BY GARY EDMONDSON

Wandering around the living room on a recent Sunday morning, waiting for the grass to dry so I might consider mowing [I didn’t], I saw the KFOR promo for Flashpoint.

I stopped, and wondered: Who is this Mike Turpen that has this cool gig of speaking on behalf of the Democratic Party? I mean, I had trudged up to OKC for two sessions of the state Democratic Convention. I hadn’t seen his smiling face anywhere on either premises.

So, I looked him up and discovered that he had served as state attorney general in the 1980s and had he served a term as party chair – back before our current chair Anna Langthorn had been born.

Well, I thought, check with the party; see if I’m missing something.

Nope. Mr. Turpen holds not even a precinct position within the party. In fact, my source says that his last active participation in party affairs was in 2008 when he was the legal rep for the Hillary Clinton campaign.

So, with the youngest state chair in the country, who has a full complement of youthful lieutenants, Channel 4 trots out the party-irrelevant Mr. Turpen as their anointed voice for Oklahoma Democrats.

He, Interchangeable Ogle and the Republican reactionary seem to have a great time talking among themselves – just some good old boys limiting the discussion to their favored few. But it is a travesty of supposed debate when the left is being represented by a guy who has been left behind by his party.

And I’m not alone with my opinion. The state party regularly fields calls on Mondays from irate party regulars complaining about Mr. Turpen – as if the choice of their supposed representative actually rested with the people supposedly being represented.

– Gary Edmondson is chair of the Stephens County Democratic Party