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U.S. Sen. James Lankford said Wednesday he will “go to bed grieved” on election night, regardless of who wins the presidency.

“I always want, in our national elections, for us to be able to vote for role models,” he said. “We’re not electing role models this year.”

Lankford had been asked, during a Tulsa Regional Chamber luncheon at the Marriott Southern Hills hotel, about whether there is a “path forward” after this fractious, often bitter presidential campaign.

“There is always a path forward,” he said, but warned the problem is not one that can be solved in Congress, or by thinking the contentiousness is confined to Washington.

“This is who we are as a nation,” Lankford said. “What’s happening politically and what we see on a national scale is not some anomaly. I hate to tell you, (but) Washington, D.C., is a mirror to who we really we are.