West wins labor commissioner runoff, heads to general election

OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma Republicans on Tuesday selected a state lawmaker as their party nominee for the state’s next labor commissioner. 

Rep. Kevin West, R-Moore, defeated fellow state lawmaker John Pfeiffer, R-Mulhall, on Tuesday’s primary runoff ballot. 

He is now set to face Democrat Kevin Dawson and Libertarian Mike Hall in the Nov. 3 general election. 

Watching election results roll in with his family, West said Tuesday he felt “really good and pleased” with the results. 

West said he and his opponent are friends and served together in the Legislature for a decade. 

“I really appreciate the overall campaign,” he said. “Pretty much everything stayed about who we were and what we wanted to do with the job and didn’t get ugly like other campaigns did.” 

West spent a decade as a state lawmaker in the House and has worked in commercial cabinet-making for 40 years, eight of which he owned his own business. 

If elected in November, he said he’d like to update safety trainings, review the Department of Labor’s administrative rules and outline clearer expectations and schedules for safety inspections.

He also said he’d like to launch a bipartisan task force on artificial intelligence to study its integration with the workforce and ensure it’s a tool rather than a replacement. 

Pfeiffer outraised West since the June 16 primary election, with more than double the individual and political action committee contributions.