[upbeat music] Welcome to the Oklahoma Memo podcast. My name is Ryan Welton, the founder and curator of Oklahoma Memo. It is a daily local news recap newsletter that hits your inbox each weekday at 7:00 AM. We have podcasts now, too, and I am just delighted to be joined today by Timothy Lee, the senior vice president for legal and, and many other things at CFIF, the Center for Individual Freedom.
And today, what we're going to be talking about is a poll that recently came out, uh, showing that the vast majority of Oklahomans oppose ending vaccine requirements. But before we get into that, thank you so much for doing this, Tim. Tell us a little bit about yourself and CFIF. Well, first, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
These are important results, and it's an important public debate. Um, Center for Individual Freedom, we were formed in 1998. Uh, this is long before I joined them.
Uh, my background is actually as an attorney, mostly in the Los Angeles area, but CFIF was founded, uh, for its, as its name implies, uh, individual freedom and protection of it, constitutional rights, um, rule of law, as opposed to some of the dictatorships and, uh, some of those inclinations that we've seen sort of progressing through the years and that the Founding Fathers aimed to prevent through the Constitution.
So we've had a lot of animating issues through the years. Intellectual property is very important to us. We're very pro-pat, pro-copyright, pro-trademark. Um, First Amendment rights, we're very opposed to so-called, uh, campaign finance laws. Uh, we think they restrict free speech. Um, so some of those issues on constitutional rights, Second Amendment, uh, especially, we wrote one of the briefs in the famous Heller case of 2008, uh, protecting the individual right to keep and bear arms.
So, uh, as our name implies, individual freedom is very important to us. But not necessarily loosey-goosey. I mean, there's conservative, and then there's libertaria. It sounds like you're a constitutionalist, like the, you know, r- rule of law. That's fair. Yeah. Sometimes people who are opposed... You know, I'll joke when people ask the name of our organization, I say, "Center for Individual Freedom," and I'll kind of pause and say, "Who could be opposed to that, right?" You'd be surprised.
[laughs] You'd be surprised. So there are- Well-... people who are on the other side, and what I always try to point out is, whether you're libertarian or conservative or pro-individual freedom, that doesn't mean you're an anarchist. That doesn't mean you want to abolish government. We're not talking about zero laws out there.
So I think a lot of people more to the left of center are opposed to libertarian principles, with a small L, by the way, that they sort of assume that anarchy is what results from greater individual freedom. No, there's, we're within a continuum, and so we can use a rule of reason. A, a buddy of mine likes to describe it as, uh, this way.
He says, "We're less Republican and Democrat, and we're a lot more communitarian and libertarian." Right. Um, just o- one is more community-minded, one is more individual freedom-minded. And by the way, uh, it's, you know, The Oklahoma Memo audience probably is a little bit left of center, but I see value in both. I... Who could be opposed to individual freedom?
And this poll is fascinating because it shows... I mean, during the pandemic, I mean, uh, it would often get referred to as the jab. Mm-hmm. Uh, it was, uh, you know, a big point of, uh, political consternation that in Oklahoma people were being forced to get the COVID vaccine. But, uh, for many things, and there's a different level of herd immunity or whatnot that goes into each one of these vaccines. Flu vaccine, it's not so much compared to others. We're not scientists.
We're talking about a poll right here that says the vast majority of Oklahomans oppose ending vaccine requirements. What can you tell me about this poll? How is it done, and, and what does it tell you? Well, we did it across four states, and, uh, I'll quote, colloquially use the term red states. These, uh, tend to be more conservative states. We're talking about Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Kansas.
And so we're looking at states that might be, in the public's view at least, a little more anti-vaccine. Uh, and this is all on the heels, obviously, of Florida, uh, eliminating all of its vaccine mandates.
So this is in the public discussion, vaccines generally, you know, mandates. The issue is that there are a lot of different types of vaccines, and people can have one opinion on one type of vaccine for adults who maybe don't even leave their houses versus, say, children, you know, who go to public schools and, and things of that sort.
And, and so there can be wide variation, and reasonable minds can differ, but we thought this was important on the heels of Florida eliminating its, all of its vaccine mandates, uh, to point out to legislators and the public especially that, um, you know, that, that isn't necessarily a popular view among voters in these red states. Was there any measurement or do you have any thoughts as to, uh, why it's not popular, even given the public discourse that's happening? Yeah.
I think because a lot of the public discourse centers on COVID, and we're talking about adults. Um, I don't wanna give you TMI, but I'm vaccinated, you know, with the COVID vaccine, but I understand that people chose not to be, and I can understand variation on that. But when you start talking about children perhaps, voters tend to take a different attitude a little bit.
Look, these are people that are going voluntarily out into publicYou know, we don't want them getting r- measles, uh, whooping cough, things of that sort, polio. And so they can sort of differ a little bit there. So I think none of these things are mutually exclusive. Children are different.
I mean, in, in, in Oklahoma right now, there is, and it- I haven't seen it in the headlines as much recently, but measles was starting to make an uptick in New Mexico and in Texas, and that- that's part of the, uh, regimen of vaccines that kids have to get at a young age. But is, is CFIF's, um...
It's just y- you, you all are just informing legislators and the top minds, business leaders, as to what Oklahomans think, or are you also actively trying to make sure that legislators don't do things that really are just, um, self-defeating for themselves? You know, last thing I'm gonna do is tell anybody how to think or to vote. Um, yes, we're informing more than dictating.
People can take from these numbers what they will, but they're so stark that they do send a message, but legislators, we elect legislators to use their own judgment. So they can take them or leave them, but they should understand that, for instance, the public, even in red states, will more, is more likely to oppose for re-election a legislator that votes to eliminate all of the vaccine mandates. And so that's something for them to keep in mind.
If they wanna take what they consider a, a strong moral stand and say, "Well, I'm going to eliminate the mandates anyway," that's their choice, but understand that you're going to foes- voters who are gonna be less likely to support you, not more so. So it's, it's more just putting this information out there, which I think might surprise a lot of people just based on the two to one margins and whatnot.
Well, to be fair, for those of us who are of a certain age and remember various different eras, the Bush era, the Bush One era, the Reagan era, it, conservatives have not had the reputation of being anti-science. They were science. You know, they, they were pro-science. Democrats were pro-science. It's only been in the past few years that even the discussion in our discourse about one side or the other being anti-science.
I mean, this is, uh, it's probably just sort of, uh, coincidental evidence, uh, but that when you ask folks one on one, even folks who are centrist or right of center, they're still pro-science, too. Right. And that's unfortunate, the terms pro-science and anti-science even get introduced into the debates. Um, during COVID, I remember one of the best quotes I heard was, "Science can build an atomic bomb.
Science can't tell you whether or not to use that atomic bomb." Mm. And so during the- Yeah... the COVID pandemic, you know, we could start to look at the numbers, and maybe people that are 30 years old and marathon runners might take a different point of view on the COVID vaccine than somebody who's 75 and just had surgery.
So people of reasonable minds can differ. So it was unfortunate that people got labeled either pro-science or anti-science, especially since the science changes sometimes. Well, a- and sometimes for the better. Mm-hmm. I, I've seen research recently that suggests that the mRNA a- aspects of the COVID vaccine could be the thing that leads us toward a cancer vaccine. Oh. Things change. Yes. Those...
You read the Wall Street Journal editorials, uh, every day, don't you? [laughs] Oh, yeah. I, I, I read everything. Yeah. Love the Wall Street Journal, love the New York Times. I love all of them. I don't really care the viewpoint. I just want information. I wanna know what's going on. Yeah. W- is this the, was this the first foray into vaccine, uh, popular opinion research that CFIF has done, or has this been something that, that you all have been following for a while?
This is, my recollection, this is the first that we've ever, uh, been involved in this. Uh, I don't recall anything, obviously, before I got there, and I haven't heard anything along those lines. We do work on some pharmaceutical issues, uh, more in the realm of intellectual property protections. We're very, very- Mm... pro-patent.
We think that they exist for a reason and that they spur growth and innovation and, you know, the United States accounts for two-thirds of all new drugs introduced to the world each year. We're, what, 5% of the world's population, and even with the largest economy in the world, we're about 25% of the world's economy, but two-thirds of all new life-saving and life-improving drugs and vaccines come from the US, and that's because we protect intellectual property so strongly.
Even the Founding Fathers put patents and other intellectual property protections in the text of the Constitution. That was very important they did th- so specifically. So at any rate, we work on vaccine issues, but typically more with regard to intellectual property rights. This is, uh, getting a little bit nerdy, but as somebody who worked in news for two decades, three decades really, and somebody, I don't know, you probably can't see it back here, I've got a piano here.
Uh- It's tuning-... I'm also a musician... Homer Spooner's back there and, uh [laughs] Those... Nice. Nice. Well, there, there is a, uh- Homer Spooner... a piano. It's not, it, it is a, uh, a keyboard right here, but as a musician, one of the things that I've learned over the, the years when it comes to copyright intellectual property is you have to protect it all the time. Yeah.
Any gap in you protecting it leaves you susceptible to a judge or somebody somewhere saying, "Look, you ex- you haven't exactly been protecting your trademark or copyright." Right. You have to be doing that all the time. So it's, it's, it's a job. One of the things I found interesting in some of the notes that I've got over here about the research that you did is that y- your, your survey didn't just touch on, uh, Oklahomans and how they feel about ending vaccine requirements.
It also talked about vaccine accessibility. Yeah. I see here that policies that ensure vaccines are easily available at local pharmones- pharmacies and fully covered by insurance had 89% support. Can you talk about-What some of those questions were and why you asked about accessibility and what you heard from Oklahomans. Yeah, because obviously if we're going to require, if the state's gonna have a vaccine mandate, that triggers the question, well, how can parents get these vaccines?
You know, some of them are gonna be a little more impoverished. They can't maybe have time, the two working parents, maybe even working double jobs, who knows? Where do they go track down these vaccines? How do they pay for them? You know, accessibility is key once you understand that some of these vaccine mandates, especially for children and whatnot, are, are more popular. How do we get those things?
And so accessibility through, uh, insurance and local pharmacies can be key because that makes it easier for people to comply with those vaccine mandates. And like you said, 9 out of 10 people favor those greater levels of accessibility through insurance and pharmacies. So in other words, for the 2026 midterms, this is probably n- this is probably not the hill for, uh, elected officials to die on. Probably not, but that's, uh, as I said earlier, uh, up to them to decide.
But I think it is important for them to consider because I think there might be sort of an assumption. Look, legislators at the state level, the national level, the local level, they're busy. They're dealing with a lot of issues, a lot of contentious issues. So this is maybe not something that they can spend a lot of time...
Maybe they don't have personal pollsters that can give them this information, and I think it contravenes maybe some of what the popular rhetoric is out there and the assumptions that, oh, no, no, people wanna just be left alone, and we don't want any vaccine mandates whatsoever, and we should eliminate them altogether.
Um, this can be perhaps surprising to them, and it's sort of smelling the proverbial coffee, if you will. And, and when you do research like this, it is a let the chips fall wherever they may. If the results had been otherwise, you would've released this port- report just the same. Yes. If I explain the benefits of patent laws and strong patents and people or legislators or executives choose to violate that, okay, you can lead a horse to water.
I can explain the benefits of lower taxes and how capital gains taxes, when you cut them, you actually get more revenues 'cause it spurs economic activity, the old Laffer curve, which you may have talked about on your show before. Um, you can tell people these things. They can choose to ignore them if they want, in this case, perhaps at their peril. I was nerdy enough as a kid that I remember Arthur Laffer when he was a young man.
So, uh- He still is. He still is... I'm just like... Oh, right, right, right. But I mean, like, uh, like, he was, like, in his 30s or 40s, you know, back when I first started paying attention. Tim, I appreciate you talking to us about this. What are some other things that CFIF... I mean, it's st- not just vaccines. I want...
So when people hear this, they're going to hear our conversation, and they, they might just, uh, assume that the Center for Individual Freedom, I know you talked about other things that, uh, uh, CFIF stands for. Is there an- any other research on the horizon that folks ought to be looking out for? Uh, on this issue more specifically or just polls the way- Anything.
It could be this issue or, uh, yeah, is there a follow-up to this? Uh, actually, that's a great idea, and we probably will do a follow-up on this. Obviously, next year's gonna be even more contentious and then into 2028. Um, we've done polls in the past that talk about intellectual property and the support, uh, for intellectual property, and so that kind of ties in with this a little bit.
But, uh, you know, it's sometimes it's important to make sh- clear to the public or to legislators that these things aren't simply right in and of themselves. They're not just right philosophically.
They're not just right legally, constitutionally. They're actually popular as well. So in this case- Hmm... we're talking about two to one margins, even in states like Arkansas and Oklahoma that favor not eliminating vaccine mandates, as opposed to, like, 21% who do favor, uh, eliminating vaccine mandates.
That's just a lopsided margin, and so it's important to educate the public. Right. In a, in a world of, uh, 47/47 with the last 6% deciding a presidential election, 75/25 or 80 to 20 is an absolute- Yeah... it is monumental landslide. Yeah. I know I'll get questions about this, but there'll be somebody on YouTube who says, "Okay, so how did they gather this information?" And so it's, uh, uh, you know, having worked with pollsters over the years, it's scientific. There are controls.
What, what can you say about how you gather this information to help people be more comfortable that this is actually real? Well, first thing I'd say is you can click on our website, and we have the poll right there. We have the methodology. They can look this up. They can see the numbers for themselves. We're not hiding the ball. Um, Signal is a well-established and reputable polling organization.
Um, and like you just said, I'm glad you said, uh, about the scientific reliability of some of these public opinion polls. Um, uh, this is 30 years ago now, which sounds scary, but going back to college as a political science major when you had to learn about polling, a lot of the public doesn't understand that when you reach toward about 1,500 to 1,000, uh, uh, survey, uh, subjects, you get pretty accurate polls. And, you know, sometimes one poll may be off.
I think a lot of people are sort of used to, in presidential elections, for instance, being a little bit off. But these are actually very reliable polls, and when you start to see this consistency between all of these four states, that adds additional validity. Yeah. The, the, the polling issues with things like the governor's race or the presidential race, there i- has been evidence that people are less likely to give you the truth when- Yeah... you're like, "Whatever.
I'm voting for Trump. I'm voting for Biden. I'm voting o- whatever." But in this case, when you're asking them about something that relates to themselves and their family and their health-There's no real evidence, is there, that people are going to, like, fudge on their sentiment? Exactly.
Uh, this is something that you're not as a- ashamed to admit in public if it's sort of gonna violate what your neighbors are doing and the, the, you know, the politician's webs- uh, or excuse me, uh, a campaign sign in their front yard. Um, but, you know, towards the end of our introduction to a lot of the polls, we talk about the margin of error here, you know, plus or minus about 4%.
The other thing I would add, just in terms of reliability, when you get questions from viewers on the reliability here, we're talking about 75 to 25, or in some cases 90 to 10 margins. Mm. That's not something that's gonna get messed up by, you know, a little bit of a bad wording on a polling question here, or maybe a little bit of an oversampling there. These are such stark numbers and stark disparities that the, uh, the points are clear. It's accuracy versus precision. In the...
You know, having worked in local news, folks would get mad if the, the temperature was off by two degrees. I'm like, "The only time you should get mad is if the weather guy says it's gonna be 57 and it turns out to be 90." Yep, yep. Then, the- the- then there's a big issue. Perfectly stated. But Tim, I, I, I, I appreciate you explaining this.
For folks who are, uh, you know, Oklahoma Memo followers, or you're listening to this on our podcast, I'm going to have all of the information, the link to CFIF, the link to the poll, the link to everything, uh, in the show notes, in the YouTube description. And if you're not subscribed to Oklahoma Memo, the newsletter, you can do so at oklahomamemo.com.
As soon as I get this edited, it will be a story in one of those daily newsletters, I would imagine, next week, so folks can read more about our conversation. Yeah. Tim Lee from the Center for Individual Freedom, thank you so much. I hope we can talk again in the future about a, various other, uh, topics. I'm fascinated by these polls, especially, um, when it may go against, uh, popular assumption. I always like contradicting assumptions. Yeah, which this, uh, set of polls does, exactly.
Um, I would add, um, for people who do have questions, they can go to our website. They can send us questions. So you can email us questions if you have an issue with some of the methodology or the polls, or a question, a follow-up, things like that. Uh, I would encourage people, uh, to go ahead and, and hit us up.
You know, send us an email, so. I will make sure and note that in the show notes and in the YouTube, uh, you know, uh, the, the description there. Tim, I really appreciate the conversation. I appreciate it, too, and I will w- add one last thing. As a double Pac-12 guy, and Pac-12 doesn't- Uh-huh... exist anymore, but, uh, you know, Arizona State undergrad and then law school at USC. I...
Tim, you don't know this, I am an Arizona State, uh, graduate as well. Oh, go Devils. Um, you ab- a- absolutely right [laughs]. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Uh, and- So wait, what happened in the 1983 Fiesta Bowl, then, when ASU played O- Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowls? Marcus- So I re- Do you remember that? I, well, I, I, I remember that game. It was 32-21, Sun Devils won.
Boom. But I, I wa- I wasn't a graduation then... a g- graduate then. I got my master's in digital audience strategy- Oh... just a couple of years ago. So I am a, I'm, I'm Sun Devil, man. S- So I'm... So you're Arizona State, and where else? Uh, for undergrad, ASU, and then, and I was born and raised in Arizona, uh, but I went to law school at USC, so go Trojans too. But- Right.
F- I, I- Fight On, and yeah, Sun Devils... and they're both maroon and gold, so I didn't have to change my wardrobe over the years. But I will say this, and I don't wanna leave anybody out, but I've always liked Oklahoma. Go Venables. I like the Cowboys, too. I know that's probably sacrilege to say there, but even the Tulsa Golden Hurricane, you probably recall Tulsa's former coach, uh...
Oh my gosh, now I just totally blanked on his name, and he came to ASU, uh, and, and was our coach for a while. Oh yeah, it was, uh, To- Todd Graham. Todd Graham. Yes. I can't believe- Yeah... I just blanked on that. Yeah. [laughs] But he was a good guy. I liked him quite a bit, and, uh, so we like the Golden Hurricane, too. But good luck to all the teams in Oklahoma. A- Arizona State was very fun to watch last year.
It's been a struggle this year, but they're still good. Yeah. They're still good, but they just don't have Cam Skedgo- uh, Skedebo. Don't have Skedebo, and we also lost our quarterback, Sam Levitt. But last week we beat Iowa State, which was a tough win in AM. Yeah. So. And Jeff Sims was great. Yeah. So here we are talking Sun Devils football. Sports brings us together, and, uh, I just appreciate the conversation.
Halleraid time. Tim, thank you so much. Thank you very mu- All right. Oh, by the, one last thing. Best- Hmm? Best barbecue. When I moved out to DC a few years ago, um, oh gosh, I'm gonna blank on the name of the town. But next interview maybe I'll tell you. Um, the best barbecue I ever had all the way from Texas all the way up to DC was a place in Oklahoma just sort of east of Amarillo.
I'll send you a picture, 'cause I, we took a picture outside of it. It was so good. Please, uh, I, I love barbecue talk anytime we can do that. Great. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. You're very welcome. [outro music]