Are Oklahoma Republicans for anything? Might Ryan Walters' shadow chase them down?
I don’t understand Republican politics in our beloved state.
I mean, I get it as I watch it happen. I see the blind allegiances and the nakedness of positions taken. But I can’t understand how it got to what it’s become, a bunch of elected officials who stand for so little, as though nothing moves them in the first place.
Take Kevin Stitt, our governor for another year-plus, who somehow maintains a grudge of unknown origin against Oklahoma’s tribes despite being a citizen of one of them, the Cherokees.
Or Lonnie Paxton, our senate pro tempore, who clearly feared Ryan Walters’ batshit-crazy, true-believing base so much, lest he wouldn’t have blocked a vote shelving the social studies standards Walters hoodwinked into existence back in February, standards new superintendent Lindel Fields has since paused.
In fact, the only Republican legislator to raise a public stink about Walters with any consistency was then–state rep Mark McBride, who had the luxury of being term-limited.
Then there’s Gentner Drummond, our attorney general, who at least rhetorically has traded in many of the values he once held for new ones, all to cozy up to a value-less president still quite popular in our state.
Or is Donald Trump, really, given Tuesday’s election results in Virginia, New Jersey, New York and Florida?
Wouldn’t it be easier to simply know what you’re for, what you’re against and why and go with that?
So much less to remember. So much less to keep straight.
Which brings us, inevitably, to Ryan Walters.
Though gone, he remains a fantastic prism through which to view state politics, which are mostly Republican politics, and here’s the latest:
KFOR’s Spencer Humphrey, on Tuesday, reported Walters not only took press secretary Madison Cercy with him to his new venture, the Teacher Freedom Alliance, but also gave her a $10,000 bonus on the way out after only ten weeks on the job.
Can he do that?
Mohler, by the way, only joined the agency in February and his LinkedIn page indicates he never left his old job as a consultant with Front Line Strategies, out of Florida, where he’s been employed from March 2007 through present day.
And we thought Walters’ only waste of beaucoup state bucks on personnel was the money thrown at adviser Matt Langston — an annual $150,000 — who hardly ever set foot in the state education department despite being employed by it.
Which raises a real question.
Though Ryan Walters’ name won’t appear on the 2026 ballot — just as Trump’s wasn’t on Tuesday’s ballots in several states — will his shadow loom over it, wrecking the chances of some, fueling the chances of others.
Will Charles McCall, the ex–House speaker now running for governor, who refused to investigate Walters after two dozen Republican reps asked him to, pay for it?
“I tried to bring [Walters’ malfeasance] to the attention of Speaker McCall our last term, the last two years we were in session, and it fell on deaf ears,” McBride told KFOR.
Will it continue to fall on deaf ears?
Drummond, to his credit, ordered an audit of Walters’ education department. Yet on Tuesday, he turned to Twitter, not to call out McCall for shielding Walters, but to attack McCall as a “Democrat.”
Seriously?
“Charles McCall is the Obama Democrat who NEVER changed,” Drummond wrote. “Soft on crime, woke on DEI, his failed record says it all.”
Among Drummond’s complaints: that McCall backed “the BIGGEST tax hike ever (450M+ on families & farmers),” is a reference to the 2018 budget bill requiring a 75 percent vote to raise taxes for the first time in 30 years when Oklahoma didn’t have the dough to pay its bills.
Remember that craziness?
Remember Mary Fallin not knowing who to take orders from?
Would Drummond have preferred the state collapse?
Why not go after McCall for being Walters’ best friend in the legislature?
For the same reason Paxton wouldn’t cross him in the Senate.
Drummond fears the die-hard, crazy-town, true believers, too.
Meanwhile, McCall’s doubling down on trans panic and having once saved girls and women’s sports from men and boys, a problem that didn’t then and doesn’t now exist. And I thought giving public funds to private schools and private school parents is where his heart lay.
It’s all calculation.
They all seem to hate each other, but to what end other than achieving power or holding onto it. Certainly not moving the state forward.
Other than running public education into the ground, are they for anything?
Do you know?
They don’t seem to.
You’re absolutely right to ask whether Oklahoma Republicans are for anything — because their record makes it hard to find evidence they are. For decades, the state’s GOP has built its entire identity around opposition: against teachers’ unions, against reproductive rights, against LGBTQ+ Oklahomans, against public health measures, against federal investment, and against anything that smells like collective care. What they do support — corporate tax breaks, privatized education schemes, and oil money politics — only deepens inequality and weakens the very communities they claim to represent.
From my perspective, this isn’t accidental; it’s the natural outcome of a party built to protect wealth and power, not people. Oklahoma’s working class deserves more than culture-war distractions and austerity budgets dressed up as “freedom.” The state’s real progress will come when its politics stop being defined by who they hate and start being guided by who they’re willing to fight for — teachers, workers, renters, and everyone long written out of the Republican version of “Oklahoma values.”