Arya Azma
Arya Azma (Democratic Party) ran for election to the U.S. Senate to represent Oklahoma. He lost in the Democratic primary on June 28, 2022.
Biography
Arya Azma was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Azma earned a bachelor's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2014. His career experience includes working as an equity options market-maker and bond trader.[1]
Elections
2022
See also: United States Senate election in Oklahoma, 2022
General election
General election for U.S. Senate Oklahoma
Incumbent James Lankford defeated Madison Horn, Michael Delaney, and Kenneth Blevins in the general election for U.S. Senate Oklahoma on November 8, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | James Lankford (R) | 64.3 | 739,960 |
 | Madison Horn (D)  | 32.1 | 369,370 | |
 | Michael Delaney (Independent) | 1.8 | 20,907 | |
 | Kenneth Blevins (L) | 1.8 | 20,495 | |
| Total votes: 1,150,732 | |||
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Democratic primary runoff election
Democratic primary runoff for U.S. Senate Oklahoma
Madison Horn defeated Jason Bollinger in the Democratic primary runoff for U.S. Senate Oklahoma on August 23, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Madison Horn | 65.5 | 60,929 |
 | Jason Bollinger | 34.5 | 32,121 | |
| Total votes: 93,050 | |||
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Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for U.S. Senate Oklahoma
The following candidates ran in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate Oklahoma on June 28, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Madison Horn | 37.2 | 60,691 |
| ✔ | | Jason Bollinger | 16.8 | 27,374 |
 | Dennis Baker | 13.8 | 22,467 | |
 | Jo Glenn | 13.0 | 21,198 | |
 | Brandon Wade | 12.2 | 19,986 | |
 | Arya Azma | 7.0 | 11,478 | |
| Total votes: 163,194 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Republican primary election
Republican primary for U.S. Senate Oklahoma
Incumbent James Lankford defeated Jackson Lahmeyer and Joan Farr in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate Oklahoma on June 28, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | James Lankford | 67.8 | 243,132 |
 | Jackson Lahmeyer | 26.4 | 94,572 | |
 | Joan Farr | 5.8 | 20,761 | |
| Total votes: 358,465 | |||
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Nathan Dahm (R)
Libertarian primary election
The Libertarian primary election was canceled. Kenneth Blevins advanced from the Libertarian primary for U.S. Senate Oklahoma.
Campaign themes
2022
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Arya Azma did not complete Ballotpedia's 2022 Candidate Connection survey.
Campaign website
Azma's campaign website stated the following:
| “ |
China The greatest threat to American primacy is China’s position as a friend to the developing world and an alternative to the Western economy. A combination of complacency, self-interest, and an “it’s just business” attitude among private and public actors in our midst has assisted China to rapidly expand its industrial base. Nowadays, China represents about three-tenths of global manufacturing output. Our plan to outperform China and maintain our economic integrity should consist of two areas of focus. First, we have to counteract China’s Belt and Road Initiative by supporting development projects in our own hemisphere. Second, we must identify the American corporations and institutions that most contribute to China’s advancement, so that we can establish an incentive structure that will redirect our companies to invest in the Americas. One way to outclass China’s advances toward developing countries would be to cultivate a strong sense of regional fraternity across the Americas. I have observed in my travels that the Latin American countries with the strongest affinity for the United States tend to be the most prosperous, and often their prosperity is the direct result of the United States’ investment in education and infrastructure projects. Panama, one of the most prosperous nations in our hemisphere and owner of the most important canal in the Americas, is a shining example of the power of American engineering to unlock the potential of developing countries. China is engaging in diplomatic courtship of developing nations, but that courtship can be repelled if we continue to apply our technological prowess to our neighbors’ challenges. Our Cold War conflict with the Soviet Union was in many ways ideological in nature, but our rivalry with China is a question of economic growth and trade relations. We give away easy wins by allowing American corporations to build critical technologies in China. Our federal government must actively protect trade secrets, enforce intellectual property laws, and deny unauthorized access to cutting-edge academic research.
Read my guest column in the Oklahoman. Computer chips are one of our nation’s significant foreign dependencies, and chip demand is at an all-time high. The pandemic has heightened the importance of online learning, work from home, and cloud computing. Our habits and interpersonal connectivity have changed. Fortunately, technology enables us to navigate those changes. Increased semiconductor demand is a lasting aspect of our post-pandemic reality, so semiconductor production needs to increase, too. Taiwan is a friend to the United States and the most sensitive pressure point in our economic rivalry with China. The island is home to several of the world’s most important semiconductor fabrication facilities. An interruption of semiconductor production in Taiwan would gravely damage the economy of the United States. Computer chips play a substantial role in devices, management, and controls in every industry of our economy. Our leaders seem uncertain of how to address the semiconductor predicament. The prevailing approach, tax credits for semiconductor equipment, is unsatisfactory. Manufacturing facilities take years to construct, and shareholders lack a profit motive to lay out enormous capital expenditures that prioritize the long-term national interest in uncertain times. Footing such a bill may represent an unjustifiable risk for a corporation, but it would be a reasonable task for Congress. Building a chip factory takes years. These factories require substantial infrastructure for water, energy, and logistics. They use complex air and water purification systems. Larger and more expensive lithography equipment is required as nanoscale manufacturing processes get even smaller. Oklahoma’s energy producers can benefit from the magnitude and predictability of the energy needs of a federal semiconductor science park, where factories belonging to multiple corporations can be served by a shared backbone of federal infrastructure. If we act with a sense of urgency, we can alleviate our dependency on Taiwan, fortify our semiconductor supply chain, and recover some strategic freedom in East Asia.
Highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, and railways are the blood vessels of our economy. Water, petroleum products, and electricity are necessities that typically capture our attention only in moments of shortage. Internet infrastructure, too, is a necessity. Dollar for dollar, infrastructure upkeep and buildout are perhaps the best investment in the health and wealth of our nation. About a tenth of Oklahoma’s bridges are in disrepair, affecting the quality and safety of the roadways that crisscross our state. Cushing is the most important petroleum pipeline crossroads in the Western world. Our state is dotted with wells and wind turbines alike. However, Senator Lankford voted against the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and he explains his stance against large expenditures by saying that “a trillion seconds is 31,688 years.” His point is well taken, but the federal government cannot shy away from big numbers simply because they are big. Important things cost money. If we refuse to build and maintain the infrastructure needed to support our prosperity, sooner or later the old infrastructure breaks and we end up spending even more money on hurried repairs.
Oklahoma’s public K-12 schools are underfunded and overloaded. Teachers do not receive the pay that they deserve, and some of the most talented among them leave for states that offer better compensation. The federal government is not directly responsible for the condition of education in Oklahoma, but its funding and requirements are consequential. I believe in public schools because I am a product of public education, and I tend to agree with the constructivist theory of learning. With regard to elementary schools, I am a proponent of mixed-age classes, student freedom to select activities within a calm and ordered classroom, and student-directed exploration outside of the classroom. I believe that aside from preparing students for achievement in secondary school, the chief purpose of elementary school is to develop a child’s academic self-concept by providing information, stimulation, and interaction beyond the confines of family life. Every student in a public secondary school deserves substantial and meaningful control over his or her curriculum. Standardized testing must take a backseat to individual development, career preparation, and life skills. Cultivating a healthy school environment involves evaluating the quality of the school by the ability of its students to get what they desire out of life, rather than setting a rigid bar that gets higher every year. Students benefit when they are shown a clear pathway to college. They also deserve the option and encouragement to attend technical schools or vocational programs that feed directly to the workforce. Challenges faced by urban, suburban, and rural school districts are fundamentally dissimilar and it makes sense to consider them in light of those dissimilarities. A student should be able to choose the best university for his or her needs and goals, and coordinate financial matters after having made that choice. Tuition ought to reflect the true cost of higher education. Student loans are ideally a government-facilitated tool for a young person to borrow against his or her own future productivity. The government can make loans available at fixed 2% interest to match the Federal Reserve’s target inflation rate and avoid saddling young people with unnecessary debt due to interest.
The inceptive act for an unauthorized immigrant is to break the law, either when entering our country or when violating the conditions of a visa. This often sets the stage for years of paranoia on the part of the immigrant. Life in a new country is difficult enough without having to fear being detained or deported for lack of legal residency. Many of the people who come to our country assimilate, contribute to our economy, and raise children here without engaging in criminal activity or causing trouble. It is an economic fact that our nation depends on the hard work of unauthorized immigrants and would not function without their labor. That being said, a country is defined by its borders. We have a sovereign right to identify the individuals who enter our country and filter them based upon established criteria. Strong enforcement of immigration laws is a requirement for sensible policy, because otherwise our immigration laws do not matter and cannot bear fruit. If, by greater enforcement, we reduce the number of unauthorized immigrants that come to our country annually, that gives us room to soften and expand the conditions for immigrant visas. Our government’s approach toward immigration should use the law as a conduit for a just and respectful relationship with the foreigners who wish to work and live among us. Many prospective immigrants to our country have integrity and technical skills, but lack the means to acquire the necessary paperwork to start a new life in the United States. Specifically regarding our southern border, the right immigration policy is to humanely drop the hammer on illegal immigration while extending a hand to immigrants who are willing to stand in line at our embassies and present their paperwork. It is inhumane to enable a system in which criminal organizations harm and exploit immigrants as they cross our southern border.
We face three areas of concern with regard to the pharmaceutical industry: expense, access, and abuse. Americans spend far more on prescription drugs than in any other nation. We have access to more advanced treatments and drugs of higher quality in some cases, but even like-versus-like comparison between countries reveals that Americans pay more. Congress has to fight back against pricing bloat to ensure that our complicated healthcare insurance system does not price the uninsured out of the medicines that they need. If we hold it to be self-evident that all people are entitled to life by their Creator, then we cannot deny a person fair access to the medicines that keep him or her alive. By the same logic, certain prescription medicines should be available with a brief and inexpensive conversation with a physician’s assistant or via telemedicine, rather than obligating those in need of medication to take time off work (or if uninsured, pay out of pocket) for an in-person visit with a doctor. Lastly but perhaps most importantly, pharmaceutical companies that profit from addictive drugs and certain life-saving medications like insulin and epinephrine should be forced by regulators to publicly disclose and explain gross annual profits for each such pharmaceutical product. Public disclosure makes it easier for individuals and regulators to identify areas of profiteering, and enables faster action to restrain abusive companies that conduct business at the expense of human life and wellbeing.
The United States cannot afford to engage in far-flung wars for reasons of ideology. The war in Ukraine affects the price of gasoline and the cost of food here in Oklahoma. We should abstain from involving ourselves militarily or financially in the conflict in Ukraine.
Lawmakers in Washington rarely speak ill of the massive budget for our nation’s armed forces. Many constituents work in the military industrial complex. Lawmakers do their best to protect bases in their respective states from closure. Corporate interests abound. For decades, our military has maintained an ability to project tremendous power across the world on short notice. Land or sea, the United States military can command just about any zone of the globe. Despite the glory involved in wielding such fearsome might, our needs at home are dynamic and we are no longer faced with the brawn-versus-brawn conflicts of the twentieth century. Our military readiness is expensive and no longer reflects our reality. If conducted in earnest, a thorough reduction in our military presence and engagement abroad could lighten the federal budget by a hundred billion dollars per year.
Oklahoma is one of many states that have brought morality to bear on the legal question of abortion. Those of us who are religious must continue to respect the free will of our neighbors. Religious doctrine and teachings are not necessarily designed to be enforced by the government. Faith is not voluntary if it is enforced under penalty of law. Oklahoma House Bill Number 4327 defines the gestation of an unborn child as beginning with fertilization. This is a problematic definition because it suggests that every fertilized egg that does not attach to the uterus is an unborn child. In reality, both the blastocyst and the uterine lining must undergo certain changes in order for there to be a physical connection between mother and child. Absent such a connection, there is no motherhood in the sense that the body of the mother cannot support the development of the blastocyst. Congress would be remiss to pass any law limiting the use of anti-pregnancy medications that act prior to implantation. Couples who feel that they have exercised poor judgment regarding a potential pregnancy ought to be allowed a brief opportunity to make thoughtful choices regarding the future. Couples who believe that life begins at fertilization are always free to plan their families accordingly.[2] |
” |
| —Arya Azma's campaign website (2022)[3] | ||
See also
2022 Elections
External links
|
Candidate U.S. Senate Oklahoma |
Footnotes
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia via email on June 23, 2022.
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Arya Azma For Oklahoma, “Home,” accessed July 6, 2022
