Mullin Seeks Re-Election After Promising Only Three Terms
Explains in video that he thinks he can have a bigger impact with Donald Trump in the White House
Oklahoma Rep. Markwayne Mullinannounced he will seek a fourth term in the House despite vowing in his first run in 2011 that he would serve only three terms.
In a video with his wife Christie, Mullin said he understands that people will be upset about him going back on his initial promise.
“I’m not hiding from that because we did say we’re going to serve six years, and it was out of true concerns,” he explains in an 11-minute video posted on his Facebook page, KTUL reported.
Mullin says in the video that he made the original commitment because of concerns it would adversely affect his family and his business.
“We thought we could do anything for six years,” Christie Mullin says in the video. “I can say our family is amazing. The kids are not just doing okay — they are doing great.”
But the congressman says he understands politics better now and believes he can have a better impact with President Donald Trump in office.
“I don’t think there’s one person that’s never changed their mind six years apart from each other or how they would approach things,” he says.
Christie Mullin says that the decision was a recent one.
“I would say up until about a month ago, we truly did not know,” she said. “We have not stopped praying about it.”
In a statement last year, Mullin didn’t address directly whether he would honor his pledge, saying only that he and his wife would “continue to seek the Lord’s guidance.”
“The only election I am focused on right now is in 2016,” he said then.
Mullin easily won re-election in 2016 with 70 percent of the vote. But the broken term-limit pledge comes after he was caught on video at a town hall meeting earlier this year telling constituents that taxpayers don’t pay his salary, and cancelling another town hall over a disagreement with the Cherokee Nation Marshal Service over security, the Tulsa World reported.