Candidates for state attorney general Nick Coffey, a Democrat, and Jon Echols, a Republican, faced off in a recent debate hosted by NonDoc and Griffin Media at Metro Tech District Center in Oklahoma City.
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Coffey, a former federal prosecutor, says his campaign priorities are what he calls the “four Cs,” corruption, crime, children and costs.” While Echols, who served 12 years in the Oklahoma House of Representatives, is running on promises to support law enforcement, as well as “Stand with Trump” and “Stand up to DEI,” among other priorities listed on his website.
We fact-checked some of the candidates’ claims during the debate using interviews, public records and other sources of information.
Fact-checking Jon Echols and Nick Coffey in the Oklahoma attorney general race
Explore the statements we examined and how each claim measured up against the available evidence.
Jon Echols
Nick Coffey
These results describe the specific claims selected for this fact-check, not either candidate’s overall truthfulness.
Echols passed a bill that allows the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office to go after illegal marijuana grows.
Echols said: “I passed the bill that allowed the attorney general to go after these illegal grows.”
In 2023, Echols authored House Bill 2095, which gave the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office authority to investigate and enforce violations of the state’s medical marijuana laws.
The law allows the Attorney General’s office to conduct unannounced inspections, subpoena business records and seize or destroy illegal marijuana products.
Outgoing Attorney General Gentner Drummond praised the legislation when it passed, saying it would help law enforcement shut down illegal marijuana operations.
As a federal prosecutor, Coffey prosecuted black-market marijuana growers and extradited cartel leaders.
Coffey said: “I went after those owning and operating black market marijuana growers. I extradited cartel leaders.”
Coffey is listed as an attorney in nearly 800 cases in federal court in Oklahoma City. He helped prosecute Naiquing Lin, a Chinese national sentenced in 2025 to serve 37 months in federal prison for his role in a black-market marijuana drug trafficking organization that had a grow operation in Ada. Coffey also helped secure an indictment in 2021 against Oscar Hernandez Flores, who helped lead the Hernandez Drug Trafficking Organization from San Luis Potosi, Mexico, smuggling meth into Oklahoma City. Flores was taken into U.S. custody in January and now awaits sentencing after he pleaded guilty to charges of possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute and conspiring to engage in international drug laundering. Coffey was also involved in the prosecution of the leaders of a $64-million methamphetamine smuggling operation. Eighteen defendants, including eight Mexican nationals, have since been sentenced to serve more than 278 years in federal prison collectively.
ChatGPT will tell you that the language of Article 2, Section 5 of the Oklahoma Constitution matches 85% of the language of the failed 1875 Blaine Amendment.
Echols said: “Stick the Blaine Amendment language in ChatGPT and stick the language in ChatGPT of the Oklahoma (Constitution). They’re going to tell you it matches 85%. It’s a Blaine Amendment. It’s anti-Catholic and it’s bigoted.
Article 2, Section 5 of the Oklahoma Constitution bans the use of any public money or property for religious purposes. Three Oklahoma Supreme Court justices wrote in a 2015 ruling that this part of the state constitution is not based on the Blaine Amendment, a failed amendment of the U.S. Constitution to ban the use of public education funding for religious groups that some view as anti-Catholic. *The Frontier *tried several prompts to try to get ChatGPT to calculate what percentage of the wording of Article 2, Section 5 of the state constitution matches the Blaine Amendment. ChatGPT recommended calculating “the percentage of identical words, excluding common function words, alongside the percentage of shared substantive terms.” Using this method, ChatGPT calculated the estimated substantive-word similarity between the two amendments at 13.3%. “That is a measure of vocabulary overlap, not a measure of legal or historical similarity,” ChatGPT said. “The provisions address related church-state issues, but the Blaine proposal specifically discusses public-school funding and property, while Oklahoma’s provision covers public money and property used to benefit religious institutions more broadly.” Echols’ campaign provided another prompt, asking “How similar are these two amendments on a percentage basis,” which yielded a different answer.
“Comparing only the public-funding restrictions, I would estimate 85–90% similarity in purpose,” ChatGPT responded. “Comparing the two complete passages, roughly 75% accounts for their substantial differences in scope and religious-liberty language.
That measures similarity of meaning, not identical wording or necessarily identical legal effect.”
Echols has accepted $24,000 in campaign contributions from the company NextEra, which was found liable for violating Oklahoma law for charging excessive prices for natural gas during Winter Storm Uri in 2021.
Coffey said: “There’s a company that was just found liable on partial summary judgment called NextEra. They’re natural gas producers. There is one person on this stage that’s taken $24,000 from NextEra during his political career, and it’s not me, the prosecutor.”
NextEra Energy’s political action committee gave six donations to Echols’ campaigns for House District 90 state representative between January 2019 and January 2022, according to the Oklahoma Ethics Commission.
But as of Monday, the company’s PAC had not donated to Echols’s Attorney General campaign. In late September, an Osage County judge granted Attorney General Gentner Drummond’s motion for partial summary judgment against NextEra for violating state laws for charging excessive natural gas prices during Winter Storm Uri in February 2021.
Echols created the Oklahoma Legislative Office of Fiscal Transparency, which uncovered spending irregularities that led to the conviction of restaurant owner Brent Swadley for defrauding the state.
Echols said: “I will root out waste, fraud and abuse and government corruption just like I did in the Legislature when I created LOFT, the Legislative Office of Fiscal Transparency.”
Echols was heavily involved in creating Senate Bill 1 in 2019. While he wasn’t a bill author, it was his idea, said former House Speaker Charles McCall. McCall and Greg Treat, former Senate president pro tempore, authored the bill. Echols’ involvement started before the 2019 legislation. In 2018, he authored and introduced House Bill 1029, which would have created a Government Accountability Office. McCall said the bill didn’t pass, but the SB 1 language mirrored Echols’ original idea.
Echols would not fight plans for an aluminum smelter in Inola.
Coffey said: “I’ve been moved by the ability of the people of Inola to fight for themselves, and I feel an immense amount of pressure to win this thing because I think I’m the only one on the stage that’s going to fight for them and make sure that their economic livelihoods are not destroyed.”
Echols has publicly said that, if elected attorney general, he would continue a lawsuit filed by current Attorney General Gentner Drummond challenging construction of the smelter. When The Frontier asked Coffey’s campaign to back up his statement, a staffer sent a link to an Oct. 15 Oklahoma Voice article as evidence that Echols’ position had softened. Echols said in the article that he’s still open to learning more about the project and supports economic growth and job creation, but “it just has to be done in a way that is safe for the citizens of Inola and northeast Oklahoma.” A spokesman for Echols’ campaign said both Echols and Coffey made clear in the article that they’re not against job creation as a result of the smelter project. The spokesman also said that Echols has consistently voiced concerns about foreign ownership of the project and high fluoride emissions from the smelter.
Echols “had anything to do with” deaths at county jails where the company TK Health, formerly known as Turn Key Health Clinics, oversaw healthcare.
Coffey said: “We’re talking about Shannon Hachett, a mother and wife, no criminal record, who was left in an intake cell for 11 days until she died of dehydration in her own waste. We’re talking about Anthony Huff in Garfield County, who was strapped to a restraint chair for 55 hours until he died. Collectively, those two cases paid out $32.5 million (from) taxpayers. So I know you say you love talking about LOFT, but guess what? You’ve cost taxpayers a lot of money. I’m thinking of Marvin May, the 74-year-old person with amnesia, dementia that went weeks without eating and died in Custer County. I’m thinking of Luis Gonzalez, a diabetic that was left for, you know, 11 days without his insulin and died. These things occurred. Most of them occurred while you were president of the company.”
Echols said: “The fact check will be whether or not I had anything to do with it, and absolutely fact check it.”
While Echols says he is no longer involved in the day-to-day operations of TK Health, he is a minority owner and was listed on the company’s website as its president as recently as May 2023. Echols and his business partners founded the company that would eventually become TK Health in 2009. TK Health told The Frontier in September that Echols now owns about 2% of the company.
There have been lawsuits against TK Health and county officials in connection with the deaths Coffey mentioned. Echols was not individually named as a defendant in any of the cases.
In the case of Shannon Hanchett, who died in December 2022, Cleveland County officials approved a $20 million payment to settle its part of a lawsuit that her husband, Daniel Hanchett, filed over her death. His case against TK Health continues. The company was dismissed from the original lawsuit, but Daniel Hanchett has filed an amended complaint that TK Health has also asked to be dismissed.
Gonzalez died at the Oklahoma County Detention Center in December 2022. His mother has a pending lawsuit against Oklahoma County and TK Health, claiming her son was not provided adequate medical care. Gonzalez died from complications of diabetes, an autopsy found. TK Health has denied the allegations in court, arguing that the medical care Gonzalez received was “appropriate and within applicable standards of care.” Marvin May died at the Custer County jail in March 2022. His family has a pending lawsuit against the Custer County Sheriff’s Office and TK Health that could be headed for trial. May died of COVID-19, an autopsy found. TK Health has argued in court that May did not meet the criteria to send him to a hospital and that efforts were underway to try to get him transferred to a long-term care facility at the time of his death. Garfield County officials agreed to pay a $12.5 million settlement in 2019 over the 2016 death of Anthony Huff. TK Health, then known as Turn Key Health Clinics, also settled outside of court with Huff’s estate, but the terms of the agreement are confidential, according to court records.
The Frontier launched in 2015 as Oklahoma’s premier investigative outlet.
Reach Frontier staff by email at info@readfrontier.com