Sen. Kannin Koehn (NWOSU), is a five star member of the legislature. Through OIL, Koehn has learned a variety of skills from politics to people. He is planning to take the skills he has learned from OIL and apply them to his campaign for a seat in the Oklahoma House Representatives, which he announced in April.
Q: I heard you are running for state office. Tell me about that.
A: “I’m running for Oklahoma House of Representatives for House District 58, which is out there kind of the borderline of the panhandle. I’ve known I wanted to run for office for a while but kind of when I got involved in OIL it made me think why not do it now? Why wait? And so I announced this April and it’s been going really good.”
Q: How did you get involved in OIL?
A: “Well one of my friends, used to be Sen. Cook, I went to a college republicans meeting with him, and he said, ‘You should go to OIL.’ And I said, ‘Why not?’ I did it, and it was a very good decision for me to make.”
Q: How was the five star luncheon?
A: “I forgot that it existed. Deputy Fleschute came to me and said, ‘Hey are you riding with me to lunch?’ And I said, ‘Oh no, I think I’m just gonna eat in the caf.’ And then she got back, and I’m like, ‘You didn’t remind me that I had five star lunch.’ So I missed it.
Q: Tell me a little bit about how you got involved in politics.
A: “For me, kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back that made me get involved was an ATF ruling that made it to where if you were under 21, you had to wait four weeks to buy a handgun. It was either three or four weeks, and for me, I’ve always been pro gun rights. And that kind of just made me mad enough that I said, ‘I’ve got to get myself involved.’”
Q: You’re very young. How do you think that will influence being a part of the legislature?
A: “I think one large thing about me being young that would help would be my focus on education. I went through the public school system; I graduated in 2021. A lot of our legislators are trying to legislate around education when they haven’t been in a public school since 1980, 1990. Well, they’re legislating problems that aren’t the same as the problems that they know.”
Q: Are there any people that have pushed you to end up where you are now?
A: “One of my friends, Sen. Bell, here in OIL, she’s made a lot of pushes. I get to talk to her a lot about politics, and she helps me kind of be able to defend my points a little bit better, because as I’m mentioning something, she’ll call me out on it if it doesn’t make sense. And I’ve got to work to be, ‘Well this is what I meant by that.’ And so she’s been very, very influential on that.”