This Podcast Is... Uncalled For - LaShaun Pryor

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

LaShaun Pryor joins us from outside of Oklahoma City to talk about the Sooner State Party, a third party in Oklahoma looking to find a middle ground. To find out more, go to soonerstateparty.org

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Just press play. We're on our way. Hi, everybody. Welcome to another edition of this podcast is on call for. I have another great guest with me today. If you would introduce yourself, please. Absolutely. My name is LaShawn Pryor. All right, Lechon. And you're calling it from Oklahoma, I'm guessing? That is correct. I'm out here in beautiful Edmond, Oklahoma. And where's Edmund, just for trying to picture of where in the state? Yeah, so it's north of Oklahoma City and kind of in an area called Deer Creek, kind of an unincorporated area, if you will, of like North Edmund, between Edmund and Guthrie for the uninitiated, just drive like 30 minutes from downtown Oklahoma, go straight north in your ear.

All right, yeah. I have my brother and his family live in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, which is out east. Yeah, out northeast. Yeah, yeah. So, and for our audience, it's close to the Kansas state line, about an hour north of Tulsa. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. So, so you ran into me in one of the Facebook groups for our podcasters.

Correct. I do appreciate it, because I'm always looking for people to talk to and all that. What will we be discussing today? I thought it'd be kind of cool for us to talk about something. The Sooner State Party is what it's called. It is a newly formed political party here in Oklahoma that represents independent voters. Okay. Great.

I know I'm in Kansas, and there's similar efforts underway called the United Kansas Party that also looks like they catered towards more independent-minded voters and all that. So, yeah, nice to hear that there's such an effort in other states too. Absolutely, absolutely. And I don't want to like just kind of like just run with it here. But for myself, you know, as an independent voter, I feel like, man, it's almost like being stuck in between. something. You know what I mean? There is, I can turn on my television or my radio at any time and I can cut on political channels, CNN, Fox, whatever it's going to be. And I can hear so much rhetoric or

sometimes it feels like it's just poison being just shot at me from both sides. And it's so hard to find that nice, unbiased like middle ground, you know, everybody wants you to have to pick a side. And I'll also, if I can, make mention that a huge part of this here in Oklahoma is a petition that's going has to get to 35,000 signatures. I think as of earlier, it's like 30,250 something, essentially to allow the sooner state party to put independent, excuse me, to allow independent voters to be able to vote in the upcoming election and the runoffs. Because right now, those of us that are independents here, we're not going to be able to vote at all. Wow. So it sounds like in Oklahoma, you have to be either an R or D to vote. It didn't used to be that way.

So we don't have open primaries, if you will, right? And what it was was you could vote Democrat. The Republicans didn't want independence to vote. Well, then the Democrats here recently at the end of this last year decided, well, they didn't want for independence to vote. either, or excuse me, to have the option to vote for a Democrat either, which meant there was absolutely nobody that represented independence. So I want to say it's like 700 and some odd thousand people that are independents that are registered independents here in the state of Oklahoma are kind of just left holding the bag, which I feel like is a pretty nice chunk of the voter populace,

especially when we look at how low voter turnout has been overall here at Oklahoma. I would want to get as many of them as I could if I if I was red or blue but that's not the way that it worked out this time unfortunately yeah that sounds uh independents do vote they just have a in a kansas i'm talking about uh we they just uh don't have it's they can get on the balance but it's a convoluted process as opposed to you know being a part of a party um and i will tell you that's there a lot of people in Kansas who register as Republican just so they can vote in a primary because the Republican primary is closed here. The Democratic primary is open, but when you show up to a vote in that primary, they'll ask you to register as a Democrat at the door.

Right, right. Yeah. It's interesting. I, you know, I think that, and if I can talk to, just a pinch about the party, you know, because I'm not, like, I'm not, I'm not a founder or anything like that. I've told them that I am a consultant helping them, because I didn't want to take on a proper title within, within the campaign, right? But I told them, I said, you know, the biggest part of this for me is I said, you know, it's a representation thing, you know, I am an independent voter. I tell people, I am fiscally conservative. You know, I love the thought of a smaller government. I love the thought of knowing where my money's going. You know,

tell me where my money's going, make it make sense, you know, and I want people to have their civil liberties, you know, I want people to have the power of choice in everything, because this is America, you know, we should be able to do that. But sometimes those things don't align properly, or you can't get a big bite of that sandwich, you know, out of either party. And so I think that, that for me is what makes the thought of this new party great, is that people have a place where there is a proper middle ground, a proper place where, you know, you can feel like, okay, I don't have to commit completely

because this may sound a little crazy, but that over there may sound a little crazy. I don't know, you know. And so it, I just, I feel like it's that, it's that grassroots thing, and it's a 47-year-old man. I've lived here in Oklahoma for 27 years. I'm born and raised in Chicago.

I used to live in Canada. Now here, you know, all of my travels have given me a very, varied, sense of the political sphere, you know, and I feel like I have thoughts that cross all parties. So, you know, why does it have to be just one? Yeah, yeah. And I also know that, yeah, Oklahoma is the one, correct me if I'm wrong here. I believe they were the one state in the union that every single county voted red. All 77 counties right here in Oklahoma indeed with red. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Look, that didn't surprise me.

I feel like for the most part, if you live here, I think that that's something that we all kind of expected, you know, just because that's kind of what the mass of the political sphere rolls with here, you know. I don't think that it's a, the irony is that I don't think, even though that's what we see, and that's, it's not a representation of how everyone here thinks, because I look at the state superintendent election that happened with Ryan Walters, if that name rings a bell, a very polarizing figure in education. Yeah. So it hasn't released yet, but I took his bullshit, Praker U test. So, yeah.

I bet go. I'll bet go. Well, here's the thing. Here's the thing. So the tests I'm talking about for Aaron, who hasn't listened to go and listen to that episode. It should be out by the time this gets out. But Prager You, a right-wing think tank and YouTube channel, they coordinated with this Walters guy and said,

yeah, if you're moving from out-of-state, especially from a more democratic-leaning states, then we want you to take this test. It's less a test than it is a, Introctrination because you can't get any answers wrong, all right? You try to get a wrong answer. No, that's not the right answer. Try again.

And then make you answer that same question until you get the answer right. So that's not an actual test. That is indoctrination and all that. Well, and that's why I say he was a polarizing figure. And for me, not in a good way. I didn't vote for the guy. I don't mind saying that. What's ironic is that the state's,

superintendent is voted on across the entire state here in Oklahoma, where in most states, that's an appointed type of a position. It's ironic to me that like Tulsa County, Oklahoma County, he did not win those large metropolitan areas. They went the other way. However, what he did, and I think what his competition did not, I don't think his competition may have realized was such a big deal was that he campaigned extraordinarily hard in the rural areas of Oklahoma. You know, he got down in the dirt with people and folks, that's no, you know, that's no knock to my friends all around the state. But I think it was a lot easier to get people in some of these farming communities and some of these smaller communities and some of these other places that don't get visitors all the time that don't

feel represented to get them to say, hey, man, we'll just go straight party, we'll fill that thing out. And whatever we get, brother, that's what we'll take because it's red, so it's got to be good. And I think that's kind of what shot us in the foot. Right. Right. So I will tell you from, I can speak on Kansas, of course, because I live there. I can speak a little bit on Missouri because I work there and went to school there. I'm in the Kansas City area, right?

In recent years, my county, Johnson County, went blue in the elections. Wynod County, which is KCK, is also fairly blue. Douglas County, which is Lawrence, traditionally blue, college town, right? And I think Shawnee County, that's Topeka, tends to trends blue as well. Cetwick County, Wichita, despite being a large city, they are quite red because Coke. Right? Right. And I think a lot of that had more to do with moderate Republicans being disgusted with what's happening with the Republican Party at the national level.

And we had probably the worst governor in Kansas history in Sam Brownback. Pretty much almost destroyed the states as far as I'm concerned. and that's causing a lot of people to, yeah, switch parties. And I will say that that's probably the reason Democrats have come into power here, at least here in Johnson County, because the guys are being elected now are, well, the national narrative, especially if you're listening to Fox News and everything, is that Democrats are socialists and everything. These Democrats are not.

They are quite centrist and corporate in nature. And I should know I ran as a candidate for office 10 years ago now, ran for Kansas Senate and was primaried from one of these corporate Democrats and promptly lost. So And Missouri Missouri has Well you can make an argument for three Democratic senators So Kansas City, St. Louis

And then Columbia, Small College Town right in the middle And the rest of the state is Quite red, especially around The Ozarks in the South. So So yeah, a lot of what you're talking about with Oklahoma Could also apply to Kansas

in Missouri to three indeed it is interesting to me you know again and as you say all that you know we look at

it makes me question why why is it that it feels almost like the current media and obviously you know not here on a podcast but the current big media

why does it feel like it is almost encouraged to try to push these narratives, to try to push the red versus blue, you know, to be so divisive, if you will. I don't understand how that, how creating division and getting people so whipped up sometimes it feels like is a recipe for success for parties, for news stations, etc. It seems crazy, doesn't it? It does. And having also worked in, I worked at, I interned at the Kansas City PBS station. So I saw firsthand what goes on.

What goes on that's legitimate, I'm going to say, news outlets is actual journalism. You know, I once again mentioned Brownback. He showed up to do the premier weekly news program that the station does. And walked out of there and walked out of there. and walked out of there and I will tell you the entire interview was

straightforward asking legitimate questions and everything BBC trained interviewer and all that's also quite British and then afterwards

I'm asked to stick around and we'll go to lunch and do another program afterwards and then while I'm waiting. I'm seeing our esteemed interviewer being given the third degree by

Brownback's people in the lobby. So they were openly accusing them of being biased and then they said, well, we'll never come back. All right, that's fine. But you can't accuse the man of being biased for being a legitimate

legitimate journalist. Now, contrast that with something like Fox and right-wing talk radio because that's where it really started, I think, this whole divisive narrative. Not so much with the mainstream media,

but certainly with right-wing media like Rush Limbaugh and Fox News and all that. But they're going to call us the Democrat Party instead of Democratic and getting Clinton impeached and saying that Obama was a

socialist when they couldn't really use the N-word, which they wanted to do. So I know I'm not to say about most of that. But for me, like I said,

I just, you know, I, I hope that we find ourselves as a nation, especially at a time where, I mean, you know, you can find so many things that separate us that we find ourselves a way to meet in the middle, you know? And again, like I say, that brings me back to the sooner state party. And I just want to say, you know, that's why I support it. That's part of the foundation of what it is, you know, is to kind of split that difference, you know. You know, we hear people speak about so many hot button topics here today, like immigration and reforms, and there's so many different things. And, you know, I think that sometimes I think we forget that it's going to take a solution that takes everybody, you know, that's going to take both sides. It's going to take minds working from both parties to find a solution that really works, that benefits everyone.

and is fair to those that are trying to come into this nation. For example, as we were talking about here the other day, common sense immigration reforms, you know, things that work to make a pathway to legal citizenship for folks that is both affordable, attainable, and logical. So again, I put that out there just a little bit, you know, just kind of a tidbit about the sooner state party and what the party itself is hoping to try to achieve.

Okay. Yeah. So, yeah, so immigration, well, I strongly disagree with what's going on right now with basically paramilitaries going into the big cities because they didn't vote for Donnie. And harassing people just based on the color of their skin or they happen to speak Spanish or what have you in them. But yeah, there's got to be a bare way to handle immigration. And I think there are some people out there that do know a thing or two about this subject that could probably talk about with much more authority than I could. But I don't think the current way is the way to go. I certainly don't think shooting people and everything is.

is the way to go. I was surprised that I heard on the news the other day that Trump said that their approach may have been a bit heavy-handed. And I think that hearing that admission will hopefully cause some kind of change. Because whether you're a person that is for or against what's happening, I don't think that any normal person is going to say that they want to see people killed. So, you know, the minute that you start seeing Americans dropping blood, I think, you know, no matter what side of the debate that you're on, I think it becomes an issue of, okay, you know, again, how does this get reformed? How is there a better way to approach this, no matter how or what your stance is? Right. Right. So, yeah, that's a good example. So then we need to come together on. And of course, we have to bring out a list you'll are Native American. Odds are

descended from immigrants in this country. That's just a fact. And I think the people that are behind all this ice crap are forgetting that fundamental

lesson than unless you have Native American blood and your ancestors came from elsewhere. You said that, and the sooner state party, I believe, earlier was at the Oklahoma State Capitol doing a press conference with Native American tribal leaders. And I was not able to attend because I unfortunately, I just broke my ankle. So I'm having a really wild run of issues.

But if you don't mind, there's something because I wanted to say something there. And I'd like to say this here because of what you just said, you brought this up. So Kevin Stipp, the governor here in Oklahoma, gave the state of the state address just the other day. It's his final one as he's term limited. And one of the things that he said is he, in no uncertain terms, kind of attacked tribal sovereignty here in the state of Oklahoma, essentially saying that everyone should be treated exactly the same and driving down the idea of tribal sovereignty. You know, this, of course, I think was first far polarized by the McGirt decision when the U.S. Supreme Court made the ruling on the McGirt case and basically saying that, you know, on that eastern part of the state, they have full sovereignty for tribal court that if a person that is of Native American descent, they can go through the tribal court system. I know that Kevin Stitt, he has spoken out against that. He's challenged that vehemently.

And essentially, like I say, I'm very much paraphrasing here, but he essentially said what I said earlier, right, that, you know, that everybody needs to be treated exactly the same. And I just want to say that I think it's important, because you just spoke about it, that I think that people tend to forget. I think that people may have a stereotypical image inside of their head, some people, right, about what Native American looks like. And I say this because, again, I've lived here for 27 years. I am not Native American. However, I know many people that live right here I've known for many years, they have a little card. That little card is that card, you know, you get your blood test done, and it shows that you are indigenous. From indigenous roots, they can trace back to what tribe, all of that.

I hope people realize that that card for many people is not just to get something, which I think is what the stereotype is. A lot of people think, especially here in Oklahoma, you know, you can get a free car tag. You can get, you know, there's certain benefits. For many, many, many, most people, it is about the pride of what they represent, about where they come from and about their heritage. What's most interesting is that when you look at the faces of these people, a lot of these people look like they are Caucasian,

but these people are representatives of their tribes. Not just that, Kevin Stitt, I believe is Choctaw, and is enrolled exactly the same, and he's saying all this. So it feels a bit icky, kind of hearing him say it, but I say that because I think we need to remind ourselves that the land that those of us stand on right here in Oklahoma, this is land that is native land, right?

And I say that, excuse me, to mention that it is so important that we here in Oklahoma, especially those in political office, work together with the tribes. There are compacts that are in place between the government here in Oklahoma and these tribes that work together in so many different ways, all the ways down to fire and police. And so I cannot overstate the fact that it is so critically important that every, works together and make sure that we respect tribal sovereignty, but that we work together because disparaging people of tribal descent is not only offensive. It's just ugly.

And we have the Oklahoma standard here. That's not the Oklahoma standard. Yeah. Yeah. And by the only my current congressperson is Native American. Sheree Stavits. I don't know which, I don't know right offhand which tribe she is, but she is Native American. Yeah.

Yeah. Indeed. Yeah. And we also have a Native American school, not too far from us in Lawrence. So, yeah. Indeed. I tell you, I love the world of podcasting because of this right here. Free expression and the ability to be able to have open and general conversation.

It's amazing how we live in a society where we can just turn on something. and we can learn about something immediately. If you've ever seen the movie The Matrix, I think to myself sometimes we're here, like this has got to be with the manifestation of the Matrix is, you know, from YouTube where you can learn how to do something immediately and TikTok to, you know, media like this right here. I am very, very, very appreciative of getting to be on here.

Yeah, I appreciate you coming on and staying here for you's and all that. And I got to learn something too about your sooner state party and all that, yeah. And we really do need more third parties. And it starts at the state level. Let's be honest here. All starts locally and at the states, you know. And I think people tend to forget that because we've become so indoctrary in the Republican and Democratic Party establishments and just the way our system runs and all that.

So yeah. Any closing thoughts before I wrap this up? I am. I just want to say thank you. Absolutely thankful. You know, man, I don't. get to talk about this kind of stuff too often. I am a sports radio broadcaster here. I've been in broadcasting for about a decade, and a lot of my life revolves around the sports world. So getting

the chance to stop and to talk about something that I'm passionate about in politics and to try to remind people to be kind. Feels great. So thank you very much for that outlet. I appreciate what you're doing, man. All right. You're welcome. And that'll do it for this portion of the podcast. So thank you, LaShawn for coming on. And for everyone else, we will talk to you next time. This podcast is Uncalled for. It's hosted produced and edited by myself, Mike Chernepsky. Our opening music was created at suno.com, sUNO.com, for all your AI music needs.

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