US Representative MarcWayne Mullinostensibly favorite to serve Oklahoma’s four-year U.S. Senate term, changed course on debate with opponents (Thursday, June 9) for the Republican nomination. He said he had to stay in the nation’s capital to… do his job.
By and large, conservatives no longer turn to the state’s largest newspaper for advice on public policy issues.
Steve Byas, a journalist and historian with decades of experience, pointed out that the newspaper’s opinion pages recently printed/published three Sunday articles on the rights of gun owners.
Everyone was in favor of a significant expansion of federal control over access to firearms.
Yet there is this: Chris Casteel, a veteran reporter for the major daily, reported dispassionately and with precision:
“U.S. Representative Markwayne Mullin has lent his voice to TV ads for his plumbing company, despite explicit guidance from the House Ethics Committee that he no longer personally promotes his company in broadcast ads or on the internet .
Clear guidelines from the ethics committee came in 2018. The committee said Mullin should no longer participate in advertisements for his plumbing company. Casteel quoted the report directly:
“Members must at all times avoid even the appearance that they are monetizing their public role for personal gain.
“Therefore, the Committee takes this opportunity to clarify… that a member should not be actively involved in the sale or personal endorsement of goods or services in which the member has a financial interest. As such, … Mullin should now understand that in the future, he will not be able to participate in the weekly radio show or commercials for radio, television and the web.
House ethical restrictions did not and do not require Mullin’s name to be removed from his company.
However, “Mullin Companies may not film new commercials featuring Representative Mullin, and old commercials featuring [him] should be removed from the Mullin Companies website.
Casteel reviewed the data in his new report. Witness it:“The five- and 15-second ads featuring Mullin aired 130 times in February, 218 times in March, 440 times in April and 524 times in May.”
Everyone started: “Hello, I’m Markwayne Mullin from Mullin Plumbing.”
When elected in 2012, Mullin pledged to serve three two-year terms. When he abandoned that promise in 2018, U.S. Senator Tom Coburn said with regret that Mullin had “drank the kool-aid” of wisdom from Washington.
In April 2017, Rep. Mullin was recorded at a town hall meeting telling voters it was “bullshit” that taxpayers were paying his salary. He said: “I pay for myself. I paid enough tax before I got here and I continue through my business to pay my own salary.”
In 2016, The Daily Caller, a conservative news service, sounded Mullin in a detailed report, saying the solon pressed for the second term pushed for a hearing for federal legislation because he believed (in the summary of the journalist) “that mixed martial arts (MMA) fighters are underpaid, should form a union, and government bureaucrats should decide who fights whom and when.”
This analysis cast Rep. Mullin as “a veteran MMA fighter who never made it. He’s now a congressman using his power to get a grudge match.”
