Oklahoma voters continued a red-state trend Tuesday night by throwing out half a dozen incumbent Republican lawmakers who voted against a tax hike to fund teacher pay increases. In Arizona, educators made a number of electoral gains in Democratic Party primaries.

Earlier this year, Oklahoma’s teachers protested by the thousands, demanding higher pay and better funding for public education. Many lawmakers were concerned that these protests would culminate in a strike.

The state’s Republican-dominated legislature responded by hiking teacher pay by an average of $6,100 per teacher; in order to finance this pay raise, it increased taxes on cigarettes, fuel, lodging, and oil and gas production.

Nineteen GOP legislators voted against this tax increase, and despite Oklahoma’s deep-red hue — Donald Trump received 65 percent of the vote there — Republican primary voters punished many of those lawmakers for opposing teacher interests.

During the June 26 primary elections, 10 Republicans who opposed the tax increase package were up for re-election. Two of them, Reps. Scott McEachin and Chuck Strohm, were defeated by Republican primary challengers. Seven others failed to secure enough votes to win their primaries outright, moving on to August 28 runoff elections.

Six of them were defeated during the second round of voting. Stan May, a Republican who campaigned in favor of the tax increase, was one of the challengers who won.

Asked whether GOP primary voters he met supported the tax hike, May said, “The majority of ’em do. There’s a few that are for no tax increase regardless, you get a few of those. The way the primary came out, it was obvious that most of the voters were sympathetic to the fact teachers needed a raise.”

May handily won the race in the state’s 80th House District, with 58 percent of the vote to incumbent Mike Ritze’s 42 percent. He was helped along by an endorsement from high school teacher Cody Coonce, who came in third place in the first round of voting.