Vickers and Nancy Presnall, who are two members of this group and lifelong Enid citizens. They confronted Blevins. They held up a giant sign that they had enlarged that allegedly showed him at the rally in Charlottesville holding a tiki torch, and asked him point blank, "Is this you?"

  And Blevins did not answer their question, and in fact, according to them, ran away from them.

  I ended up talking to those two women just about confronting Blevins.

• Nancy Presnall, Enid Social Justice Committee:

  If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck, and you're not calling name-calling if you call it a duck, and the same with a Nazi.

• Connie Vickers, Enid Social Justice Committee:

  I was going on Facebook, and I went to a certain Facebook page, and I went under comments, and there I saw this picture, and I was just petrified that we had a city councilman, a guy running for city council that was that had been at Charlottesville.

  And so I started digging. I posted pictures. Nancy posted pictures, and we just started a campaign against him.

• Adam Kemp:

  That group ended up collecting nearly 350 signatures to initiate that recall petition.

• William Brangham:

  So, has Blevins answered questions about this? Has he said anything more recently about his associations or not?

• Adam Kemp:

  Yes, for the longest time, he would neither confirm or deny whether he was a member of these groups, or a white nationalist, or believed in white nationalist ideals.

  But, this past week, at a forum held in Enid for the two candidates that are running for the spot, he did confirm that he attended the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, and he gave this reason as why he felt he needed to attend.

• Judd Blevins, Enid, Oklahoma, City Commissioner:

  Because I felt it was important to protest the removal of statues of American soldiers, of American figures, that, if they remove statues of men who fought in the Civil War, they will move on to whoever they want.

  Defending, protecting, protesting against the removal of historical Americans is important to me. It's our history. It's our heritage. It's who we are.

• Adam Kemp:

  Blevins was later then asked to denounce white nationalism, and he responded that he couldn't denounce what he never was.

• William Brangham:

  So, if Blevins keeps his seat and the recall fails, what do residents say that this means for their community?

• Adam Kemp:

  Yes, talking to residents, they're, frankly, embarrassed.

  They're — I think a lot of them are embarrassed that he was elected in the first place, and now they're pretty petrified that he will be reelected and what that will do to their city's reputation.

  Beyond that, talking to folks, they're worried about how the city will go about attracting businesses to come do business there in their town and their ongoing relationship with Vance Air Force Base, which is based there in Enid.

• William Brangham:

  So if someone were to look at this and just say, well, this is just one small city council in Oklahoma, what is the larger connection, is there a larger connection to the white nationalist movement in this country?

• Adam Kemp:

  Yes, I talked with Pete Simi, who is an expert on white nationalism in the U.S., started studying it after the Oklahoma City bombing actually in 1995.

  And he said that white nationalists were emboldened after the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and that getting into local elections has been a goal of theirs.

• Pete Simi, Chapman University:

  The danger of having white supremacists holding local office is that this is part of their agenda in terms of them being able to implement, execute various strategies, various plans as it relates to them wanting to create a white ethnostate, for example, which is obviously a larger plan on the horizon for them.

  But there are smaller steps along the way that need to happen, and having people hold a local office allow them to potentially achieve some of these smaller steps to the ultimate goal, really, which is, like I said, a white ethnostate.

• Adam Kemp:

  Simi also went on to say that beyond getting into local elections and winning them is, the threat of normalizing white supremacy is one of the bigger threats facing this nation.

• William Brangham:

  All right, "NewsHour" communities correspondent Adam Kemp, thanks for this great reporting.

• Adam Kemp:

  Thanks.