Oklahoma's Fourth District up for election - KSWO, Lawton, OK- Wichita Falls, TX: News, Weather, Sports. ABC, 24/7, Telemundo -

Oklahoma's Fourth District up for election

LAWTON, Okla_Since 2002, Republican Tom Cole has held the position as the voice of Oklahoma's Fourth District in the United States Congress. Cole says he's worked hard to represent the conservative values of the district on spending, energy exploration and supporting agricultural needs.

He says his greatest success so far has been creating more jobs within the state's military.

"You see that Fort Sill was a huge winner in the BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) process...additional missions with air defense artillery, more soldiers, more soldiers families and frankly a lot of private contractors as well. Same thing has been true at Tinker Air Force Base at the other end of the district."

He says if voted in for a sixth term, his focus will be defense and non-defense spending and extending the Bush tax cuts. Mainly, however, he wants to get the nation's spending under control.

"We've had four, 1-trillion dollar plus deficits in a row," he says, "that's going to take a lot of tough decisions, both on the spending end and probably in terms of reforming some of our programs like Medicare and Medic-aid in particular."

First time candidate Donna Bebo, a Democrat from Fletcher, also hopes to win Oklahoma's District Four seat.

She says as the wife of a former soldier she knows how to hold down the home front and knows exactly what Oklahomans need.

"I think that we have a lot of working families here that are just waiting for our tax cuts to be permanently extended so they can finally kind of breathe that sigh of relief, get back to work and get going on building our economy back up."

Bebo says that if she is put in charge of Oklahoma's Fourth District, she will get the nation's political leaders to re-focus their attention on what she says they've lost sight on: the people.

"Right now in D.C. we have a lot of stagnation. we have a very oppositional congress that is working more to advance their careers than working towards representing the regular people back at home."

Independent Nominee R. J. Harris is no newcomer, however. This is his second time running for the position.

He says his goal is to get rid of "Big Brother."

"I don't agree with the federal government taking all this power for itself. Telling people how they should live...telling people what they should buy with their money...what kind of insurance they should have...none of that should be occurring at the federal level."

He says he wants to create a better bridge of communication between the people of Oklahoma's Fourth District and their congressional leader.

"People of Oklahoma could have that dialogue with their local leadership...their local elected representation and decide what level of private governmental intervention needs to occur for us to have things like our social welfares, our infrastructures...our county wide infrastructures."