Re-elect Governor Kevin Stitt

Oklahoma hasn't elected a Democrat to statewide office since 2006. Since 2004, every county in Oklahoma has given a plurality of its vote in every presidential election to the Republican nominee. Voter registration, a lagging indicator, continues to trend toward the GOP across the state, most strongly in southeastern Oklahoma, aka Little Dixie, which was Yellow Dog Democrat country for most of Oklahoma's first century. Republicans have super-majorities of 82-19 in the State House and 39-9 in the State Senate.

So it's astounding to see a poll a month before the election giving a Democrat the lead over an incumbent Republican governor. The latest Sooner Poll of 300 likely voters has Democrat Joy Hofmeister leading incumbent Republican Kevin Stitt by 46.8% to 43.0%. Crosstabs have not yet been published, but those polled would support Donald Trump over Joe Biden in a 2024 rematch by only 52.7% to 40.8%, which may indicate that the universe of those polled leans far more strongly to the left than the actual Oklahoma electorate. The actual vote in 2020 was Trump 65.4%, Biden 32.3%; Trump managed 55% of the vote or better in every county except Oklahoma County. It is hard to believe that Oklahoma voters have a more favorable opinion of Brain-Dead Biden after 20 disastrous months.

Dark money has funded dozens of mailers, TV ads, and social media posts misrepresenting the facts in order to hang the false label of "corrupt" around the governor's neck. Even if these ads fail to persuade Republicans to vote for the Democrat, it may succeed in discouraging GOP voters from filling the box next to Stitt's name.

In truth, Republican voters who want the party's platform enacted ought to be stampeding to the polls to give him another term in office, overflowing with gratitude for Stitt's record and filling their social media feeds with calls for his re-election.

Kevin Stitt promised to sign every pro-life bill that crossed his desk. Stitt kept that promise and earned the endorsement of the National Right to Life Committee. Because Kevin Stitt is in office instead of his Democrat opponent, Oklahoma has the strongest pro-life laws in the nation.

In February 2019, Kevin Stitt signed constitutional carry into law, one of the first bills approved during his term, affirming the right of Oklahomans to keep and bear arms without needing government pre-approval. This would not have happened had his Democrat opponent won the 2018 election. Stitt has been endorsed both by Oklahomans for the 2nd Amendment (OK2A) and the National Rifle Association Political Victory Fund, which gave Gov. Stitt an A+. Hofmeister earned an F.

While many parts of our country were undercutting the efforts of their police forces to protect the law-abiding citizens against criminal predators, Kevin Stitt backed the blue and earned the endorsement of the Oklahoma Fraternal Order of Police. Gov. Stitt signed pay raises for law enforcement officers in the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, Oklahoma Department of Corrections, and other state public safety employees, funded three academies to train new OHP officers, and established a mental wellness program to support all Oklahoma public safety officers and their families.

Gov. Stitt has appointed three excellent jurists to the State Supreme Court: John Kane, Dustin Rowe, and Dana Kuehn. For the first time in history, a majority of the justices were appointed by Republican governors. Five of the nine justices are 70 or older, including one justice, Yvonne Kauger, who has been serving since her appointment in 1984 by Gov. George Nigh. Three justices were appointed by the previous Democrat governor, Brad Henry. There will be vacancies, and recent events in Kansas demonstrate the importance of installing strict constructionist justice in a post-Roe world. Activist justices in our neighbor to the north struck down pro-life legislation on specious constitutional grounds, and an attempt to fix the problem with a constitutional state question went down in flames with the help of a well-funded disinformation campaign. Now that SCOTUS will no longer interfere with state regulation or prohibition of abortion, leftists will use state judiciaries to thwart protections for the unborn. Stitt has shown good judgment in his judicial appointments, and we'd be wise to allow him to continue rather than allow Oklahoma's version of Kathy Hochul to appoint activist leftists.

Stitt has also appointed 4 of the 12 members of the Court of Civil Appeals, which has a majority of judges appointed by Republican governors in only two of the four divisions. One Democrat appointee, W. Keith Rapp, died in August at the age of 88; a Stitt appointment to fill that vacancy would mean one more division with a majority of Republican, strict-constructionist appointees.

Kevin Stitt streamlined state government, signing legislation to consolidate state agencies and making agency leadership accountable to the voters through their elected officials. He modernized the state civil service system, helping state agencies recruit, retain, and reward the most dedicated employees, and he gave public employee retirees, including teachers and firefighters, the first cost-of-living adjustment in more than a decade. Making state agencies a better place to work means better people working on behalf of the people of Oklahoma, and Stitt's efforts won him the endorsement of the Oklahoma Public Employees Association.

Kevin Stitt used the power of the purse -- allocation of new federal COVID relief funds -- to force the University of Oklahoma's Oklahoma Children's Hospital to cease performing surgical "gender confirmation" mutilations on children. The scope of the bill was limited by the stated call for this special session, but if re-elected, Gov. Stitt will sign broader legislation to ban the practice in Oklahoma. Earlier this year, Gov. Stitt signed legislation protecting girls' private spaces from men claiming to be women; SB 615 requires multiple-occupancy restrooms and changing rooms in our public schools to be reserved exclusively for one biological sex or the other.

Kevin Stitt signed HB 1775, which bans specific elements of "woke," racist indoctrination from Oklahoma's public schools and universities. The bill is succeeding in flushing out radical teachers and administrators who see public schools as a missionary endeavor to convert children to their anti-civilizational ideology.

Unlike his counterparts across the country, Gov. Kevin Stitt kept COVID-19 pandemic restrictions to a minimum, resisting calls for a statewide lockdown and mask mandate. Gov. Stitt was the third governor, after Doug Burgum in North Dakota and Mike Dunleavy in Alaska, to end the statewide COVID-19 state of emergency. (Emergency declarations in Wisconsin and Michigan were terminated earlier by court order, over the objections of Democrat governors.) Within a few months of that early reopening, Oklahoma's unemployment rate reached record lows, among the lowest in the nation.

Under Kevin Stitt's leadership, Oklahoma has improved election security, guaranteed patients the right to have a loved one with them in the hospital, protected schoolchildren from obscene materials, prohibited biologically impossible non-binary birth certificates, and reformed the state funding formula to ensure school funds follow students to their new school district. Kevin Stitt has enthusiastically supported school choice. Gov. Stitt has been endorsed for re-election by former President Donald Trump.

As state superintendent, Hofmeister supported ineffective mask mandates. Gov. Stitt moved to reopen Oklahoma as soon as it was safe to do so, while Hofmeister's plan for school closures would have kept Oklahoma's public schools shut for more than half of the time between September 2020 and March 2022.

Hofmeister said in announcing her candidacy that Stitt's pro-freedom approach to the pandemic is why she switched parties to run against him. Hofmeister wanted to subject Oklahoma to the same sort of never-ending restrictions that Michigan Gov. Christine Whitmer, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and NY Governors Andrew Cuomo and Cathy Hochul imposed on their states.

If Hofmeister becomes governor, all of the progress we've made under Stitt and his Republican predecessors will come to a screeching halt. Hofmeister opposes parental choice in education. Hofmeister opposes legal protections for the unborn. Hofmeister, indebted to the Democrats who elected her, will veto conservative reforms of state government and will fill her staff, cabinet, state courts, and state boards with her leftist allies.

Jamison Faught at Muskogee Politico has documented Joy Hofmeister's "long con." Hofmeister claims that her values have not changed since her first campaign for office as a Republican, but she has taken positions this year that would have killed her 2014 Republican primary campaign against incumbent State Superintendent Janet Barresi.

Just days after announcing her newfound party, Hofmeister attacked Governor Kevin Stitt over transgender birth certificates. Gov. Stitt recognizes the scientific fact of male and female, while the 'Newly-Improved-and-Woke' Joy Hofmeister apparently feels like pandering to flaming leftists. By the way, she accuses Gov. Stitt of pandering to extremism, which is highly ironic given her apparent disregard for science.

In a recent article from TheFrontier, Hofmeister criticized Gov. Stitt for signing pro-life bills, giving the lame excuse that "[abortion] is a decision that is personal and one between a woman, her doctor and her faith." Right. Do you think she would have said this during her campaigns as a Republican? I think not.

Joy Hofmeister was indicted and arrested (that's her mugshot above) for campaign ethics violations, colluding illegally with the dark-money campaign attacking her opponent. Despite overwhelming evidence clearly documenting violations of the law, Oklahoma County Democrat DA David Prater dropped charges shortly before her 2018 re-election. You can read the indictment of Joy Hofmeister and the documentation on which it was based at this link.

Earlier in this article I mentioned the dark-money attacks labeling Stitt "corrupt." They rest on a handful of "scandals" that aren't scandalous at all.

The so-called Swadley's "scandal" was driven by Gov. Stitt's desire to make our state parks a top-10 experience by offering high-quality regional cuisine from an Oklahoma based restaurant chain. The usual government contract process results in boring bistros run by multinational institutional food service conglomerates who fill their menus with the bland and barely edible. Swadley's had built a popular chain of barbecues with 8 locations, starting from their hometown of El Reno. I've eaten at a Swadley's Barbecue a few times and always enjoyed it, and I was looking forward to visiting a state park and eating at a Swadley's Foggy Bottom Cafe. Stitt didn't profit, nor did any of his friends or business associates. At worst, Swadley's put more money into the renovation of these restaurants than was strictly necessary to build a more enjoyable dining experience. But political opportunists labeled this, without justification, as corruption and got it shutdown. One of the negative consequences of this destructive political maneuver by Hofmeister's supporters was the Western Swing Music Society of the Southwest's cancellation of the annual Western Swing Weekend at the Lodge at Sequoyah State Park (formerly known as Western Hills) because the Lodge had no food service available after Swadley's was evicted.

When school doors were shut because of the pandemic, parents who had been reliant on public schools suddenly had to find ways to continue their children's education. The switch to online instruction meant that many low-income families urgently needed to upgrade electronics and internet access and purchase software and books. Federal aid was made available to meet that need, and Gov. Stitt and Secretary of Education Ryan Walters made it their aim to get the money into the hands of Oklahoma families as quickly as possible with as little red tape as possible. Rather than incur the delay involved in competitive bidding, Oklahoma's Chief Information Officer hired ClassWallet, a national company with experience handling educational grants, to manage the funds.

Eligible families had access to a digital wallet that could be used with 36 approved vendors, most of them specializing in classroom materials and supplies, but also including Office Depot and Staples, sources for general office supplies and computing equipment, and Tracfone, a source for high-speed internet hotspots for families without their own high-speed internet access. The digital wallet system meant that families could simply purchase items from the approved vendors, without the red tape of submitting a purchase request and waiting for approval or submitting an expense report and waiting for reimbursement.

As our students face disruptions from COVID-19 and schools turn to distance learning, we must ensure all Oklahoma students have the supplies and materials necessary to meet their individual education needs. By giving families these funds, we are empowering them to choose what materials are most necessary to make their children successful academically.

Some parents took unfair advantage of the streamlined system to buy non-educational equipment for their own enjoyment. They figured out that they could buy anything that Office Depot or Staples had available for sale online, and that includes many items without educational value that are offered online only, never in stores, like Christmas trees and grills. One estimate, compiled by a partisan news outlet, puts the total wasted on such items at about $650,000 out of the program's $18,000,000 total. Their analysis has large amounts in broad categories that are likely to include legitimate educational purchases, but even accepting their numbers, the amount wasted is less than 4%. Any waste is regrettable, but the cost of pre-screening every purchase would have been to delay the 96% of legitimate purchases made by honest parents.

The latest attack involves a privately-funded proposal to build a new governor's mansion at the State Capitol complex. The proposal pre-dates Gov. Stitt's time in office, and the project could not possibly be completed before the end of his second turn. Stitt's family did not move to Oklahoma City until the end of the school year during which his inauguration occurred. A $2 million renovation of the mansion's electrical, plumbing, and HVAC systems was already underway, and when the family moved from Oklahoma City, they moved to the Centennial House at 6500 N. Kelley Ave., owned by the Oklahoma National Guard. The Stitt family was able to move in to the governor's mansion in the spring of 2021, but in an October 2021 interview about the renovations, First Lady Sarah Stitt said, "We have lived here for a while, but we do want to protect our family life, so we are looking for a house probably just for our family." The Stitt family, using their own funds, acquired a home in Edmond about a year ago. None of this has been done in secret, but irresponsible news media outlets have created a false impression of the sequence of events designed to tar the reputation of Gov. Stitt and his family for the sake of helping a leftist Democrat win the governor's office in America's most Republican state.

Hidden special interests, some of them led by nominal Republicans, have spent millions to get rid of Gov. Kevin Stitt. Although much of the dark money is untraceable, Stitt has faced hostility from tribal governments, from the marijuana industry, and from leftist teachers' unions. Leftists in mainstream media have helped to amplify and distort the dark-money accusations.

Kevin Stitt defends the interests of all Oklahomans, which offends tribal officials who want to accumulate power and wealth at the expense of the well-being of their own citizens as well as the non-citizens who live on so-called "sovereign land" -- the former territories that were allotted and sold over a century ago under tribal agreements with the US government. These tribal officials supported a child molester's court appeal in the pursuit of their own power. Stitt understands that lightly-regulated, highly-potent marijuana will produce a generation of schizophrenics, dangerous to themselves and others, and stands in the way of the cannabis industry that wants to warp Oklahomans minds to fill their own pockets. Stitt believes that Oklahoma children should not be stuck in underperforming schools that inflict woke dogma and trans madness in place of true education, frustrating the leftists who see public schools as their publicly funded cathedrals for converting the children of conservative Oklahomans.

Gov. Kevin Stitt is defending Oklahomans, particularly Oklahoma families and children, against the special interests who want their power and money no matter how many Oklahomans it hurts. Oklahomans should enthusiastically re-elect Kevin Stitt as governor.

MORE:

Jamison Faught, the Muskogee Politico, writes that Oklahoma Republicans must not fall asleep on the governor's race, reminding us, "Liberals win when conservatives take things for granted. Brad Henry was governor of Oklahoma for eight years, vetoing important legislation and styming conservative policies - because conservatives took things for granted in 2002."

OK2A's Don Spencer explains why it's crucial for 2nd Amendment rights supporters to turn out to re-elect Kevin Stitt.