03-14-2024, 02:56 AM
He got the most votes in the ward he now represents even after he was exposed.
https://www.aol.com/news/small-city-okla...55139.html
ENID, Okla. — The photo of Judd Blevins was unmistakable.
In it, Blevins, bearded and heavyset, held a tiki torch on the University of Virginia campus, on the eve of Unite the Right, a 2017 coming-together of the nation’s neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups.
Connie Vickers had found the photo online along with others showing Blevins marching alongside an angry mob — a crowd of men recorded throughout the night spitting and shouting “Jews will not replace us!” Vickers had it enlarged at a local print and copy shop. On a January night in 2023, she and Nancy Presnall, best friends, retirees and rare Democrats in a deeply red Oklahoma county, brought it to a sparsely attended forum where Blevins, a candidate running to represent Ward 1 on Enid’s six-seat City Council, was making his case.
They had hoped to get a question in while Blevins was on stage, but settled for confronting him after.
Hearts pumping, Presnall and Vickers approached the 41-year-old former Marine. From a kitchen trash bag, Vickers pulled out the blown-up photo of Blevins and asked about his ties to white nationalists.
As his campaign manager whisked a red-faced Blevins away, Vickers and Presnall followed, yelling, “Answer the question, Judd!”
“He ran away from two little old ladies,” Presnall recalled.
Two weeks later, on Valentine’s Day, Blevins won his race, unseating the Republican incumbent, widely viewed as a devoted public servant, who died from cancer later that year. Voters seemed to appreciate Blevins’ bio: a veteran who’d served in Iraq and who’d worked a manual job in Tulsa before moving back to his hometown to take over his father’s roofing business. Blevins described himself as a man of God and extolled the city as a place where “traditional values” remained the norm.
The message resounded in Enid, a city nearly 100 miles north of Oklahoma City with just over 50,000 people. In 1980, more than 90% of the area's residents were white; now less than 3 in 4 are. Enid is both one of the country’s most quickly diversifying places and one of the most conservative, where residents describe the ever-present whirring of jets from nearby Vance Air Force Base as “the sound of freedom.”
It’s not clear how many voters knew about Blevins’ white nationalist ties. There was an article in the local paper, which Blevins labeled “a hit piece,” but beyond the confrontation with Vickers and Presnall, it just wasn’t talked about. Blevins wasn’t asked about it at campaign events or forums and his opponent never brought it up.
But a white nationalist campaigning for office is one thing; his election is another. And Blevins’ win didn’t sit well with many in Enid. It marked the beginning of a fight to expel Blevins from the City Council — a fight for the very soul of Enid that would unite a coalition of its most progressive residents, divide its conservatives and show the power of community organizing.
https://www.aol.com/news/small-city-okla...55139.html
ENID, Okla. — The photo of Judd Blevins was unmistakable.
In it, Blevins, bearded and heavyset, held a tiki torch on the University of Virginia campus, on the eve of Unite the Right, a 2017 coming-together of the nation’s neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups.
Connie Vickers had found the photo online along with others showing Blevins marching alongside an angry mob — a crowd of men recorded throughout the night spitting and shouting “Jews will not replace us!” Vickers had it enlarged at a local print and copy shop. On a January night in 2023, she and Nancy Presnall, best friends, retirees and rare Democrats in a deeply red Oklahoma county, brought it to a sparsely attended forum where Blevins, a candidate running to represent Ward 1 on Enid’s six-seat City Council, was making his case.
They had hoped to get a question in while Blevins was on stage, but settled for confronting him after.
Hearts pumping, Presnall and Vickers approached the 41-year-old former Marine. From a kitchen trash bag, Vickers pulled out the blown-up photo of Blevins and asked about his ties to white nationalists.
As his campaign manager whisked a red-faced Blevins away, Vickers and Presnall followed, yelling, “Answer the question, Judd!”
“He ran away from two little old ladies,” Presnall recalled.
Two weeks later, on Valentine’s Day, Blevins won his race, unseating the Republican incumbent, widely viewed as a devoted public servant, who died from cancer later that year. Voters seemed to appreciate Blevins’ bio: a veteran who’d served in Iraq and who’d worked a manual job in Tulsa before moving back to his hometown to take over his father’s roofing business. Blevins described himself as a man of God and extolled the city as a place where “traditional values” remained the norm.
The message resounded in Enid, a city nearly 100 miles north of Oklahoma City with just over 50,000 people. In 1980, more than 90% of the area's residents were white; now less than 3 in 4 are. Enid is both one of the country’s most quickly diversifying places and one of the most conservative, where residents describe the ever-present whirring of jets from nearby Vance Air Force Base as “the sound of freedom.”
It’s not clear how many voters knew about Blevins’ white nationalist ties. There was an article in the local paper, which Blevins labeled “a hit piece,” but beyond the confrontation with Vickers and Presnall, it just wasn’t talked about. Blevins wasn’t asked about it at campaign events or forums and his opponent never brought it up.
But a white nationalist campaigning for office is one thing; his election is another. And Blevins’ win didn’t sit well with many in Enid. It marked the beginning of a fight to expel Blevins from the City Council — a fight for the very soul of Enid that would unite a coalition of its most progressive residents, divide its conservatives and show the power of community organizing.
