Two weeks before the 2020 Republican primary in Oklahoma's 5th District, the head of the state's biggest anti-abortion group did something groups like his almost never do. He publicly called out a Republican candidate.

Tony Lauinger of Oklahomans for Life told The Oklahoman that mail landing in voters' mailboxes was making claims about Stephanie Bice that were not true.

"Oklahomans For Life has not endorsed anyone in the 5th Congressional District Republican Primary. Any claim to the contrary is false. The most recent mail piece says Stephanie Bice has been 'Endorsed & Rated 100% Pro-Life by Oklahomans For Life, Inc.' Neither half of that assertion is correct."

Neither half. Not the endorsement. Not the rating.

What the mail actually said

There were two mail pieces, and it matters which was which.

The one claiming Bice had been endorsed and rated 100% pro-life was paid for by an outside group — a super PAC called American Jobs and Growth PAC. Bice's campaign didn't send it.

But the other one did come from her campaign. That piece said Bice is pro-life, and it carried the Oklahomans for Life logo. Lauinger said the group's name and logo were used without its knowledge or consent.

That's the part that belongs to her. A candidate's campaign put an organization's logo on its own mail, and the organization found out the way everybody else did.

Lauinger also filled in the number the outside mailer got wrong. Over Bice's six years in the state Legislature, he said, she voted for 12 of the 14 bills his group pushed. Twelve out of fourteen is a real record. It just isn't 100%, and it isn't an endorsement, and the group had deliberately stayed out of the race — Lauinger pointed out there were "several strongly pro-life candidates" running.

Bice's answer was not an apology

Here's what she said when The Oklahoman asked:

"I understand Oklahomans for Life wasn't endorsing in this race and wanted to make clear that I am pro-life and have stood with Oklahomans for Life."

Read that again. She says she understood the group wasn't endorsing anyone. So the logo went on her campaign's mail anyway. There's no "we made a mistake," no "we'll pull it," no apology to the group whose name got borrowed. Just a restatement of the message the mailer was pushing in the first place.

Nobody could tell you who paid for the other one

The mailer that flatly invented the endorsement came from American Jobs and Growth PAC — a super PAC, meaning it can raise and spend unlimited money as long as it doesn't coordinate with the campaign.

Federal Election Commission records show the group reported more than $90,000 in spending to support Bice during that 2020 race, on direct mail and digital ads in June — the same weeks the mail was going out.

Where did that money come from? Of the nine itemized contributions the PAC reported for the entire 2019–2020 cycle, only two arrived before it started spending on Bice: $453,854 from a committee called Eagle Eye PAC on April 3, 2020, and $3,500 from something called the Jobs and Progress Fund six days later. So the trail from the false claim in your mailbox leads to a PAC, which leads to another PAC. An Oklahoma voter holding that postcard had no realistic way to find out who was actually talking to them.

It worked

Bice finished second in the June 30 primary, behind Terry Neese, 36.5% to 25.4%. She won the August runoff 52.9% to 47.1%, then beat Democratic incumbent Kendra Horn in November, 52.1% to 47.9%.

She's been in Congress ever since. And the habit the 2020 mail showed — say the thing that helps, sort out the accuracy later, never take it back — didn't stay in 2020.

The same move, five years later

On July 15, 2025, Bice voted yes on a procedural motion that killed a bipartisan push to force the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. It passed by one vote, 211–210. Her name is on it as a Yea.

Two weeks later, on a telephone town hall, a constituent asked her about the Epstein files. Bice called Epstein disgusting, said the victims' privacy was paramount, and, as Oklahoma Watch reported, "clarified that she had not voted to block the release of the files."

She had. The roll call is public.

That same call produced another moment worth keeping. A caller told her he'd only gotten through by pretending to ask about something else, and said the phone events "are a joke, and are screened, carefully screened," then asked why she wouldn't face constituents in person. Her answer:

"I am never going to get that kind of engagement if I'm doing in-person town halls. I am lucky to get a couple hundred, and that's on a great day. I do not dodge my constituents."

It was her 30th telephone town hall. A month later she finally scheduled an in-person "Coffee with a Congresswoman" — and her Democratic opponent, Jena Nelson, pointed out the venue wasn't in the district. The event was canceled for "scheduling conflicts."

And on the paperwork Congress requires of itself, Raw Story found Bice among at least 62 members who broke the STOCK Act, the law meant to stop insider trading by members of Congress. She reported two Treasury bill purchases held in a joint trust — each valued between $15,001 and $50,000 — between nine months and a year late. Her office didn't respond to Raw Story's request for comment. She's not the only Republican who's done it, which is its own indictment of how seriously the law is taken.

Why an old mailer still matters

Because it's the earliest documented example of a pattern Oklahomans are still living with. A logo used without permission. A rating that was invented. A vote she says she didn't cast. A town hall in the wrong district.

Bice isn't unusual in this. Ashley Hinson's campaign in Iowa put out an attack ad within an hour of her opponent winning his primary, making claims he had never supported. It's a style of campaigning that treats what's true as a detail to be handled after the votes are counted.

Meanwhile, the actual work of the office goes somewhere else. In July 2025 she introduced a resolution declaring that "The Star-Spangled Banner" must be performed in English — a measure with no force of law that still hasn't gotten a vote. In the same stretch, Trump's budget bill she voted for put an estimated 131,000 Oklahomans at risk of losing food benefits, and the Oklahoma Hospital Association warned the Medicaid cuts in it could eliminate nearly 15,000 jobs and cut federal reimbursements to Oklahoma hospitals by $8.7 billion over a decade.

The group whose logo she borrowed said it best in 2020: any claim to the contrary is false.

We deserve better.

Source

Chris Casteel, "Anti-abortion group claims mail pieces misleading in 5th District primary," The Oklahoman, June 18, 2020.