#my sister texted me the other day that her trump supporter coworker asked:

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EDMOND, Oklahoma | Resisting Trump in a bright red state

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EDMOND, Oklahoma | Resisting Trump in a bright red state

EDMOND, Oklahoma (AP) — Vicki Toombs was watching the returns on election night 2016 when her phone buzzed — a text from her 22-year-old son Beau in Chicago. Beau, who is gay, was afraid that the new administration would end the Affordable Care Act and with it the insurance he and his friends used to pay for the drugs that protected them from HIV and AIDS.

“I just felt the bottom drop out of my world,” said Toombs, 61. She felt she’d failed her son, as if Donald Trump’s election was somehow her fault. She had to do something.

So, in one of the reddest cities in one of the reddest states in the union, Toombs sought out the Resistance.

It wasn’t as easy as it might be in places like New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., where multitudes of college-educated, predominantly white women have joined a rolling boil of activism since Trump’s election. The Democratic party and liberals are plentiful on the coasts, but light on the ground in swathes of the country that hold the majority of electoral votes and congressional seats.

But even in Edmond, Oklahoma, Toombs has found her sisters-in-arms. And it’s the reach of anti-Trump forces into red states like Oklahoma that gives Democrats hopes of a national resurgence, though no one suggests that the heartland will change its political allegiance on a dime.

Regardless, the simple act of local liberals emerging from their shells has the potential to subtly change the dynamics in places like Edmond.

“It’s been a revelation,” Toombs said of joining a group of more than 300 Democratic women in Edmond, a place she believed housed only a couple of other members of her political tribe. “We’re excited and also apprehensive thinking of what the fall’s going to be like. I hold my breath, hoping we created enough energy.”

These days, Toombs texts her son excitedly to tell him about how she and her fellow activists have made calls and knocked doors for Democratic candidates running for special elections and helped win four of five legislative seats. How they have supported thousands of teachers who marched on the state capitol and won additional education funding from the GOP-controlled state legislature and Republican governor. How they helped recruit candidates for every possible office in November, from their local city council to state legislative seats where Republicans usually garner double the votes of Democrats.

In states like Oklahoma, activists often say they came “out of the closet” when they started wearing their political affiliations on their sleeves after years of hiding them to avoid conflict. Still, they blanch at the term “The Resistance” and try to avoid mentioning Trump, knowing the key to swaying their neighbors is finding common ground on local issues rather than rehashing divisive national debates.

“I don’t necessarily think minds have been changed on Donald Trump and we don’t encourage our candidates to talk about national politics,” said Anna Langthorn, chair of the Oklahoma Democratic Party.

The emphasis on local issues makes particular sense in Oklahoma, which has seen mounting dissatisfaction over the low-tax, small-government approach of the current GOP administration. About 20 percent of schools in the state are only open four days a week and Republicans this year had to raise some taxes to patch a hole created in part when the state’s leaders slashed levies on the oil and gas firms that dominate Oklahoma’s economy.

Activists and the Democratic party they’re hoping to rejuvenate have their work cut out for them in Oklahoma, which Trump won with 65 percent of the vote in 2016. But even though Democrats are clearly outnumbered in Oklahoma and in other red states — and even though they know they face long odds — they believe intensity is a great leveler.

“It only takes a couple of hundred people to elect your state representative,” Langthorn said. ___

Jeremy Pressman, a political scientist at the University of Connecticut, has kept track of demonstrations since Trump’s inauguration with another colleague. They totaled 6,700 in 2017 alone, involving 6 million people or more, not just in liberal cities but in small towns in red states like Alaska, Michigan and, of course, Oklahoma.

“We’re so used to seeing these maps every four years of us divided in red and blue, but these protests tend to make a counterpoint — in every red there’s blue and in every blue, red,” Pressman said.

But closeted as they are — and dispersed as they are — would-be activists sometimes find it hard to connect.

Janeen Axtell recalled how nervous she rode past the cattle pastures of eastern Oklahoma, en route to a rally of teachers at the state capital, three hours to the west.

She was sharing the Chevy Suburban with a half-dozen other teachers from the rural school district where she teaches high school science, and even though she’d been there eight years she knew nothing of her coworkers’ political leanings. Axtell didn’t even dare look them up on Facebook. But, during the trip, the gripes began to bubble up — about the cuts in education and social services made by the state legislature, the way the energy industry has a lock on state government. Axtell was relieved to find that she’d been surrounded by allies the whole time.

Still, a month later, Axtell hasn’t asked her newfound allies for their opinions on the president. Axtell unloads on Trump in safer confines — in conversations with other, like-minded activists across the state who, like her, are active in the Indivisible movement. It’s been a way for Oklahoma’s isolated liberals to keep their sanity, especially in rural areas.

Sherry Wallis, an information technology consultant who lives in the same county as Axtell, could barely handle the political isolation in 2016. “I was feeling very alone,” she said. “A lot of childhood friends I had and new colleagues I met, I don’t talk to anymore.”

Then she heard about a bus that would travel for 24 hours from Oklahoma to Washington DC for the initial Women’s March and she leapt at the chance. “It’s something I wouldn’t trade for the world,” Wallis said of the trip, which connected her with a new array of activist friends across the state. She thinks little of driving four hours to go to a meeting of activists.

Those connections are a lifeline for people like Wallis, who live in the most conservative parts of the state, where Trump/Pence campaign signs still adorn lawns. Liberals are rare out here, as are college graduates. Oklahoma ranks 42nd in the nation for the share of its population with a bachelor’s degree or higher — the group that has been most active since Trump’s election.

That’s given the Resistance a somewhat homogenous cast. In meetings in Oklahoma and elsewhere, activists wonder how they can draw younger people into their movement. Even at the recent March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C., organized by the teenage survivors of the Parkland school shooting, the median age was 49, according to surveys conducted by University of Maryland sociology professor Dana Fisher.

“There’s no data to say the Resistance is representative of most of America,” said Fisher, who’s writing a book on the movement. “But that’s not to say it can’t make social changes that way — the tea party wasn’t representative of America, either.” ___

Chelsea Abney grew up surrounded by red. She was a reliable Republican herself until 2015, when she took an online quiz during the party’s crowded presidential primary to see which candidate she should vote for.

The quiz told her she was a Hillary Clinton voter.

“I was horrified,” said Abney, 34, who lives in the Oklahoma City suburb of Mustang. “I couldn’t believe it.”

But as she checked the internet to try to convince herself to oppose Clinton, Abney said, “the more I fell in love with her.”

Despondent after the election, Abney was inspired by a plea from the comedian Chelsea Handler for people angry at Trump to get involved in local politics. She started volunteering for state legislative campaigns. Her father severed all ties with her but Abney was undaunted. “I couldn’t just sit here and watch the Kardashians anymore,” she said.

On a recent Sunday afternoon Abney gave marching orders to about a dozen canvassers who’d gathered in the living room of Danielle Ezell, Democratic state Senate candidate in Oklahoma City. “It’s actually proven this is how elections are won,” Abney told the volunteers before laying out goals for the day — get commitments for three yard signs from the voters on canvassers’ lists.

Taz Al-Michael didn’t need the pep talk. At 18, he volunteers for two other campaigns along with Ezell’s. Al-Michael, a college student, was brought to the U.S. illegally from Bangladesh when he was 9 months old. A program authorized by President Obama, that Trump wants to end, provides him with a driver’s license and protection from deportation. Trump’s election gave him purpose. “I just couldn’t take it anymore,” he said.

Al-Michael knocked on the door of Carol Cater’s humble bungalow in a modest neighborhood in central Oklahoma City. Cater, 73, hobbled to the front and cracked the door open, her show dogs inside yipping.

She asked Al-Michael, skeptically, which party he was with. When he said “Democrat,” she stepped outside.

“You’re the first Democrat to come and see me. Everyone who’s come by is a Republican,” Cater said. She agreed to take a yard sign.

But in Oklahoma, activists could reach every enthusiastic Democrat in the state and they’d still lose badly. Pat McFerron, a veteran GOP strategist there, said the party’s recent gains came in special elections when their motivated voters have outsized impact. In November, when more regular voters join them at the polls, it’ll be harder to make a dent.

“In a high-turnout environment, it’ll be difficult for Democrats to make inroads,” McFerron said, predicting they’d gain fewer than five additional seats in the legislature. Republicans hold 72 of the 101 seats in the lower house and 39 of 48 senate seats, as well as every statewide and federal elected office.

Jackie Phillips is hoping to overcome those long odds. The Republican state representative she’s challenging in November garnered twice as many votes as his Democratic opponent in 2016.

Phillips, 50, is a member of Edmond Democratic Women, the same group that Vicki Toombs joined after Trump’s election. It was founded around the dining room table of a former chamber of commerce director shortly after the election and now has more than 300 members.

On a recent evening, members of the group gathered at a popular pizzeria. They talked about how they used to keep their political views under wraps, and about the halting progress they’ve made.

Even now, they sometimes find it hard to believe that they can be so public in their liberalism — such as when Phillips mentioned she had been talking with Planned Parenthood, anathema to the right.

Jill Ogden, a 42-year-old wine shop owner, gasped.

“You just said the two words out loud!” she exclaimed. “I’ve never said the words out loud!”

By  NICHOLAS RICCARDI by Associated Press – published on STL.News by St. Louis Media, LLC(U.S)

[lilleen]

I have never been overly an overly political person, I understand that being white, heterosexual, middle class and educated has afforded me certain privileges, but I am also a woman. A woman who working in the entertainment industry. A woman with friends, coworkers, clients and adopted family of very different and diverse backgrounds and lifestyles.

I am not being a sore loser. My candidate has lost before. It isn’t just that my candidate didn’t win, it’s that Donald Trump, and a majority of his supporters scare the hell out of me. The man ran on a platform of hate, terror, disrespect and lack of experience. And he won.

Not only that, but since the election has done absolutely nothing to inspire any sort of confidence, at least to me, that he even wants to do the work required of him as president, or at the very least put people who know what they are doing in positions to help him.

It’s no secret that Rape Culture is a very real thing, and over the past few years especially, we’ve seen more and more how women are thought of as nowhere near equals. It is beyond frightening to me to hear an elected official claim, and fully believe, that a woman can’t get pregnant if she is raped because if she doesn’t want to have sex/get pregnant she can just shut that stuff down. Um, excuse me? Even scarier, a friend sent me this just this morning.

With everything going on in the world is hard not to want to do something, to take a stand. The question was what?

  So shortly after the election results, I was having a group chat with two of my beautiful lady friends about what happens next. We mutual came to the decision that we wanted to attend the Women’s March on Washington. Soon after deciding this I was texting with my baby cousin, who at 25 is way more politically minded than I ever was, and upon hearing she was planning on going as well added her to our group.

Last weekend, it was finally time. As Saturday drew closer I became more and more excited and slightly apprehensive. Excited as news reports came in about how not only were these marches happening all over the country, but all over the world. Places like Cape Town, Tokyo and even Antarctica. On all seven continents marches were being held. Proving, that this truly was bigger than just a bunch of “sore losers”. Apprehensive because of all the articles going around with warnings on how to stay safe, remedies for tear gas etc. Luckily, that was not the case.

Friday night after work I met up with my beautiful baby cousin, and we grabbed dinner before heading over to Penn Station to catch an Amtrak train down to D.C. Our train was completely sold out, and it was obvious from the chatter on board that a great deal of the passengers were headed into the capital for the next morning’s march.

I have only been to D.C. one other time, back when I was in college, to visit a friend going to GW so basically I took a bus overnight and saw the inside of  a lot of bars. I told you I was never the most politically minded person.

Anyway, I had never been to Union Station before, so I was slightly in awe as we exited the station and were greeted by the sight of the Capital Building just across the street. Through the fog and a sea of people, there it was. Baby cousin and I both stood there a moment and took a picture the reality of what we were going to be a part of sinking in.

fist sight of d.c.

We quickly made our way to the car where Leslie and her mother were waiting to take us back home. Leslie’s parents, who are both incredibly warm and wonderful people, graciously opened up their home to the three of us for the weekend. They live just outside of D.C. and have a HUGE house that somehow manages to feel incredibly warm, welcoming and cozy. We firmed up plans for the morning and I learned that Leslie’s mother would be joining us for the march as well as Leslie’s twin sister Lauren.

Early the next morning we all woke up got ready. Leslie being the extraordinary human she is went on a coffee run for us and then we all headed to the Metro station to meet up with our friend Heather who would be also be marching with us. Heather had begun texting us updates at the crowds at the station. The line for passes was around the station. Luckily Lauren had already picked up cards for us so we were able to walk right in. What struck me most was the feeling that hit you when we entered. There was a current of excitement running through the whole station. Despite all the craziness everyone seemed to be in a fantastic mood. Metro staff were friendly, and helpful. There was even a transit cop who came over to me and asked if my hat was a BB-8/New York Islanders mash-up. When I confirmed that it was, he told me “As a Star Wars and Hockey fan I defiantly approve.” And then we talked hockey a little bit before our group headed down to the platform.

nasty women

The only thing I can possibly liken the metro ride to D.C. to is riding the monorail at Disney World. The train was PACKED but no one seemed bothered by it. People were cheering, and chatting happily with one another. Complete strangers helping others to make sure everyone knew what stations to get off at, when station closures were announced. Even the conductor was loving it, happily getting on the intercom with station updates and at one point even told us they we were getting him “pumped up” and made his morning. Despite the fact that the train was packed and people clearly wouldn’t be getting on our train as it pulled into the station people on the platforms looked excited rather than annoyed, waving to people on the trains and waving their signs for all to see.

And the signs were FABULOUS! We saw some really awesome and creative signs being held about.

When we got to the pre-march rally we attempted to get into the Native American Museum to use the rest room, which proved way more difficult than one would think, as they only had one door open and were only letting 10 people in at a time and having everyone go through security. Here lies potential for people to become nasty, but I happy to report that this was not the case. There was no pushing, no shoving, people, complete strangers helping each other move through the crowds, stepping up on/jumping down from ledges. Helping people climb up on the side of a building to get a better view, spotting them as they climbed, cheering them on when they made it, the spirit of love and togetherness was everywhere you looked.

climbing on walls to see the stage

Early estimates put crowds in D.C. at around 500,00 and yet somehow in that giant mess of people, I managed to run into one of my absolute favorite people, and best friend from college. We both knew that we would both be at the march, and although he called me at one point, at the time he called we were literally miles apart. Yet, somehow, nearly four hours later, and about an hour after the march was supposed to have officially begun, when droves of supporters decided to just start marching on their own, and  after our group had moved a good few feet from where we had stood when we spoke, who should I happen to spot in the crowd but my Beaser.

my beaser

What amazed me most was the diversity of the groups of people there. Men and women of all ages. While walking up to the rally, behind us were a mother and father and their three sons, who were in strollers. Heather or I made a comment about how great that was, and their father said, “We thought it was really important they be here.” Parenting done right. Later on, while waiting for the march to start we ended up chatting with two women in their 60s, down from New Jersey. One of who admitted to us that they had never marched/protested for anything, but this was too important not to.  There was a staff member at the National Museum of the American Indian, which is where the great bathroom-ing happened, who asked if we were marching, then shook her head with a longing look, said she wished she could be out there and that she wanted us to stay safe, have fun, fight the good fight. 

i’m with her

Something happened and the original route needed to be changed, but the directions to the new route weren’t exactly clear, so marchers took to several different streets.From where our group was marching we could hear chanting coming for the blocks to our left and our right. The march itself was INSANE, in the beautiful way. Here we were in our nations capital surrounded by millions of people with the same goal. The feeling was electrifying. Not only did you have all those people marching, but people filled the stands set up along the streets, which I can only assume were set up for the day before’s inauguration parade. They held up signs and cheered along the mass of people coming down the streets. People climbed up on platforms and lead cheers as the crowd passed by. Even some of the clearly military personal set up along the route, smiled and waved.

For the first time, in a long time, I felt hope.

Since the march I have come across many people on the internet, complaining that the people marching were just sore losers, and that we thought by marching Trump would be kicked out of office. And while there was definitely some anti-Trump sentiments filtered in, that wasn’t what Saturday was about. Saturday was about was asking for peace. There is no denying, as I said before, that Trump’s campaign was run on a platform of hate, sexism and bigotry. People are scared. The past has shown us that Trump doesn’t hold himself accountable for his actions, nor does he often, it appears consider the consequences of his/other’s actions.

this is what democracy looks like

People marched through the streets chanting “This is what democracy looks like” and “We will not go away, welcome to your first day.” Saturday’s WORLD WIDE protest was to remind Trump that just because he’s President, it isn’t about him. The purpose of the march was to say, we the people are watching. We want to be heard. We WANT Trump to stand up and act like a President. To care about the people he is supposed to be in charge of. To remember that ALL people are equal. Women’s Rights Are Human Rights. That everyone deserves access to affordable healthcare. Listen you wanna take away the ACA? Fine, but you need to replace it with something. You need to work for us, for all of us.

signs at the metro after the rally

    Rise Up: This is Not Politics as Usual The Women’s March on Washington I have never been overly an overly political person, I understand that being white, heterosexual, middle class and educated has afforded me certain privileges, but I am also a woman.

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EDMOND, Oklahoma | Resistance makes subtle impact even where Trump is popular

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EDMOND, Oklahoma | Resistance makes subtle impact even where Trump is popular

EDMOND, Oklahoma (AP) — Vicki Toombs was watching the returns on election night 2016 when her phone buzzed — a text from her 22-year-old son Beau in Chicago. Beau, who is gay, was afraid that the new administration would end the Affordable Care Act and with it the insurance he and his friends used to pay for the drugs that protected them from HIV and AIDS.

“I just felt the bottom drop out of my world,” said Toombs, 61. She felt she’d failed her son, as if Donald Trump’s election was somehow her fault. She had to do something.

So, in one of the reddest cities in one of the reddest states in the union, Toombs sought out the Resistance.

It wasn’t as easy as it might be in places like New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., where multitudes of college-educated, predominantly white women have joined a rolling boil of activism since Trump’s election. The Democratic party and liberals are plentiful on the coasts, but light on the ground in swathes of the country that hold the majority of electoral votes and congressional seats.

But even in Edmond, Oklahoma, Toombs has found her sisters-in-arms. And it’s the reach of anti-Trump forces into red states like Oklahoma that gives Democrats hopes of a national resurgence, though no one suggests that the heartland will change its political allegiance on a dime.

Regardless, the simple act of local liberals emerging from their shells has the potential to subtly change the dynamics in places like Edmond.

“It’s been a revelation,” Toombs said of joining a group of more than 300 Democratic women in Edmond, a place she believed housed only a couple of other members of her political tribe. “We’re excited and also apprehensive thinking of what the fall’s going to be like. I hold my breath, hoping we created enough energy.”

These days, Toombs texts her son excitedly to tell him about how she and her fellow activists have made calls and knocked doors for Democratic candidates running for special elections and helped win four of five legislative seats. How they have supported thousands of teachers who marched on the state capitol and won additional education funding from the GOP-controlled state legislature and Republican governor. How they helped recruit candidates for every possible office in November, from their local city council to state legislative seats where Republicans usually garner double the votes of Democrats.

In states like Oklahoma, activists often say they came “out of the closet” when they started wearing their political affiliations on their sleeves after years of hiding them to avoid conflict. Still, they blanch at the term “The Resistance” and try to avoid mentioning Trump, knowing the key to swaying their neighbors is finding common ground on local issues rather than rehashing divisive national debates.

“I don’t necessarily think minds have been changed on Donald Trump and we don’t encourage our candidates to talk about national politics,” said Anna Langthorn, chair of the Oklahoma Democratic Party.

The emphasis on local issues makes particular sense in Oklahoma, which has seen mounting dissatisfaction over the low-tax, small-government approach of the current GOP administration. About 20 percent of schools in the state are only open four days a week and Republicans this year had to raise some taxes to patch a hole created in part when the state’s leaders slashed levies on the oil and gas firms that dominate Oklahoma’s economy.

Activists and the Democratic party they’re hoping to rejuvenate have their work cut out for them in Oklahoma, which Trump won with 65 percent of the vote in 2016. But even though Democrats are clearly outnumbered in Oklahoma and in other red states — and even though they know they face long odds — they believe intensity is a great leveler.

“It only takes a couple of hundred people to elect your state representative,” Langthorn said. ___ Jeremy Pressman, a political scientist at the University of Connecticut, has kept track of demonstrations since Trump’s inauguration with another colleague. They totaled 6,700 in 2017 alone, involving 6 million people or more, not just in liberal cities but in small towns in red states like Alaska, Michigan and, of course, Oklahoma.

“We’re so used to seeing these maps every four years of us divided in red and blue, but these protests tend to make a counterpoint — in every red there’s blue and in every blue, red,” Pressman said.

But closeted as they are — and dispersed as they are — would-be activists sometimes find it hard to connect.

Janeen Axtell recalled how nervous she rode past the cattle pastures of eastern Oklahoma, en route to a rally of teachers at the state capital, three hours to the west.

She was sharing the Chevy Suburban with a half-dozen other teachers from the rural school district where she teaches high school science, and even though she’d been there eight years she knew nothing of her coworkers’ political leanings. Axtell didn’t even dare look them up on Facebook. But, during the trip, the gripes began to bubble up — about the cuts in education and social services made by the state legislature, the way the energy industry has a lock on state government. Axtell was relieved to find that she’d been surrounded by allies the whole time.

Still, a month later, Axtell hasn’t asked her newfound allies for their opinions on the president. Axtell unloads on Trump in safer confines — in conversations with other, like-minded activists across the state who, like her, are active in the Indivisible movement. It’s been a way for Oklahoma’s isolated liberals to keep their sanity, especially in rural areas.

Sherry Wallis, an information technology consultant who lives in the same county as Axtell, could barely handle the political isolation in 2016. “I was feeling very alone,” she said. “A lot of childhood friends I had and new colleagues I met, I don’t talk to anymore.”

Then she heard about a bus that would travel for 24 hours from Oklahoma to Washington DC for the initial Women’s March and she leapt at the chance. “It’s something I wouldn’t trade for the world,” Wallis said of the trip, which connected her with a new array of activist friends across the state. She thinks little of driving four hours to go to a meeting of activists.

Those connections are a lifeline for people like Wallis, who live in the most conservative parts of the state, where Trump/Pence campaign signs still adorn lawns. Liberals are rare out here, as are college graduates. Oklahoma ranks 42nd in the nation for the share of its population with a bachelor’s degree or higher — the group that has been most active since Trump’s election.

That’s given the Resistance a somewhat homogenous cast. In meetings in Oklahoma and elsewhere, activists wonder how they can draw younger people into their movement. Even at the recent March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C., organized by the teenage survivors of the Parkland school shooting, the median age was 49, according to surveys conducted by University of Maryland sociology professor Dana Fisher.

“There’s no data to say the Resistance is representative of most of America,” said Fisher, who’s writing a book on the movement. “But that’s not to say it can’t make social changes that way — the tea party wasn’t representative of America, either.” ___

Chelsea Abney grew up surrounded by red. She was a reliable Republican herself until 2015, when she took an online quiz during the party’s crowded presidential primary to see which candidate she should vote for.

The quiz told her she was a Hillary Clinton voter.

“I was horrified,” said Abney, 34, who lives in the Oklahoma City suburb of Mustang. “I couldn’t believe it.”

But as she checked the internet to try to convince herself to oppose Clinton, Abney said, “the more I fell in love with her.”

Despondent after the election, Abney was inspired by a plea from the comedian Chelsea Handler for people angry at Trump to get involved in local politics. She started volunteering for state legislative campaigns. Her father severed all ties with her but Abney was undaunted. “I couldn’t just sit here and watch the Kardashians anymore,” she said.

On a recent Sunday afternoon Abney gave marching orders to about a dozen canvassers who’d gathered in the living room of Danielle Ezell, Democratic state Senate candidate in Oklahoma City. “It’s actually proven this is how elections are won,” Abney told the volunteers before laying out goals for the day — get commitments for three yard signs from the voters on canvassers’ lists.

Taz Al-Michael didn’t need the pep talk. At 18, he volunteers for two other campaigns along with Ezell’s. Al-Michael, a college student, was brought to the U.S. illegally from Bangladesh when he was 9 months old. A program authorized by President Obama, that Trump wants to end, provides him with a driver’s license and protection from deportation. Trump’s election gave him purpose. “I just couldn’t take it anymore,” he said.

Al-Michael knocked on the door of Carol Cater’s humble bungalow in a modest neighborhood in central Oklahoma City. Cater, 73, hobbled to the front and cracked the door open, her show dogs inside yipping.

She asked Al-Michael, skeptically, which party he was with. When he said “Democrat,” she stepped outside.

“You’re the first Democrat to come and see me. Everyone who’s come by is a Republican,” Cater said. She agreed to take a yard sign.

But in Oklahoma, activists could reach every enthusiastic Democrat in the state and they’d still lose badly. Pat McFerron, a veteran GOP strategist there, said the party’s recent gains came in special elections when their motivated voters have outsized impact. In November, when more regular voters join them at the polls, it’ll be harder to make a dent.

“In a high-turnout environment, it’ll be difficult for Democrats to make inroads,” McFerron said, predicting they’d gain fewer than five additional seats in the legislature. Republicans hold 72 of the 101 seats in the lower house and 39 of 48 senate seats, as well as every statewide and federal elected office.

Jackie Phillips is hoping to overcome those long odds. The Republican state representative she’s challenging in November garnered twice as many votes as his Democratic opponent in 2016.

Phillips, 50, is a member of Edmond Democratic Women, the same group that Vicki Toombs joined after Trump’s election. It was founded around the dining room table of a former chamber of commerce director shortly after the election and now has more than 300 members.

On a recent evening, members of the group gathered at a popular pizzeria. They talked about how they used to keep their political views under wraps, and about the halting progress they’ve made.

Even now, they sometimes find it hard to believe that they can be so public in their liberalism — such as when Phillips mentioned she had been talking with Planned Parenthood, anathema to the right.

Jill Ogden, a 42-year-old wine shop owner, gasped.

“You just said the two words out loud!” she exclaimed. “I’ve never said the words out loud!”

By NICHOLAS RICCARDI , By Associated Press – published on STL.News by St. Louis Media, LLC(R.A)