OKLAHOMA CITY – Jon Echols spent Thursday night’s attorney general debate pressing one argument against Democrat Nick Coffey: A career federal prosecutor isn’t ready to run an office that works mostly in state law.

“If you check OSCN, he has been in four total state law cases. He knows nothing about the state system, just nothing,” the Republican nominee said. “He was a line-level prosecutor. He was not a manager.”

The NonDoc and Griffin Media debate put the two candidates to succeed Attorney General Gentner Drummond on one stage 12 days before the Nov. 3 election.

Drummond lost the Republican runoff for governor to Mike Mazzei in August.

Echols, a former House majority floor leader who served 12 years in the Legislature, won the June Republican primary with 55% of the vote. Coffey is a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Western District of Oklahoma.

Echols said most of the office’s work falls outside criminal law. “The attorney general’s office is a 350-person agency. Twenty of the lawyers are involved in criminal,” he said. “If we were applying for the job of Western District prosecutor under the Biden administration, they should pick my opponent.”

Coffey built his case on courtroom work. “There is one law enforcement candidate in this race,” he said. “Politicians don’t hold people accountable; prosecutors do.”

“Jon’s right. I don’t have a lot of experience in state court,” Coffey said, adding that he could find only one jury trial in Echols’ record, a federal case Echols lost about 20 years ago.

Before the debate, Coffey told CityNewsOKC that voters should ask “who’s going to do the hard thing of standing up to their own party whenever some of their own party violates the law.”

Echols pointed to his endorsements from 68 of the state’s 77 county sheriffs, the Fraternal Order of Police and the Farm Bureau. “The FOP has said, beyond a shadow of a doubt, this is the person to be your next attorney general,” he said.

“If you want someone backed by law enforcement, ready to go from day one, that believes in a safer, freer, stronger Oklahoma, I’m your guy,” Echols told CityNewsOKC before the debate.

The candidates split on capital punishment. “I am not afraid to tell you where I personally stand on the death penalty,” Echols said, pledging to attend every execution the state carries out. Coffey, who is Catholic, said life without parole “absolutely would create less risk, but your job as attorney general is not to write the law.”

The widest policy gap came over the state’s 21-year-old pollution lawsuit against poultry companies in the Illinois River watershed, where a settlement awaits federal court approval. Echols said he worries about chicken farmers in northeast Oklahoma.

“We need to be very careful with these environmental extremist lawsuits where we lose sight of the actual farmers and ranchers that are doing the job,” he said. Asked whether he would move to end payments to the settlement’s three court-appointed neutrals, Echols said, “100%, that’s my plan.”

“They came here, they polluted our water. They need to pay to clean it up. It’s not that complicated,” Coffey said.

Religious charter schools drew another contrast. Echols stood by calling Article 2, Section 5, which bars public money for sectarian purposes, a stain on the state constitution. “It’s anti-Catholic, and it’s bigoted. But it’s the law until the Supreme Court says it’s not,” he said.

Coffey, who attended Catholic schools, took the other side. “I’m never gonna fault anybody for wanting to raise their kid in faith. But that doesn’t mean that we need to use public funds to do it,” he said. “I don’t get to pick and choose which amendments I’m going to enforce.”

Both men said McGirt v. Oklahoma requires new agreements with tribal nations. “If we continue to litigate ourselves into oblivion, we are letting nine U.S. Supreme Court justices that can’t find Oklahoma on a map tell us how we’re gonna live our lives,” Echols said.

They also divided on whether the office should stay partisan. “Where you stand on the issues matter,” Echols said. Coffey said, “In a perfect world it would not be partisan.”

The partisan question turned personal when Echols raised Coffey’s political giving. “I didn’t donate to Kamala Harris twice,” Echols said, adding that Coffey had campaigned with Stacey Abrams the week before.

“I think it’s a little ridiculous that he’s attacking me for donating as the Democratic candidate to a Democratic nominee,” Coffey said. He said he gave after President Donald Trump pledged to pardon Jan. 6 defendants who had pleaded guilty or been convicted. “I’m a law and order guy,” Coffey said. “That offended me.”

Tempers rose when Coffey said Echols had “evolved” in his opposition to a proposed aluminum smelter near Inola.

Echols said his late mother told him not to use the word liar, “but I’m gonna use it.” He said he had been clear on Inola for a long time. “It is disgusting to take an opportunity to try to twist my record after the debate had been going so well,” he said.

Coffey also pressed Echols on Turn Key Health Clinics, now TK Health, the jail medical provider Echols co-founded in 2009. “I currently own 2% of the company,” Echols said, adding that he sold it in 2019. “If you own 2%, 20%, I don’t care. It’s too much,” Coffey said, citing detainee deaths in cases he said cost taxpayers $32.5 million.

He asked Echols to “admit right now” that four detainees “all had their civil rights violated by your company, leading to their death.”

“Maybe you have spent so much time in your ivory tower in the feds that you actually don’t know what it’s like down on the ground,” Echols said. “What happened in those cases is ridiculously sad, but what’s sadder is you’re lying about it.”

“It’ll be fact-checked,” Coffey said.

They agreed on the rest of the state’s pending litigation. Both said they would continue Drummond’s suits against State Farm and Allstate, the Winter Storm Uri price-gouging case and the challenge to the Inola smelter. Echols said his message to State Farm was simple: “Stop breaking the law.”

A moderator asked about restaurateur Brent Swadley, convicted in May of defrauding the state. Both men said Swadley should have gone to prison. Echols said the Legislative Office of Fiscal Transparency, which he said he created as a lawmaker, uncovered the problems that led to the case. “The decision was a miscarriage of justice. He should have done time,” Echols said.

Echols closed by saying the wealthy have “gotten away with far too much in this state for far too long.”

“It’s the prosecutor versus the politician,” Coffey said in his closing.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in CityNewsOKC.com at this link October 23, and is published here with permission. About the author: Rarchar Tortorello is Executive Editor of CityNewsOKC and CityNewsAmerica and the publication’s Senior White House correspondent. He hosts The Patriot Sentinel podcast, covering Oklahoma politics and national affairs. A retired combat veteran and former Norman City Council member, Tortorello brings more than two decades of public service to his journalism. Follow him on X @Rarchar or contact him at rarchar@grellnermedia.com.