County judge candidate Joe Finfrock meets with voters

Joe Finfrock, pastor of Oak Street Baptist Church in Graham, met with supporters and curious voters at Hometown Coffee and Tea in Olney as he kicks off his write-in candidacy for Young County judge.

Finfrock decided to run on March 25 after hearing a divine message that it was time for him to step down from a position he has held for 26 years, and run for county judge.

He will face Republican Win Graham in the Nov. 8 general election. The Young County judgeship falls vacant at year’s end with the retirement of Judge John Bullock.

“I’d just finished doing my sermon and I was looking at it and I said, God what do you want me to do? And I heard the voice, and He said, ‘I want you to run for county judge as a write-in candidate. Word for word, I can repeat that,’ he said.

His first reaction: “Whoa, what? My head started spinning, and I thought, ‘That doesn’t make any sense.’ But I knew what I’d heard. I went and asked my wife, and she said, ‘I think you’d make a perfect judge.’”

Finfrock told his wife, Patti, that he didn’t know what a county judge does.

“She said, ‘Go find out.’ And that started my journey,” he recalled.

Win or lose, he will vacate his pastorship on Dec. 31, he said.

Finfrock has been attending Commissioners Court meetings to learn the issues and workings of Young County. “I started looking at the judges in the Old Testament and what was their qualification? Well, they had good judgment. In 38 years of pastoring, I hope I’ve learned some things about good judgment and good decision making, so that’s the thing I’m excited about, that I think maybe I can contribute to - the wisdom to our county,” he said.

Finfrock grew up on a wheat farm near Hooker Oklahoma, and graduated from Southwestern Oklahoma State University with a degree in pharmacy. He attended seminary in Fort Worth a few years later, and spent 11 years at his first church posting near Fayetteville, Arkansas. He and his late wife and three children moved to Graham, where he took up his current post. His first wife died in 2015. He married Patti Baker, a widow he met in 2009 when her family attended his church, in 2017.

When asked about meting out county resources equitably, Finfrock said: “I grew up in the Oklahoma panhandle, and Oklahoma City was like a million miles from us. The issues we faced in a farming rural community were often overlooked by the metropolitan area so I’ve got a real heart for the rural areas.

I’ve done church budgets for 38 years so I know there are more needs than there appears to be money so you have to balance that, but I want to be honest and fair and open to the needs of the whole county.”