Barring some amazing upset, chalk up another Republican member of Congress from Oklahoma starting in January 2013:
Rep. Dan Boren, the only Democrat in Oklahoma’s congressional delegation, plans to announce Tuesday that he won’t seek reelection in 2012, leaving open his seat that spans much of eastern Oklahoma.
A source close to Boren said he will make an official announcement at 2 p.m. in his hometown of Muskogee.
Former Oklahoma Congressman Brad Carson said Tuesday that he would run for the seat he held just before Boren won it in 2004.
Boren’s district scores R+14 under its current lines and it is Tom Coburn’s old district. In a year the Republicans should win Oklahoma by their traditional landslide, will Democrat Brad Carson, who represented the district from 2001 to 2005, be a conservative enough nominee? If the race really does become a question of who’s more conservative, this should be a GOP pickup that balances out the recent loss in New York.