Marven Goodman

Republican for House District 38

Marven Goodman grew up in a blue-collar family where plumbing was the family business. Marven's grandfather and namesake, Marven Holdeman, owned Enid Plumbing.

At 14, Goodman went to work as a dishwasher at Enid's Polly and Peggy's Cafe. Goodman played football on the Carrier high school team where, in 1973, he was a member of the school's last ever graduating class.

That year, he joined the United States Marine Corps, where he would be promoted to Corporal and specialize in avionics. In 1977, he transferred to the Army/Army National Guard, was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and General Staff Officer G6 status.

He served as the Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the Oklahoma Military Department and was assigned duties as a Contracting Officer's Technical Representative (COTR) where he was responsible for overseeing up to a 4 million dollar combined State and Federal annual budget.

During that time, he functioned as the liaison to local government emergency operation centers (EOCs) and as the officer in charge of Oklahoma National Guard troops on the ground to assist local authorities with heavy equipment, transportation, water, and physical security at disaster sites.

Goodman earned the Humanitarian Service Medal for his work running the Guard's Emergency Operations Center (EOC) shift during the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, where he was responsible for coordination between the Governor's office and FEMA.

As the CIO, Goodman led the Guard's communications leading up to the Y2K event. This included testifying on the State House floor as part of a preparedness hearing by a joint House and Senate committee.

Goodman left the military in 2000 and entered the private sector where he oversaw network security for Hertz and the public sector IT security operations at EDS.

In 2012, Goodman formed Patriot's Republic and opened a gun shop in Crescent, Oklahoma.

Goodman planned to live an easy-going life as an entrepreneur in rural Oklahoma.

He had just opened his own small business, Patriot's Republic, a gun shop in Crescent, Oklahoma, and was enjoying the pace of being a small business owner in a small town.

Then, it happened: the call to serve.

Goodman became aware of his County Commissioner's effort to authorize a Tax Increment Financing (TIF) District. Goodman instinctively knew this was wrong.

TIF districts create holes in the property and sales tax code, much like how monied special interests have riddled the income tax code with many loopholes that allow those with the means to hire lawyers and accountants to escape paying millions in taxes while those without means are not afforded the same special favors.

Once these districts are formed, the lawyers and bond underwriters make bank as they issue massive debt to finance infrastructure that immediately improves the values of the developer's property who is applying for the district.

This puts local politicians in the business of deciding which developer gets the special favor of the TIF districts and which do not.

All in all, it’s bad policy that allows a privileged few to receive benefits that many others do not, and it empowers local politicians with the ability to determine the winners and losers of the free market.

Goodman attempted to raise this point of concern with the local commissioner. That commissioner arrogantly dismissed Goodman’s concerns.

Goodman observed that the commissioner appeared to relish wielding the power to award TIF districts to the powerful special interest that would benefit, and it was clear that once the first district was formed, there was likely to be more of this abuse; indeed, soon thereafter, a powerful, monied special interest was gearing up for a 2nd, large TIF district to develop a massive private land project.

Goodman knew that he had to do something.

He realized that by approving the first TIF district, the incumbent commissioner had opened Pandora's box on this dangerous policy.

He didn’t want to see what he viewed as "legalized corruption" brought to his local county.

He filed to run against the TIF-supporting commissioner. Few gave Goodman any chance. The incumbent had been ensconced for 12 long years and had won previous elections by a large margin.

But that didn't deter Goodman; no one else was stepping up. He went door-to-door exposing the abuse and on election day, Goodman pulled off one of the greatest upsets in the modern-day history of the county.

And then, even more importantly, after Goodman took his oath of office, he didn’t change.

He kept his word and shut down all future TIF district proposals, even though the monied special interest that would have benefited from the massive new TIF district became involved in financing local races, including financing a campaign against Goodman.

For eight years, Goodman stood up to these powers and successfully stopped the TIF proposals.

And that massive project that was being considered for a TIF district?

It was developed anyway, without any special favors from the commissioners, thus proving that the free market works, and if the free market supports development, it will occur without any special favors from the government.

In 2023, Goodman left office, having done his part to keep the county free from this inappropriate and dangerous form of government influence in the market.

Goodman served through the COVID crisis, where he was known for keeping the county open in what he would call, "The Logan County Freedom Zone."

He also won approval for changing county policy to allow county employees to carry their handguns while on duty.

Now, once again, upon seeing dangerous policies from a long-term incumbent, this time it's State Representative John Pfeiffer, Goodman is stepping up to do his part.

He is ready to once again step into the void that's not being filled by anyone else.

He knows that 10-year incumbent John Pfeiffer does not represent our values and he knows that the voters need to have the option of changing course.

No other Republican filed to challenge Pfeiffer, so Goodman is going to do his part to ensure that voters have the opportunity to change course and to elect someone who actually represents their values.

Just as Goodman refused to benefit from special interests while serving as county commissioner, he will also refuse to take money from lobbyists and their employers while serving as state representative.

This will again keep him completely free of the taint that destroys so many elected officials.

Now, it’s up to you: will you join with Goodman and step up to defend our liberties and freedoms on June 18th?

John Pfeiffer's attempt to create a new government surveillance agency has inspired retired Lt. Colonel Marven Goodman to step up to defeat Pfeiffer and his big government plans

For retired Lt. Colonel Marven Goodman, watching our state legislator write "dangerous" legislation to "bring George Orwell's surveillance state to Oklahoma," was the last straw.

Goodman's state representative, John Pfeiffer was completing his 9th year in office when he sponsored House Bill 3542.

Pfeiffer's bill builds on a public surveillance project, initially created by a 2007 executive order of former Governor Brad Henry, and expands it into a new government agency charged with monitoring and watching over various communications of, and serving as an information clearinghouse on the actions of, Oklahoma's citizens.

The new government bureaucracy will be known as the "Oklahoma Fusion Center." Pfeiffer charges it with the mission of consolidating data on "suspicious activities" that occur in Oklahoma.

Pfeiffer also wants to change the oversight model of the surveillance center.

Instead of being housed inside of the Department of Public Safety, where the center is overseen by the direct appointee of the Governor, who is elected by the people, a twelve-person board of unelected appointees will have the power of oversight.

This includes three board members who are from Indian tribes, groups that sometimes consider themselves to be separate nations.

Four other members of the board will be appointed by private police associations.

These associations are not elected by the public.

They are private associations, yet they will now be responsible for appointing four of the board members who will be in charge of the public surveillance operations.

This means there will be little recourse to the citizens against the surveillance center.

Tom Coburn’s Findings

Disturbingly, the fusion center surveillance project already has a history of controversy.

In 2012, Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn served as the minority ranking member on a Senate committee to analyze what exactly was going on with these government surveillance systems.

That committee produced a report that was extremely critical of the fusion centers and stated:

"The Subcommittee investigation found that DHS-assigned details to the fusion centers forwarded ‘intelligence’ of uneven quality — oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens’ civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally taken from already-published sources and more often than not unrelated to terrorism."

Ironically, for all the risks of infringing on our privacy, the fusion centers were found to have possibly hindered, not aided, actual counterterrorism response.

The Senate's investigation could identify no example in which a fusion center uncovered a terrorist threat, nor could it identify an instance when fusion center reporting helped disrupt an active terrorist plot.

Instead, the Senate report did find significant examples of government waste including dozens of flat-screen TVs; Sport Utility Vehicles they then gave away to other government agencies; hidden “shirt button” cameras, cell phone tracking devices, and other surveillance equipment unrelated to the analytical mission of a fusion center.

In another particularly embarrassing instance of abuse, a fusion center falsely attributed an “attack” to Russian hackers, when in fact, the person involved was an authorized employee who was accessing a system remotely, while on vacation.

Essentially, the Senate's report painted a picture of massive government waste, including the spending money on frivolous items such as vehicles, that violated the privacy rights of Americans, with little to show in terms of benefit to the security of the country.

It Gets Worse

Earlier this year, an Oklahoma State Senator, when debating against Senate Bill 1620, a bill that would allow police departments to automatically scan all passing traffic, theorized that the surveillance data would be passed through the fusion center as a conduit to other government agencies, presumably to include the controversial FBI and ATF, and even to foreign government agencies.

If correct, this means the fusion centers could be acting to launder surveillance from local law enforcement license plate scanners, to entities that have little to no accountability to local voters.

Goodman says that this isn't the type of thing voters expected when they voted for Republicans.

He asserts that once a Democratic governor created this project, this is the type of thing Republicans were supposed to do away with once they came to power; and yet, both Fallin and Stitt allowed it to stay around and haunt state government.

Now Pfeiffer is going to take it to the next level and make it into a full-blown statutory bureaucracy that can no longer be repealed by a simple executive order from the governor.

"Republicans are supposed to shrink government, not grow it; and certainly not grow the programs that have proven to infringe on our liberties."

Goodman suggests that after nine years in office, Pfeiffer likely believes himself to be untouchable, able to get away with any proposal no matter how out of touch with the values of local voters.

"It is my sincere and honest belief that the vast majority of those of us who live in this district would never support the creation of a new government agency with the mission of spying on the taxpayers.

I didn't serve our state and nation just to stand by and watch immature, foolish politicians destroy the freedoms we have all worked so hard to preserve.

I am once again stepping up to do my part to preserve our freedoms.

I am asking all fellow voters to help me, by standing up and voting John Pfeiffer out of office on June 18th.

When we do, we will send a message to freedom-destroying government tyrants everywhere, ‘We are not going to allow you to do this in Oklahoma!'

If we fail to step up and do this, history will record that it was our generation who gave up the freedoms for which so many sacrificed so greatly."