The Oklahoma Freedom Caucus announced its debut in September 2024 with an ambitious goal: to pull one of the nation’s most conservative Legislatures even further to the right.

The group argued Oklahoma’s Republican supermajority wasn’t conservative enough. Its members accused GOP leaders of abandoning campaign promises, demanded votes on hardline legislation and frequently targeted fellow Republicans they viewed as moderates masquerading as conservatives.

Now, after a primary election that saw several Freedom Caucus-backed candidates struggle, Sen. Dusty Deevers, R-Elgin, defeated in his own district and Sen. Shane Jett, R-Shawnee, preparing to leave office because of term limits, the movement is in flux. 

The June Republican primary served as a major political test for the group. And the Freedom Caucus flopped.

The most significant defeat came in Senate District 32, where Deevers — an Elgin pastor who became one of the Legislature’s most outspoken conservatives after winning a 2024 special election — finished third in a three-way Republican primary and failed to advance to a runoff.

Senate President Pro Tempore Lonnie Paxton, R- Tuttle, a longtime target and foe of the Freedom Caucus, told The Frontier the results showed who conservative Oklahoma voters want to represent them — and who they do not.

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“I think the voters absolutely sent a message,” Paxton said. “I think the case is we have true, kind of Ronald Reagan-style conservatives in the Oklahoma Senate, and then we have a group of populists. They’re not really conservatives.”

Paxton accused Freedom Caucus members of turning policy disagreements into personal conflicts and pointed specifically to the Freedom Caucus’s campaign against the “Swamp Seven,” saying incumbent senators survived because they defended their records directly to voters.

“They got rewarded for that hard work, and they also got rewarded because the truth prevailed,” Paxton said. 

Most of its publicly identified members remain in office, and the organization itself shows no signs of dissolving. But the caucus is facing new realities. It will no longer have Jett, who could not be reached for comment, leading its Senate strategy or Deevers serving as its loudest, most visible spokesman. Modeled after the House Freedom Caucus in Congress, the Oklahoma chapter became the 12th affiliate of the national State Freedom Caucus Network, an organization that provides conservative lawmakers with political strategy, communications support and campaign resources.

Unlike many ideological factions that primarily exist to coordinate votes, Oklahoma’s Freedom Caucus quickly became an insurgent force within the Republican supermajority itself.

Its members argued legislative leaders had grown too comfortable with governing and had drifted away from the conservative promises they made during campaigns. The caucus frequently turned its attention toward its fellow Republicans, accusing GOP leadership of blocking conservative legislation and protecting the political establishment.

Deevers was elected in 2023 and quickly became one of the group’s more outspoken and divisive members. He compared COVID-era vaccine mandates to Nazi medical experiments and introduced a bill classifying abortion as homicide, which would have allowed parents and grandparents to file wrongful death lawsuits on behalf of fetuses. That bill, which did not become law, would have made it so women who received abortions and doctors who performed the procedure could have faced charges ranging from manslaughter to first-degree murder, which could be punishable by execution . Deevers also filed bills seeking to outlaw pornography, and to end gay marriage and no-fault divorce. 

Paxton said Deevers’ focus on larger culture war issues like those caused his constituents to reconsider.

For Deevers, the election results were not a rejection of the Freedom Caucus at all. The problem, Deevers said, is that establishment Republicans won by campaigning on Freedom Caucus priorities and benefiting from millions of dollars spent to protect incumbents.

“Republican voters were saying they want people who are strong on immigration, lower taxes, limited government, and actual conservative principles,” Deevers said. “What most of them don’t know is that the establishment spent literal millions of dollars claiming to be for those things even though their voting records show the opposite.”

Deevers also rejected criticism that the Freedom Caucus focused too heavily on fighting Republican leadership instead of building coalitions, a common refrain from Republicans who believed the group was focused more on division than progress. He said the movement itself remains larger than any one elected official and will keep pressing forward.

“The Freedom Caucus is not about any individual,” he said. “It’s about defending our constitutionally protected freedoms and holding government accountable to the people.”

With Jett termed out, the Freedom Caucus will elect a new chairperson, Deevers said. 

That new leadership could include Rep. Jim Olsen, R-Roland.Olsen helped launch the Oklahoma Freedom Caucus as its House vice chairman and, unlike Jett and Deevers, will return to the Capitol next year after running unopposed for reelection. While the loss of Jett and Deevers is “significant,” Olsen told The Frontier, they won’t threaten the organization’s long-term viability.

“Shane Jett and Dusty Deevers are both good and brilliant men, and losing their leadership will certainly be a loss,” Olsen said. “I don’t know who would step into those leadership roles, but there are several men and women who are well qualified to do so.”

Olsen rejected Paxton’s assertion that Republican voters had turned away from the Freedom Caucus’s approach and, like Deevers, questioned whether Republican leaders’ campaign messaging reflected their legislative records.

“The messaging of Senate leadership may have been effective in convincing Oklahoma voters of their conservative policies; actual fidelity to those policies may be in question, though,” Olsen told The Frontier.

Olsen told The Frontier that success for the Freedom Caucus in 2027 means “passing legislation, electing members, and continuing to advocate for constitutional, conservative principles.”

But how the caucus pursues those goals appears to be an open question. For Paxton, the movement’s fate has already been decided.

“Oklahoma voters have rejected them — and resoundingly rejected them,” he said.