This November, a familiar name from Fairfax will be on the ballot.
“Not bad for a 22-year-old newcomer,” said Carter Rogers, after the State of Oklahoma’s Election Board unanimously voted him to remain on the ballot to run against Rep. Ken Luttrell for a seat in the House of Representatives. Rogers’ 70-year-old opponent, Luttrell, tried to oust him from the general election on a voting registration technicality, but the young Osage represented himself in court against the GOP’s top attorney A.J. Ferate, and won. So, it’s official: this November, Rogers will be the first opponent to run against Luttrell in 14 years.
The House of Representatives seat for Oklahoma’s 37th District represents a large portion of Osage County, as well as Kay County. Municipalities represented in Rogers’ district if elected would include Fairfax, Hominy, and most of Pawhuska. He comes from the Cox family of the Grayhorse District, and despite his young age, has a serious background in technology. Currently a web developer for the Osage Nation, he began working in Internet at the age of 16, when he became the network administrator for the town of Ralston. During his high school years, he attended Pioneer Technology Center in Ponca City, Okla., and took courses related to CISCO network administration. Previously, at age 13, his grandfather purchased him an older computer and Rogers learned how to program on it.
“I was a Minecraft [kid],” he said, and he had wanted to learn to “mod,” or modify the game. He then began learning JAVA, and won a national competition in his junior year of high school. Growing up as a tech whiz, the lack of connectivity presented a challenge to his areas of interest, which are partially dependent on Internet speeds. “[The Internet] was terrible,” he said. “We had WindStream, which the highest plan we could get was 25 MB per second down and 5 MB per second up, which is just terrible, especially with today’s world and how much we’re utilizing it.” He has good things to say about Internet development in Osage County and understands many technicalities of the Broadband updates underway in the Osage Nation.
If elected, he would bring his experience and perspective to office, but that is actually not what is driving his ambition. The events that drove him to run for office are “a sad story,” he said. His brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was not able to have the care he needed in the State of Oklahoma. In 2020, his older brother, Tristan, committed suicide. “That was very frustrating and upsetting. There’s just a question of, if there were more resources and an emphasis on mental health care, would he still be here?”
For his brother, Rogers is undertaking the tough, uphill climb to office, and he’s serious about the race. His opponent is an interesting study, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation who has been a Republican since 2010 and formerly identified with the Republican Party. The change came when Steve Vaughn ran and defeated Luttrell, at which time the representative switched parties. “And there hasn’t been an election in Oklahoma for Rep. 37 in about 14 years,” Rogers said. He doesn’t think the two-party system is working and believes voters agree. “People … don’t like their choices at the federal level,” he said, of talking to constituents in the 37th.
When Luttrell contested Rogers’ candidacy, it was dramatic and unexpected. Rogers received papers served by the Osage County Sherriff’s Office on April 9 and remembers, “I was working that day. The town clerk asked me to meet him at the town’s police station. You know, honestly, I didn’t expect them to contest my candidacy, … I can only speculate [as to why] but I am running with the thought that the 70-year-old incumbent was scared at the thought of the new, fresh blood.”
If elected, Rogers said that his number one priority is the public education system in the State of Oklahoma. “Not just for Oklahoma 37,” he said. “Ryan Walters really has to go, he’s just usurping the legislative body’s rule-making process by saying and claiming he can make his own rules by overriding the legislative process … he’s taking our tax dollars and trying to use them to make [illegitimate changes.]”
Rogers does not believe that a majority of Oklahoma’s residents are Christian, conservative or even prejudiced, either. Instead, he feels that’s an image that gets blown out of proportion. “The polls even show,” he said, “that Ryan Walters is very unpopular for public education.” In terms of immediate necessary changes for the education system, Rogers noted SB 615, a bill that requires students to use a bathroom of their gender assigned at birth.
“We see [anti-trans legislation] as a repeated effort by Republicans who have a supermajority in all three branches of our government, [an effort] to disenfranchise people. We have to mobilize enough voters to see that Oklahoma really wants to see that progress, that if students do identify as transgender, they at least have access to a single stall where they do not risk coming into contact with a student who doesn’t agree with them. Everyone is different and diverse and it isn’t this colonial lens that we have to [use to] see everything. Look at the death of Nex Benedict and the disaster that was, and the impact it still has in Tulsa today. I know I would advocate tirelessly [for the safety of trans students],” he said.
Rogers will also fight Governor Stitt’s efforts to remove caps on the amount of donations that political candidates can receive from oil and gas, and other large enterprises. “Stitt wants there to be no cap on the amount of donations that [lobbyists, businesses and enterprises] can give to political candidates. Oil interests and big interests are involved in Republican Governor Stitt’s election commission,” he said, noting corruption in the state.
Of how he would strategize toward some voters who may in fact hold racist attitudes, Rogers said, “If you’re racist, I don’t condone that, that is terrible, but do I think everybody should be given a fair shot, regardless. I do. And you’re not given a fair shot [now] unless you’re in the [top] ten percent.” If elected, it’s clear that Rogers is an astute student of politics who will work to shift Oklahoma toward a state of progression. And he believes that Oklahomans are ready for change in a state “that hasn’t seen progress in the past decade or more,” he said.
Are voters ready to move past “all the political obstacles, and surge Oklahoma into a new era of progress,” as Rogers says? He is determined to find out, and will do so with love for his brother, and the safety of children and disenfranchised people across the state, at the front of his mind.
