In partnership with NonDoc, The Frontier fact-checked some statements GOP candidates for state attorney general made during a May 18 debate in Oklahoma City. Former State Rep. Jon Echols and Oklahoma Secretary of Energy and Environment Jeff Starling are competing in the June 16 Republican primary. The winner will face Democrat Nick Coffey in the general election.
The full debate is available on YouTube.
Claim: Article 2, Section 5 of the Oklahoma Constitution, which forbids the use of public money or property for religious purposes, is known as the “Blaine Amendment,” and is named for “an anti-Catholic bigot in Congress.”
Echols said: “What you’re talking about is called the Blaine Amendment. Anyone that doesn’t know this, Thomas Blaine was an anti-Catholic bigot in Congress, and that’s where we took it from. The Blaine Amendment is a stain on the Oklahoma Constitution.”
Fact check: Mostly false
That part of the Oklahoma Constitution is not based on a so-called “Blaine Amendment,” which would forbid the state from using money for public education for “religious sects or denominations.”
Article 2, Section 5 of the state constitution is a much broader ban on the use of any public money or property for any religious purpose. Oklahoma voters rejected repealing this part of the constitution in 2016.
U.S. Rep. James G. Blaine, of Maine, originally proposed amending the U.S. Constitution in 1875 to outlaw the use of public education funding for religious groups. Some conservative groups that support publicly funded vouchers for private schools, including the Freedom Foundation, have used Echols’ same description of Blaine as an “anti-Catholic bigot.”
Blaine’s amendment failed, but Congress required some western territories to add similar provisions to their constitutions as a condition for statehood. Congress passed the Oklahoma Enabling Act in 1906, allowing Oklahoma to become a state. The federal law required Oklahoma to establish public schools that would be “free from sectarian control.”
This requirement for schools can be found in Article I, Section 5 of the Oklahoma Constitution.
Three Oklahoma State Supreme Court justices wrote in a 2015 ruling, which found a Ten Commandments monument on the Oklahoma Capitol grounds was unconstitutional, that Article 2, Section 5 of the state constitution is not a Blaine Amendment.
Citing previous court rulings, Justice James Edmondson wrote that the law was inspired by the ideas of Thomas Jefferson and the 1830 constitution of the state of Virginia.
“….nothing in the recorded history of the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention, this Court’s case law, or any other historical evidence” supports that this part of the state constitution is a Blaine amendment,” Justice Noma Gurich wrote.
-Brianna Bailey
Claim: Echols partnered with the ACLU to oppose felons being required to provide DNA samples.
Starling said: “He actually partnered with the ACLU to protect felons from having to be required to provide DNA samples.”
Fact check: Mostly false
Echols voted against House Bill 2275 in 2016. The bill, which was signed into law by Gov. Mary Fallin, allowed police to collect DNA samples from the saliva of people arrested for felonies.
Echols was one of 36 lawmakers who voted against the bill in March 2016. Both Democrats and Republicans cited privacy concerns with the bill, according to The Tulsa World.
The Oklahoma American Civil Liberties Union also opposed the bill, according to news reports from the time.
The Frontier could find no evidence to suggest that Echols worked in partnership with the ACLU against the bill.
-Ashlynd Baecht
Claim: Echols had a bill while he served in the Oklahoma Legislature to give the attorney general the authority to prosecute illegal marijuana growers.
Echols said: “The attorney general’s office has the authority to go after these illegal grows because I passed it, because it was my bill giving the attorney general that authority.”
Fact check: True
In 2023, Echols authored House Bill 2095, which gave the attorney general’s office the “full authority to investigate and enforce any violations” of the state’s medical marijuana laws. The bill also gave enforcement authority to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control and the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation. The bill’s Senate author said at the time that the attorney general’s office requested the legislation.
-Kayla Branch
Claim: Oklahoma grows half of the illegal marijuana in the country and the state has more illegal marijuana grows than public libraries.
Starling said: “We grow something like 50% of the illegal marijuana in the entire country. In Oklahoma, we have more illegal marijuana grows than public libraries in the state.”
Fact check: Mostly true
While it is impossible to know exactly how much illegal marijuana is produced in Oklahoma because of the clandestine nature of the market, state and federal officials say Oklahoma has been one of the nation’s leading sources of illicit cannabis. In 2024, Oklahoma accounted for 66% of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s nationwide marijuana seizures. That same year, Attorney General Gentner Drummond said 60% of the cannabis consumed in New York originated in Oklahoma. In 2023, the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics said other law enforcement agencies had identified Oklahoma as the country’s top supplier of black-market marijuana.
Oklahoma has 225 public libraries. At its peak, the state had thousands of licensed marijuana grow operations. Although the number of licensed growers had fallen to about 2,400 by early 2025, the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics said it was still actively investigating between 1,500 and 1,700 suspected illegal grow operations.
-Garrett Yalch
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Claim: Echols passed a bill in the Oklahoma Legislature that created the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority, which led to the decline in medical marijuana grows in the state.
Echols said: “We should have created OMMA day one, which is what I tried to pass day one. We didn’t. Because we didn’t, we got to around 8,000 grows. We finally passed OMMA, the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority, a bill that I passed because I was trying to regulate and get a hold of it. After two years…That’s what we created.”
Fact check: Mostly true
When Oklahoma voters approved State Question 788 in 2018, the measure legalized medical marijuana with almost no regulations for marijuana grow operations. Echols was the principal House author of House Bill 2612 in 2019, known as the “Unity Bill.” This legislation established an initial regulatory framework that created the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority to regulate the industry by requiring “seed-to-sale” tracking, code compliance, and inspections. Later, Echols also authored and passed legislation that separated the Medical Marijuana Authority from the State Department of Health, making it an independent agency with the ability to investigate criminal violations and seize illegal marijuana.
While the Medical Marijuana Authority has helped shut down some illegal marijuana farms, state and federal law enforcement agencies — including the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics, the Oklahoma Organized Crime Task Force, the DEA, and the FBI — have also been heavily involved in investigating and dismantling illicit marijuana farms.
-Garrett Yalch
Claim: Starling has never tried a court case in Oklahoma.
Echols said: “My opponent has never seen the inside of an Oklahoma courtroom; he’s never tried a case.”
Fact check: False
Starling was admitted to practice law in Oklahoma in 2013. Starling’s campaign provided court records for two cases in Dewey County where he was listed as an attorney in 2023 for the company Lagoon Water Logistics LLC.
Starling noted during the debate that he previously served as the head of litigation for Devon Energy and was in charge of legal teams working on court cases for the company across the country, including many cases in Oklahoma.
Starling has represented clients in court in several other states while working as an attorney for the multinational law firm McGuireWoods. He eventually became a partner in the firm’s litigation department.
-Brianna Bailey
Claim: Echols has tried “only one real case” in Oklahoma.
Starling said: “I looked at his record and what he actually did in court, and there’s only one real case I can find that he ever tried that wasn’t a divorce and a family law matter or a small claims court matter, and that was a case filed against the men and women in blue.”
Fact check: False
OSCN and federal court records indicate that Echols has represented many clients beyond family law and small claims court cases. Starling’s campaign said in response that Starling meant that Echols had only taken one case to trial.
-Brianna Bailey
Claim: Echols has a company that has been sued over 160 times and has been sued more often than he’s represented clients in court.
Starling said: “It was sued 160 times, and the truth of the matter is, you’ve been named as a defendant in lawsuits more often than you’ve represented a client in litigation.”
Fact check: Mixed
It’s true that Echols is one of the founders of Turn Key Health, a company that contracts with jails across the country to provide medical care to detainees, which has been sued many times. Echols is a minority owner of the company, his campaign said.
But it’s false to say that Echols has personally been sued in more cases than he’s represented clients. Federal court records show Turn Key Health has been named as a defendant in more than 200 lawsuits since 2015. Some cases are still pending, while others were dismissed or had various other outcomes. Echols has only personally been named as a defendant in a handful of those cases. Federal court records listed Echols as an attorney in eight court cases since 2004. State court records show Echols as an attorney in more than 100 matters over the past two decades.
-Brianna Bailey
Claim: Dark money groups are spending millions of dollars campaigning against Echols.
Echols said: “I’m not beholden to the downtown Oklahoma City crowd, and that’s why they are spending millions and millions of dark money to make sure I don’t get it, because it terrifies them that someone that would only be beholden to you, the citizens of the state of Oklahoma.”
Fact check: Mixed
Outside groups are actively dumping money in the Oklahoma Attorney General primary, but the true extent of their spending won’t be revealed until weeks after the vote in June.
The group Secure Oklahoma PAC is running ads calling Echols “the snakiest snake in the swamp.” But the most recent records on file for the group with the Oklahoma Ethics Commission only show donations through the end of March. Secure Oklahoma only had one donation of $1,000 for the first quarter of the year, which came from the political strategist who is running the PAC. The PAC won’t have to file another report with the Oklahoma Ethics Commission until the end of July, which could show how much money it spent, or who its donors were in the two and a half months leading up to the primary.
Another group, Electing a Conservative and Honest Oklahoman PAC has purchased negative advertising against Starling, labeling him a “Virginia Swap Lawyer.” The dark-money group Conservative Agenda for America was ECHO PAC’s largest donor during the first quarter of 2026, giving $250,000. ECHO PAC spent more than $29,000 on campaign mailers supporting Echols during the first three months of the year.
-Brianna Bailey
Rating system:
True: A claim that is backed up by factual evidence
Mostly true: A claim that is mostly true but also contains some inaccurate details
Mixed: A claim that contains a combination of accurate and inaccurate or unproven information
True but misleading: A claim that is factually true but omits critical details or context
Mostly false: A claim that is mostly false but also contains some accurate details
False: A claim that has no basis in fact
The Frontier updated its rating for a claim regarding Starling’s legal experience in Oklahoma after his campaign provided additional information.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the year Oklahoma voted on a state question to get rid of a constitutional ban on using state money or property for religious purposes.
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