Rep. Tom Cole is the House of Representatives’ newest Republican on the defensive this year, facing a primary challenger from the right in Oklahoma, while incumbent Republicans across the country have seen their margins of victory shrink in recent years.
It’s the most competitive primary Cole has faced since he was first elected in 2002, and it’s been a bitter battle — almost as bitter as the legendary rivalry between the University of Oklahoma Sooners and the University of Texas Longhorns, who has become a subplot in the race.
Cole’s allies have leaned into that sports rivalry to ensure Cole doesn’t fumble ahead of Tuesday’s primaries. The congressman’s main opponent, businessman Paul Bondar, has spent more than $5.1 million of his own money on the race.
But Bondar has faced a potentially damning accusation in Sooner country: that he is actually a Texan.
“It’s no good moving to a place where you want to run for Congress if you’ve never lived there, but coming from Texas to Oklahoma probably adds an extra dimension,” said Cole, a lifelong Oklahoman and member of the Chickasaw Nation, NBC News told Thursday.
Americans 4 Security PAC, a super PAC backing Cole, recently launched a TV ad accusing Bondar of “coming straight from Dallas and trying to buy a congressional seat in Oklahoma.”
“Bondar is full of Texas bull,” a narrator later adds. “Let no Longhorn try to take our Sooner seat.”
Bondar tried to address the issue this week with his own TV ad, saying, “I’ve played a lot of football in my life and I love the Sooners. But these elections are not about football. We’ve all seen what Tom Cole can do over the past 22 years. Tom Cole wants to cut your Social Security benefits. He wants to raise the retirement age and reduce your benefits if you have extra income.”
“I’m not a Longhorns fan,” Bondar said in a telephone interview.
Bondar, who grew up in Wisconsin and later lived in Illinois, said he moved to North Texas in 2021 to escape Illinois’ pandemic restrictions. Bondar voted this year in the Texas primary in March before surrendering his Texas driver’s license for an ID in Oklahoma, and he said he will be able to vote in the Oklahoma primary on Tuesday because it is a different election.
A Bondar-affiliated company purchased property in Oklahoma’s Johnston County in June 2022, as well as a 500-acre property in Atoka County on March 31, 2023, according to two deeds his campaign shared with NBC News. Bondar’s newest property isn’t actually in the 4th District, and he declined a question about whether he plans to move, noting he doesn’t have to live in the district to run for the seat.
Bondar, who has worked in insurance, said a client spurred his involvement in Republican politics, and he first came into contact with Oklahoma after supporting some candidates there in the 2022 midterm elections. He said the Republican lawmakers in North Texas “represent their constituencies well,” as do other members of the Oklahoma delegation.
“I wouldn’t run into someone who does a good job, but I’m going to run into someone who doesn’t do their job,” Bondar said.
Bondar suggested Cole has lost touch with the district and is spending too much time in the nation’s capital. He also criticized Cole, chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, for failing to rein in government spending and supporting aid to Ukraine.
“I’ve spent more time in my district in a month than this man has in a lifetime,” Cole countered when asked about those criticisms, describing them as “an attempt, I think, to distract from his own lack of familiarity with a district. and his own lack of connection to Oklahoma.”
“I think at the end of the day it’s kind of like a bar fight,” Cole later added. “If you’re in a bar fight, the guy with the most money doesn’t win; the guy with the most friends wins. And I have a lot more friends than my opponent and I think that will show on Tuesday.”
The pro-Cole super PAC, Americans 4 Security PAC, has also launched ads featuring images of Bondar driving a car with Texas license plates and stumbling over his exact location in a local news interview, acknowledging he was not in Oklahoma.
Peter Kirkham, a former Cole chief of staff who works with the super PAC, said the 60-second ad featuring the local news interview “defined the race for voters.” Kirkham said the football ad was a way to add some humor and emphasize that Bondar is unreliable.
“College football is the No. 1 sport in the state and the Oklahoma-Texas game is the No. 1 game. … The rivalry is real,” Kirkham said.
In addition to some football references, ads from Cole and his allies have also all emphasized that the longtime congressman has the support of former President Donald Trump, which Cole said has been “tremendously helpful” in the race.
According to calculations by the Daily Kos Elections, Trump won the 4th District by 32 percentage points in 2020.
Trump ally Roger Stone is an adviser to Bondar’s campaign.
Trump’s support could give candidates a big boost in the Republican Party primaries. But Cole is also trying to keep his race from going into overtime. With four other candidates on the ballot, Cole could be forced into a head-to-head runoff on August 27 if he doesn’t win more than 50% of the vote against the full field.
Both candidates sprint to the finish, and Cole and Bondar are no strangers to leaving it all on the field. After all, both played college football.
CORRECTION (June 13, 2024, 4:28 PM ET): An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated when Bondar purchased his Atoka County property. It was March 31, 2023, not this year.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
