KPG joins Keating, Edmondson, and animal welfare groups in condemning Gov. Stitt's remarks praising cockfighting

Governor films video message to “cheer” on Oklahoma cockfighting organization.

Leaders from national and state animal welfare organizations joined two former Oklahoma officeholders to condemn recent video remarks made by Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt in support of a cockfighting group seeking to decriminalize the brutal practice.

“I have never seen a governor of a state associate himself or herself with the cockfighting community,” said Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy, two nonprofit animal advocacy organizations, during a virtual press conference co-hosted by Kirkpatrick Policy Group on November 15, 2023. “This is a felony in the state of Oklahoma. It is a United States felony, and (Stitt) just gave them great comfort that the governor of the state is supporting their illicit, illegal organized criminal activity.”

Stitt’s statement came in the form of a video he filmed from his office for a legislative rally held by the Oklahoma Gamefowl Commission, a group of cockfighting enthusiasts that has no legal or government affiliation. The one-minute, eleven second video was played in front of a crowd of between 300 – 400 people during an Oklahoma Gamefowl Commission legislative rally held in McAlester, Oklahoma on November 12, said Tulsan Kevin Chambers, who surreptitiously attended the meeting. The cockfighting supporters also posted the video on their Facebook page. “I wanted to take a moment to cheer you on from the sidelines,” Stitt said in the video. “Oklahomans like yourselves remain dedicated to the spirit of competition and camaraderie that runs deep in our communities.”

The governor’s sentiments run antithetically to the values of a vast majority of Oklahomans, said Louisa McCune, volunteer board member of Kirkpatrick Policy Group. “We’re talking about pure, unmitigated animal cruelty today. It’s appalling that the governor of the state of Oklahoma would so clearly endorse competitive animal fighting to the death,” McCune said. “It’s an embarrassment to have our number-one elected leader promoting knife fights between animals.”

Former Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson criticized Stitt during the press conference, saying that cockfighting is inextricably bound to other forms of criminal activity. “That’s what we know from the cockfighting operations that have been busted,” Edmondson said. “That you don’t have cockfighting without gambling, that you don’t have cockfighting without guns being present.”

Former Governor Frank Keating, who endorsed a 2002 ballot measure easily passed by Oklahoma voters making cockfighting a felony, said in a written statement that the inhumane ritual is just as cruel and backwards now as it was twenty years ago. “It is an embarrassment to me that any elected official seeks to turn back the clock on this morally settled issue. Talk of decriminalizing cockfighting is toxic to the idea of economic development and forward progress for our great state.”

Stitt’s message, while not explicitly endorsing cockfighting, was expressed in thinly veiled code commonly known among the community, Pacelle said. “There’s no other purpose for these specialized breeds of fighting birds but for cockfighting.”

The governor praised the cockfighters for preserving what he called “game fowl traditions” and said that game fowl farmers across the state should be protected. “I can’t wait to see what we accomplish together in the next legislative session,” said Stitt, referring to decriminalization bills that stalled in the Legislature last session but can be reexamined in 2024.

If Stitt’s message was meant for political gain, recent polling doesn’t concur. According to a March 2023 Sooner Survey poll, 87 percent of statewide registered voters surveyed said that cockfighting should remain illegal. This sentiment was nearly identical across all demographics - including Republican, Democrat, and independent voters, urban and rural voters, and male and female voters. “Any candidate for office that toys with the idea of permitting cockfighting to occur without the risk of a felony is at odds with voters,” said pollster Mat McFeron, president of Cole Hargrave Snodgrass and Associates in a statement about the survey.

Follow the money

The Oklahoma Gamefowl Commission PAC was created in 2022 and made more than $70,000 in contributions to candidate committees during the past eighteen months, according to Oklahoma Ethics Commission campaign finance reports. One of the political action committee’s largest donations, $2,000, was made to Stitt’s reelection campaign on August 27, 2022. “This is a values issue, a moral issue, an issue about the measure of a man,” said McCune. “For years now we have watched Kevin Stitt tear Oklahomans apart on culture wedge issues, and now he has come into the realm of animal abuse, endorsing competitive animal fighting, which is revolting to every Oklahoman in all corners of our state.”

Law enforcement not much help

During the rally, many attendees spoke openly and wore T-shirts referencing cockfighting. The crowd included six current members of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, including Representative David Hardin, former Adair County sheriff, Chambers said. “He said he had been to so many chicken fights, he didn’t how many.”

Law enforcement has been deficient in enforcing cockfighting laws, Pacelle said. According to the District Attorneys Council, from 2004 to 2022, there were only twenty-nine law enforcement actions resulting in the arrest of individuals involved in cockfighting, an average of 1.75 busts a year for all but one of Oklahoma’s seventy-seven counties. “There’s not been a single arrest in counties known to have extensive illegal cockfighting, including Atoka, Coal, LeFlore, and McCurtain counties,” Pacelle said in a statement released as the press conference began. “In August 2023, however, Carter County prosecutors charged seven men, including a leader of the Oklahoma Gamefowl Commission, with felony offenses related to illegal cockfighting, stemming from a bust of a cockfighting pit in Ratliff City.”

According to local newspaper The Admoreite, deputies broke up an illegal cockfighting event in June attended by about 180 people, “confiscating (about sixty) fighting roosters and equipment while impounding twenty vehicles and trailers.”

The non-profit organization Showing Animals Respect and Kindness (SHARK) obtained drone footage of three of the cockfighting farms from the president, vice president and sergeant at arms for the Oklahoma Gamefowl Commission, and Animal Wellness Action also has released two videos of other leaders of the group appearing in marketing videos made by a Philippines-based cockfighting network, Pacelle said.

Fighting birds spread disease

According to the Center for a Humane Economy, cockfighting has been linked to the spread of avian influenza and virulent Newcastle Disease. “There have been fifteen introductions of Newcastle Disease into the United States since 1950, ten of which occurred via the illegal smuggling of gamecocks across the southern border from Mexico,” Pacelle said. “Just three of those outbreaks cost the federal government close to $1 billion.”