How shall we regard another election in the Sooner state?
Half horrendous?
One-out-of-two ain’t bad?
The worst of all possible worlds?
Oh, wait, not quite?
Mike Mazzei topped Gentner Drummond to become the Republican Party’s gubernatorial choice, which has been tantamount to becoming governor since 2010, when Brad Henry completed his second term, a Democrat not to be heard from since.
Robert Franklin, thank goodness, knocked off James Taylor to get the Republican nod to be our next superintendent of public instruction, and Franklin will indeed win the general election come November, for most Democrats have already disavowed their own candidate for the post, Jennettie Marshall.
So, what’s next.
What can be done to stop Mazzei, who will never get the “plan” he claims to have made into law because even he he knows it’s a joke.
You know the plan, right?
Reduce the state income tax until it’s zeroed out. Eliminate property taxes for seniors and veterans. It won’t fly because the state couldn’t pay for anything if it did, so what’s a governor who made things up to get elected bound to do?
Nothing good.
What can be done?
I’ve got something.
One, Franklin must campaign for Cyndi Munson, because their values align.
He wants to make education a priority again in our state and he has a plan to do it and that plan demands resources, which is exactly what Munson wants to deliver and exactly what Mazzei won’t.
Mazzei’s already told us how every district superintendent is a radical socialist, and his calling public schools “government schools” is entirely intentional, an effort to tear down public education in the public imagination.
Franklin must get to the other side of that.
Recall, he’s been a Democrat most of his life, is now utterly non-partisan, doesn’t have political ambitions beyond the post to which he’s bound to be elected and does not arrive at at his decisions through a political prism. He arrives at them by asking what’s best for public education, and that puts him on Munson’s side.
Two, it can get even better.
Did you listen to Drummond concede last night?
You need to see it and listen to it.
Or read it, at least.
Mr. Mazzei, tonight I wish you and your family well. Now you have to show up.
You have to show up for the teachers who walk Oklahoma classrooms every morning. You have to show up for the police officers, the firefighters, the first responders who put their lives on the line for people they’ve never met. You have to show up for the public servants who keep the state moving.
You have to show up for the rural hospitals to keep their doors open. You have to show up for the families desperately searching for mental health treatment for someone they love. You have to show up for the farmers and ranchers, the small business owners and the working families, and you have to show up for the Oklahomans who didn’t vote for you just as surely as you show up for the ones who did.
That’s the job.
The governor doesn’t work for the wealthy. The governor doesn’t work for the special interests. The governor doesn’t work for the people who can write the largest campaign checks or hire the most expensive lobbyists. The governor works for the people of Oklahoma.
Does that sound like a Republican to you?
Me, neither.
So what will he do?
Primary Mazzei in four years? Run for governor again in eight, because Oklahoma governors, regardless of party, tend to get two terms.
Waiting eight years would make him 70 years old and by then, politics in this nation and state will have changed. MAGA will have crashed, even in Oklahoma. Or, if it doesn’t, many Republicans will have become Democrats by then. All of that gives Drummond the chance to be way out in front of the curve by endorsing and campaigning for Munson.
Through the force of his authenticity, sincerity and will, he could change Oklahoma politics in one fell swoop, because, I promise you, Drummond and a great many of his supporters still do not want Mazzei to become governor. They know he’ll take the state further backward.
Imagine Munson, Franklin, Drummond (and maybe Oklahoma City mayor David Holt, too) on the stump together, agreeing on any number of things that are neither left nor right, but dang good policy the whole state can get behind, beginning with educating Oklahoma children, because who’s against that?
All of us should be upset about Mazzei getting through, about this slow-talking, creepy-sounding, wind-him-up pablum delivery man becoming governor, but it need not happen.
It’s a moment for Franklin to put state over party and, for him, particularly, it ought to be a layup. It’s a moment, too, for Drummond to do the same, and by doing it becoming the most consequential person in Oklahoma politics since I don’t know when. I want to say David Boren, but even he was no paradigm shifter, just a terrific governor, senator and university president.
Mazzei, after all, is Ryan Walters without the car videos, Ryan Walters without the ability to speak quickly while maintaining command of the language, Ryan Walters without the vulgarity, the demonization, the … Oh, wait, scratch that last one because he’s all of those things and has proven it on the stump.
Bottom line, there’s still a chance to turn this state around.
We, and some very singular individuals, Drummond, Franklin and others to be named later, must take it.
Clay,
If Drummond had put all the points from his concession speech in his TV ads rather than saying negative things about his opponent, then perhaps he would have won. Unfortunately, that’s what politicians do.