Yes, Oklahoma And Other Red States Have Higher Violent Crime. It's A Fact, KEVIN.

It's the gun laws, dummies.

Joy Hofmeister, the Democratic running for governor in Oklahoma, said something OUTRAGEOUS during her debate Wednesday with incumbent Gov. Kevin Stitt:

"So let’s talk about facts: The fact is, the rates of violent crime are higher in Oklahoma under your watch than in New York or California," Hoffmeister said. "That's a fact." She's the state superintendent of public schools, and she has done her homework on this.

The claim was so obviously impossible that Stitt had to snort-laugh, interrupt Hoffmeister (twice) and point in disbelief at his Democratic challenger. It was also true, as the Washington Post pointed out (free gift link):   

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , Oklahoma has a homicide rate of 9 deaths per 100,000, compared with California’s rate of 6.1 and New York’s rate of 4.7.

Yep, Oklahoma's murder rate is nearly double that of New York. That's the sort of thing you probably ought to have good information on if you're the governor of the state with more violent crime.

Stitt nonetheless tried to enlist the audience, mocking Hofmeister for such a ridiculous true statement: "Hang on, Oklahomans, do you believe we have higher crime than New York or California?"

Stitt's bit was met with hoots and applause from the audience, and the debate moderator said the matter would be fact-checked by nonprofit journalism outfit The Frontier (which hasn't yet published its fact check).

Nonetheless, people all over Twitter were happy to point out that Hofmeister was right. Here's video:  

“Finally. A Democratic candidate just correctly pointed out that red states like Oklahoma have HIGHER crime rates than New York and California. The Republican candidate and moderator refused to believe it.”

— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen) 1666226386 

Just to be scrupulously accurate, we'll note that, in a separate fact check, Oklahoma TV station KFOR, using FBI crime statistics, noted that Oklahoma had higher violent crime than New York and California in 2020, but that in 2019, the first year of Stitt's term, Oklahoma had "higher crime than New York, but not California." Going a bit further still, WaPo's Phili Bump notes that between 2019 and 2020, violent crime rates in Oklahoma actually increased more than either New York or California. Oh look, it's a chart!

Because FBI crime stats take a while to compile, Bump adds, we simply don't have the data to fact check whether Oklahoma has higher crime rates this year, which is awfully convenient for Republican politicians, who rely on the perception that crime is increasing whether it really is or not:

Polling from YouGov conducted in August showed a pattern that’s recurred over and over since violent crime began to fall in the 1990s: People tend to think crime is rising nationally even if they don’t think it’s increasing where they live. So if you are a candidate or organization with a vested interest in amplifying concern about crime, it’s easy to cherry-pick incidents or isolated measures to reinforce that concern.

Notice what Stitt said to the audience. Not “her figures are wrong,” but “do you believe we have higher crime than New York or California?” Not fact but feeling .

In reality, Hofmeister has identified a reality that Republicans would rather not talk about:  As a Third Way study published earlier this year points out, murder rates in the last couple years have increased in red states as much or more than in blue states. In fact, in 2020, "per capita murder rates were 40% higher in states won by Donald Trump than those won by Joe Biden." And eight of the ten states with the highest murder rates in 2020 have gone to the GOP candidate in every presidential election since 2020.

Third Way's Jim Kessler told Oklahoma TV station KOKH that it's mostly the guns, stupid:  

"There's a couple of factors you can't ignore. Nearly all murders are committed by guns. In Republican states, gun ownership is far higher than in blue states," [...]

But that claim is not cut and dry. States like Utah, Nebraska, and the Dakotas, traditionally Republican states, have very low murder rates.

"This is not iron-clad laws of physics. What I'm saying about places like Utah, Nebraska, and the Dakotas, they're very sparse areas and I do believe you need some population density to make this work," said Kessler.

I'm not sure anyone wants to "make that work" better than it already does, but you get the point. Compulsive idiot and GW Bush administration torture defender Marc Thiessen attempted to debunk the Third Way study by claiming that the real cause of crime in those red states is that they have cities with Democratic mayors, so really it's still Democrats being "soft on crime," but that's ridiculous bullshit, since it's red state legislators and governors making the gun laws, not the mayors.

For that matter, the study notes that cities with Republican mayors have some of the highest murder rates in the country, which further supports the idea that it's gun policy, not mayoral party, that's contributing the most to high homicide rates:

For example, Jacksonville , a city with a Republican mayor, had 128 more murders in 2020 than San Francisco , a city with a Democrat mayor, despite their comparable populations. In fact, the homicide rate in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco was half that of House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy’s Bakersfield , a city with a Republican mayor that overwhelmingly voted for Trump. Yet there is barely a whisper, let alone an outcry, over the stunning levels of murders in these and other places.

In that latter example, the high crime rate in Kern County, California, appears to have more to do with the high level of gang activity spilling into rural towns than with any leader's party affiliation.

And for all the Republican campaign rhetoric blaming progressive prosecutors for increases in violent crime in the last couple years, a recent study released by the Center for American Progress actually found something very different , as the Atlantic's Ronald Brownstein explains:

Countering conventional wisdom, the study found that homicides over recent years increased less rapidly in cities with progressive prosecutors than in those with more traditional district attorneys. It also found no meaningful differences between cities with progressive or traditional DAs in the trends for larceny and robbery. “I think it’s really important to emphasize the extent to which we looked for a relationship and found none” between a prosecutors’ commitment to reform and crime rates, Todd Foglesong, a fellow in residence at the University of Toronto and one of the co-authors, told me.

So hey, Democrats, y'all need to be making a lot more noise about the facts, because there's no reason to let Republicans run on pointing at you and saying, “Can you believe this?" The belief that Republicans are tougher on crime is just wrong.

In any case, we're delighted to see Joy Hofmeister getting national attention, especially since she's polling remarkably well against Stitt in the final weeks of the campaign. It certainly can't help Stitt that, thanks to his ongoing fights with Indigenous tribes over casino profits, hunting and fishing rights, and tribal sovereignty , the state's five largest tribes have for the first time ever endorsed a candidate for governor, and it's Hofmeister. 

He's just such an asshole, and you should send Hofmeister a few bucks if you can, the end.

[ WaPo (gift link) / KFOR-TV / WaPo / KOKH-TV / Third Way / Atlantic / AP / Frontier ]

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