I have learned so much about what’s happening in Oklahoma from John Thompson, retired teacher and historian. Recently I asked John if he could explain the question that is the title of this post. John responded with the following post. Thank you, John!
When Kevin Stitt was elected governor in 2018, Oklahomans knew he was an extreme conservative and a true believer in the “Free Market,” as THE solution to our problems. Stitt had been the CEO of Gateway Mortgage, which had a questionable reputation. And he knew little or nothing about how government operated; The Tulsa World reported that Stitt apparently hadn’t even voted for governor before he was elected. Even so, the World explained, “Stitt wants the Legislature and the voters of Oklahoma to give him authority no previous governor has ever had — the power to hire and fire all state agency heads and boards.”
The first bill Gov. Stitt signed into law allowed individuals to carry firearms without a permit or training and then he “expanded the number of public spaces where guns could be carried.”
Even more disturbing, as Oklahoma Watch explained, “In his first State of the State speech, Stitt said healthcare depends on personal responsibility.” And later, he opposed Medicaid expansion.
On the other hand, in 2019, I was active in the Justice for Julius campaign, which was fighting for the life of my former student who had been sentenced to death for murder, despite the lack of evidence against him, and the evidence that Julius Jones had been framed. We were told that Stitt’s religious beliefs were sincere. Stitt saved Julius from execution, but denied and banned any future efforts for parole or clemency.
Stitt also began his administration by listening to bipartisan efforts to curtail Oklahoma’s mass incarceration; our state had one of the world’s largest incarceration rates. But, a rightwing dark money group invested $160,000 on ads that said Stitt was soft on crime. Afterwards, the Oklahomanexplained, Stitt rejected Pardon and Parole Board recommendations, and replaced several board members. Moreover, “Oklahoma has executed 14 men during Stitt’s administration, second most among U.S. states. All but one were people of color or poor, or a combination thereof.”
Stitt ignored the Pardon and Parole recommendations when executing four of them.
Also, as Oklahoma Watch explains, Stitt’s belief that healthcare was a personal responsibility “became his tagline throughout the (COVID) pandemic.” As the Washington Post reported, in the first few days of the pandemic, Stitt was maskless when “he attracted national attention for tweeting a photo with his family at a ‘packed’ Oklahoma City restaurant,” and saying “he would continue to dine out ‘without living in fear, and encourages Oklahomans to do the same.’”
Stitt soon caught COVID, and he also attended, without a mask, “Trump’s rally in Tulsa — the president’s first since the pandemic set in … Local health officials warned the indoor event at a 19,000-person arena could cause a dangerous spread of the virus in a county that was already seeing a spike.” That week, Oklahoma’s weekly COVID deaths increased by more than 40%. Republican Herman Cain caught COVID after attending the rally maskless and died afterwards.
The Washington Post also reported how Stitt resisted the federal vaccination mandate for the Oklahoma National Guard, and fired the Guard’s adjutant general for supporting vaccinations.
The Frontier also reported that Stitt ordered $2 million of hydroxychloroquine, which President Trump touted. And as NPR reported, in 2020, Stitt refused to publish Oklahoma infection and death rates.
So, it’s hard to estimate how many thousands of deaths were attributable to Stitt, but in 2022, Oklahoma’s death rate was 5th highest in the U.S. In 2023, it was 2nd highest in the nation.
And Stitt continued to undermine governmental and legal institutions. After he ramped up attacks on established legal compacts with Oklahoma’s tribes, and invested $600,000 in state money in compacts which the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled were illegal, the conservative Republican Attorney General, Gentner Drummond, said he was compelled to take “extraordinary action to put an end to the governor’s betrayal of his duty … [and] ‘cause the laws of the state to be faithfully executed.’”
As the New York Times reported, Stitt also advocated for and signed a bill that “bans nearly all abortions starting at fertilization. The new law … is the most restrictive abortion ban in the country.”
And Stitt took the lead in campaigning against Critical Race Theory which was falsely said to be undermining public education. The Oklahoman reported:
Stitt signed House Bill 1775 that would prohibit public schoolteachers from teaching that “one race or sex is inherently superior to another,” and that “an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive.”
Proponents of the bill say the measure is designed to prevent the teaching of critical race theory.
Also, the Washington Post reported:
Gov. Kevin Stitt signed a bill prohibiting nonbinary gender markers on birth certificates for people who don’t identify as male or female — the first law of its kind in the United States, according to legal experts.
… Republican backers describe the new rules as reflecting their religious beliefs, arguing that gender is binary and immutable. “I believe that people are created by God to be male or female,” Stitt said when he issued the executive order. “There is no such thing as nonbinary sex.”
The governor’s press release said:
I am taking decisive executive action to ensure the true definition of the word woman, meaning a biological woman, is what guides the state as we reaffirm our commitment to ensuring the safety, dignity, and sanctity of women across Oklahoma. As long as I’m governor, we will continue to protect women and ensure women-only spaces are reserved solely for biological women.
By the way, my House Representative, Mauree Turner, was the nation’s first Black, Muslim, nonbinary state legislator; As the Washington Post explained, Rep. Turner suffered through terrible abuse by Republican politicos. Their behavior was illustrative of a new norm where MAGAs seemed to compete over the ability to be cruel, and push out their colleagues who showed respect for their opponents.
Eventually, the extremism of Stitt et. al sowed division among Republicans. OpenSecrets.org was unable to locate the source of the money used by Stitt to fund primary candidates who opposed Republican incumbents who weren’t reactionary and confrontational enough, but it did “match up” expenditure from 46 Forward Inc. that funded 46 Action and Stitt’s “endorsements in the Republican state Senate primaries.”
During Stitt’s second term, his ideology-driven policies continued to get weirder. For instance, the Oklahoma Voice reports, “Gov. Kevin Stitt has approved a controversial set of rules from the Oklahoma State Department of Education, as expected after the Legislature declined to take action on the regulations.” This gives Walters’ rules that expand test-driven accountability. The regulations also add “new ‘foundational values’ for the state Education Department that make multiple references to ‘the Creator.’”
Other rules include potential punishment for schools that continue to employ educators under investigation for wrongdoing (as defined by the ideology-driven board), and permission to fire teachers who engage in acts that “promote sexuality” within view of a minor.
And, after the voters passed a state question calling for a vote on an increase in the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15.00 per hour, Stitt ordered the election be delayed until 2026.
But the most noteworthy characteristics of Stitt’s recent policies have been their cruelty.
As the Oklahoman reported in 2024:
For the second year in a row, Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt has rejected a federal program that would have provided additional funding for families to feed their children next summer.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Summer EBT program … would earmark about $40 per child per month on a card that families could then use at local grocery stores.
Oklahoma ranks fifth in the nation for child food insecurity.
The Washington Post added:
A new food program would have kicked in this summer, had Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt not turned down $48 million from a $2.5 billion initiative that the Biden administration calls “a giant step forward” in ending childhood hunger in the country. Though Oklahoma is one of the most food-insecure states, with surveys finding that more than 200,000 children are hungry at some point during a year, Stitt suggested the administration was “trying to push certain agenda items on kids.”
And as the Oklahoman reports, a new consent decree seeks to provide mental health services for “scores of presumed-innocent Oklahomans who experience severe mental illness [and] are languishing in county jails awaiting competency restoration treatment for prolonged periods that far exceed constitutional limits.” But “Gov. Kevin Stitt, House Speaker Charles McCall and a top state mental health official are pushing back on a proposal.”
Stitt sounds like he is resisting the funding that would be required, but I wonder if he’s also opposing the agreement because it is supported by his opponent, A.G. Gentner Drummond, who doesn’t want this injustice, which has “plagued” the criminal justice system to continue to “drag on for months or years.”
By the way, A.G. Drummond was not at that meeting; he was arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court against the execution of Richard Glossip arguing that prosecutorial misconduct prevented him from receiving a fair trial.
And that brings us back to Stitt’s original intention to hire and fire all state agency heads and boards. During his second term, Stitt, rightwingers’, and their dark money donors have doubled down on a campaign to politicize the Oklahoma Supreme Court. I doubt Stitt knew much about the Court’s history, but it used to be the most corrupt Supreme Court in America. But a bipartisan team created the Judicial Nomination Commission which was often seen as the institution that started the process of making Oklahoma a real democracy.
A rightwing dark money group is funding an effort to remove three justices who voted for abortion and voting rights, tribal contracts, and against the creation of a Catholic charter school. So, whether he knows what he is doing or not, Stitt is helping to lead an effort to dismantle the Nominating Commission, take control over the nomination process, and likely turn back the clock to the corruption of the 1950’s and before.
And that leads to the question as to whether Stitt is primarily motivated by a simplistic “Survival of the Fittest” ideology, and merely follows the lead of Big Money? Or are his policies simply born out of his ignorance and their propaganda? Or has he fully embraced the most disgusting components of Trumpism, and thus devoted himself to brutality? Fundamentally, is he now seeking a reputation for embracing the cruelty that the MAGAs admire?
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