Oklahoma Nurse Wins U.S. Senate Nomination With Just $455 Left in Campaign Cash

A nurse whose campaign account was down to less than $500 is now a major-party nominee for the United States Senate.

N’Kiyla “Jasmine” Thomas won Oklahoma’s Democratic primary runoff on Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026, defeating a far better-funded opponent backed by prominent Oklahoma Democrats.

Thomas, 31, is a nurse, a Chickasaw Nation citizen, a mother of two, and an active-duty military spouse from Ardmore, Oklahoma. She holds an active, unencumbered Oklahoma practical nurse (LPN) license issued in 2024, according to Nursys, the national licensure database maintained by state boards of nursing.

Her campaign priorities include healthcare access, the nursing workforce, and burnout.

Her nomination puts a nurse in a race for a chamber where the profession has never been represented: the United States has more than 4 million registered nurses, plus hundreds of thousands of licensed practical nurses, yet a nurse has never served in the U.S. Senate.

Want to see more Nurse.org articles in your Google results? Add us as a preferred source.

Thomas defeated attorney and nonprofit CEO Jim Priest, taking about 61% of the vote to his 39% in unofficial returns.

She finished first in the five-candidate June 16 Democratic primary with 45.2% of the vote but fell short of the majority required to avoid a runoff.

Priest outspent Thomas more than five to one, about $315,000 to her $58,000 in reported spending, according to FEC filings, and his backers included former Govs. Brad Henry and David Walters. By Aug. 5, Thomas’ campaign was down to approximately $455 in cash.

Her campaign was conducted largely through social media.

In her victory speech, Thomas said “money doesn’t equate to votes” and pledged to fund rural hospitals and “put nurses and doctors back into the hospitals.”

The Associated Press called the race for Thomas around 8 p.m. local time. Results remain unofficial until certified by the Oklahoma State Election Board.

>>Listen to The Latest Nurse News Podcast

Thomas was talking about the nursing workforce well before election night. At an Aug. 3 meeting with Comanche County Democrats in Lawton, she told The Lawton Constitution she would push Congress to fund college-level nursing programs and expand the healthcare workforce.

“I’m going to make sure that there’s not nursing burnout by putting more into the workforce,” Thomas said, according to the newspaper.

Her stated nursing priorities at that meeting and on her campaign platform include:

• Federal funding for college-level nursing programs
• Student loan repayment for nurses who return to their hometowns to practice
• Support for nursing unions and organized labor
• Funding for rural hospitals
• Addressing the nursing shortage and protecting women’s healthcare rights

“I’m a big labor union candidate,” Thomas said at the same meeting, adding that she also supports “funding the hospitals so they can better fund their nurses.”

The shortage she is campaigning on is documented: the Health Resources and Services Administration projects a 3% national shortage of registered nurses by 2038, rising to 11% in nonmetropolitan areas compared with 2% in metropolitan areas, and projects that the supply of licensed practical nurses will meet only about 70% of demand.

Thomas discussed her healthcare platform at an Aug. 15 meeting with Delaware County Democrats in Grove:

Nurses make up one of the largest professions in U.S. healthcare, but few serve in Congress.

Only three registered nurses currently serve in the U.S. House of Representatives: Reps. Lauren Underwood, Jen Kiggans, and Sheri Biggs. A nurse has never served in the U.S. Senate, according to American Nurse, the journal of the American Nurses Association.

Nursing workforce legislation is active in the current Congress. The bipartisan Congressional Nursing Caucus relaunched in January 2025 with more than 50 members, and a reauthorization of Title VIII nursing workforce development programs was forwarded to the full House Energy and Commerce Committee in September 2025 but has not had a House vote.

Hern, a Tulsa Republican who has represented Oklahoma’s 1st Congressional District since 2018, won the Republican Senate nomination outright in June with about 70% of the primary vote.

Thomas told NBC News she is “a self-proclaimed democratic socialist,” though “not yet” a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, and said she breaks with parts of that group’s platform. NonDoc reported that she appears to be the first candidate identifying as a democratic socialist to win a major party’s nomination in Oklahoma. During the runoff, Priest argued the label would cost Democrats a general election.

The financial mismatch in the general election is even larger. Hern’s campaign reported nearly $10 million in total receipts and about $2.5 million in cash on hand through June 30, per FEC filings, against about $57,000 raised by Thomas’ campaign for the entire cycle.

No Democrat has won a U.S. Senate race in Oklahoma since David Boren in 1990, and no Democrat has held this seat since Boren left office in 1994.

Thomas’ campaign has put several nursing workforce issues into a statewide federal race, including burnout, staffing, student loan repayment, rural hospital funding, nursing education, and labor policy.

Her proposals remain campaign positions. Whether any become law would depend on the outcome in November, congressional support, and the details of any legislation, and she enters the general election far outspent in a state that has not elected a Democratic senator since 1990.

For nurses following the race, the takeaway is that nursing workforce issues are now part of an Oklahoma U.S. Senate campaign, and if Thomas wins on Nov. 3, she would become the first nurse ever to serve in the U.S. Senate.

🤔 Do you think having a nurse in the U.S. Senate would change how nursing issues get handled in Washington? Share your thoughts in the comments below.