(USNewsMag.com) – Voters in Enid, Oklahoma, chose to recall Republican city council member Judd Blevins, 42, who has white supremacist ties.
Voters in Ward 1 elected grandmother and longtime youth leader at a local church, Republican Cheryl Patterson, to the city council seat, according to results posted on the Oklahoma Election Board website.
Following the election results, Blevins thanked his “voters, volunteers, donors” and those who supported him. He added that it took “an all-out media blitz” to remove him from office.
Despite his ties to white nationalist groups, Blevins, a veteran of the Iraq War, was elected to the city council in February 2023, winning by 36 votes.
However, the controversy over his ties to white nationalist groups did not go away, and he was criticized during a public meeting in the fall of 2023, where some members attempted to censure Blevins. However, the city council voted to delay its censure vote, which resulted in a recall effort launched by Democrats best friends and members of the Enid Social Justice Committee, Nancy Presnall and Connie Vickers, who started a signature drive that garnered 350 signatures, qualifying Blevins’ recall for the ballot. The 350 signatures, more than the 240 needed, resulted in the April 2nd special election in Enid, a town in northern Oklahoma with a population of close to 50,000, votes Republican 4-1.
During a March 26th community forum between the two candidates, Blevins admitted that he was in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 for the Unite the Right rally. When asked about his involvement in the Unite the Right rally during the community forum, Blevins stated to bring attention to the issues of securing the country’s border, immigration reform, and “pushing back on this anti-white hatred.” He also admitted he had ties to Identity Evropa, a white supremacist group that is now defunct. A 2019 report by Right Wing Watch had previously identified Blevins as the Oklahoma recruiter for the group.
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