In its early years, Oklahoma was a “Solid South” state whose founding fathers like "Alfalfa Bill" Murray and Charles N. Haskell had disfranchised most of its black population via literacy tests and grandfather clauses,[1] the latter of which would be declared unconstitutional in Guinn v. United States.

[2] In 1920 this “Solid South” state, nonetheless, joined the Republican landslide of Warren G. Harding, electing a GOP senator and five congressmen,[3] but in 1922 the Democratic Party returned to their typical ascendancy as the state GOP became bitterly divided.

Despite problems in the state's agricultural sector, La Follette did not have the appeal in Oklahoma he had in more northerly areas of the Plains.

Isolationism was weaker in this heavily Southern, Protestant state and Bryan-era pietist Democratic support struck a different cultural vein from La Follette's largely Catholic and Lutheran backers.

[5] Unlike the Bryanites, La Follette's base strongly opposed the Ku Klux Klan, which dominated politics in Oklahoma at the time, and was focused on farm cooperatives.