By Nuria Martinez-Keel, Oklahoma Voice
OKLAHOMA CITY — A central and south Oklahoma City House district finally has a representative after spending the past legislative session without one.
Sam Wargin Grimaldo, a Democrat, took the oath of office Friday afternoon to represent House District 92. Former Democratic Rep. Forrest Bennett resigned from the office Dec. 1to lead the Oklahoma AFL-CIO, a labor union coalition.
“It’s the district I grew up in there in south Oklahoma City, a district that over the decades has in a lot of ways been neglected or underinvested in,” Wargin Grimaldo said after his swearing-in ceremony. “I’ve always had an interest in reversing that trend, and so this is one of the steps I’m taking to do that.”
Wargin Grimaldo, 38, won the seat in the June 16 primary elections. He narrowly defeated fellow Democrat Vicki Ruth Werneke, 62, in both a special election to finish the last few months of Bennett’s unexpired term and a regularly scheduled election to stay in the seat from 2027 through 2029.
About 1,100 voters cast ballots in the HD 92 race. Wargin Grimaldo defeated Wernecke by 25 votes for the unexpired term and by 30 votes for the full two-year term.
No other candidates filed to run for the seat. That allowed the primary election victor to win the office by default.
Wargin Grimaldo is a criminal defense and immigration attorney, a father and a life-long resident of the majority-Latino south Oklahoma City. His mother immigrated to the United States in 1979 from northern Mexico.
He formerly worked at the Latino Community Development Agency, as a bilingual education teacher in Oklahoma City Public Schools and for the GEAR UP program at the University of Central Oklahoma, his alma mater.
As a lawmaker, he said he aims to focus on public education, housing affordability, landlord-tenant laws, increasing civic engagement and addressing social issues within his community, like violence prevention programs. He also intends to examine privacy and surveillance issues, he said.
Having a member of Oklahoma City’s Latino community in the HD 92 seat is a positive step toward engaging more of the area’s residents in politics, he said.
“I know there’s so many families very much like mine with mixed status, mixed origins, and so to give those younger folks someone that has a similar life experience as them is very meaningful to me,” Wargin Grimaldo said.
