Oklahomans took to the polls Tuesday, June 18 to choose their party’s candidates for several positions including the U.S. House of Representatives. The presumptive winners will most likely come from the Republican Party, so they have garnered most of the attention.
As per the U.S. Constitution, members of the House serve twoyear terms, so all five Oklahoma’s districts are up for reelection.
In two of Republican primaries, incumbents are running unopposed: Josh Brecheen in District 2 and Stephanie Bice in District 5. The other three districts are moving forward but if you watch TV commercials, it seems as if there is only one race flooding the airwaves: incumbent Tom Cole versus challenger Paul Bondar for District 4.
There are many issues in this race, from border security to funding for Ukraine, to who Trump loves most. But the real issue seems to be Bondar’s Oklahoma residency. While I am in no position to answer this question, the idea of who can run for Congress seems worthy of exploration.
First, the Constitution. Article 1, Section 2 reads, “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other Persons.”
What this fancy language means is that the number of Representatives for each state is determined by population. Later in the section it states that a census is made every 10 years and the Representatives are arranged accordingly. Oklahoma is a smaller state so based on the 2020 census it only has five Representatives while Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Vermont and Washington D.C. only have the mandatory one, while California has a whopping 52 Representatives — scary. According to the original Constitution, the numbers are made up of free people, including indentured servants and possibly the most controversial part of the Constitution, three out of every five slaves. Indians were not counted until 1924 when they became citizens.
Section 2 also lists the qualifications of Representatives: “No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty-five Years and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.” Those are the only qualifications. In fact, the candidate for a U.S. House district does not even have to live in the district, only the state. While the Bondar living situation is dominating the airwaves, it is not the first time this issue has been raised.
In 1790 Maryland passed a law requiring candidates to live in their congressional district for a year before being eligible to run for the House. However, in 1807 William McCreery won a congressional seat from the 10th District, which encompasses the city of Baltimore. Joshua Barney, who came in second, made an ap- peal to Congress not to seat McCreery because his residency for the past year was in question. Ultimately a Congressional committee overseeing the appeal dismissed the claim on the grounds that Maryland did not have the right to add qualifications for a federal office. It argued that federal qualifications should be uniform and that they were protecting the people against “encroachments on their liberties by their own State legislatures.”
While the McCreery episode was a committee ruling, the idea became law in 1969 with the Powell v. McCormack U.S. Supreme Court case. In 1966 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. was reelected to his congressional seat even though he was embroiled in controversy over allegations of misappropriated congressional travel funds. When Powell arrived at the next session of Congress, he was denied his seat and an investigation was launched. Powell sued Speaker of the House John McCormack to be allowed to take his seat and the case made it to the Supreme Court. The Court ruled that Powell met all the qualifications of the Constitution, was duly elected, and that no other qualifications can be placed on a Representative. Finally, there is the case of U.S. Term Limits Inc. v. Thornton. Several states had passed term limits in their states for members of Congress. In 1992 when Arkansas passed a similar law it was sued by Ray Thornton claiming the law unconstitutional. In 1995 the Supreme Court agreed with Thornton citing that states cannot impose qualifications stricter than those the Constitution specifies.
With Oklahoma’s race for District 4, as long as Bondar officially lives in Oklahoma – even for a short amount of time – he is legally qualified to run for Congress. It will be up to Oklahoma voters to decide if his recent move qualifies him to represent the Sooner State.
James Finck is a professor of history at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. He can be reached at HistoricallySpeaking1776@ gmail.com.
