Chicken-Fried News: She never fails

(Madeline Hancock)
Madeline Hancock

By far, the most exciting thing to come out of Oklahoma’s first 2014 gubernatorial debate was a T-shirt.

After Gov. Mary Fallin and challenger Joe Dorman finished exchanging their pillowy jabs, resident badass Rico Smith delivered a brutal undercut to Fallin’s pride.

Smith, a Dorman supporter, local businessman and associate justice of the Oklahoma Intercollegiate Legislature, caught up with Fallin for a seemingly innocuous photo op, which she kindly obliged.

There was one problem: Smith’s shirt altered Fallin’s campaign logo to read “Mary Failin’ Oklahoma.”

Fallin did a double take before realizing just what in Sam Hell was going on. But, alas, it was too late. A second photo had been snapped — of her priceless, side-eyed reaction.

Never one to squander a smear opportunity, Fallin’s camp tried to paint Smith as a member of the Dorman campaign.

“I thought it was petty and the kind of stunt that we’ve come to expect from Joe Dorman, who is running a very negative campaign,” Fallin spokesperson Alex Weintz said.

Naturally, Dorman spokesperson Adrienne Covington-Graham denied, denied, denied.

“He comes to events,” Covington-Graham said. “But he has not done our volunteer events... He’s just a Joe Dorman fan.”

That might be true. But in our book, Smith is Dorman Fan of the Year.

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