While the board did well, three angry men proved how embarrassing our politics, and our state, have become
Our one-party supermajority is killing us and even on a day Ryan Walters again proved to be a small, weak, phony and corrupt little man — always a treat — the utter embarrassment our state’s become under Republican-über-alles control could not have been on fuller display.
We’re talking about Tuesday, of course, when state school board members Ryan Deatherage, Becky Carson, Michael Tinney and Chris Van Denhende executed a board meeting all by themselves, first getting it scheduled and, second, carrying it out in a quick 10 minutes during which they accomplished two things.
One, they voted to hire Ryan Leonard as the board’s new counsel. Two, they approved a search beginning for a new executive secretary.
It was the circumstances that created the drama, all of it finely charted by The Oklahoman’s Murray Evans, whose story you can read here.
Here’s some highlights.
State schools Superintendent Ryan Walters was a no-show, but the Oklahoma State Board of Education hired an attorney and began the process of hiring a board secretary during a special meeting …
No staff from Walters’ agency showed up for the meeting, held just across the Capitol complex from the Oliver Hodge Building, which houses the Education Department. The board members thought that might happen, so they improvised.
Tatyana Blakemore, who works for the Commission for Educational Quality and Accountability, served as the secretary for the meeting. Matt LaFon, the deputy general counsel for the Office of Management and Enterprise Services, was available to provide legal counsel if necessary.
The large Senate meeting room was nearly full of spectators. Those in attendance included state Education Secretary Nellie Tayloe Sanders; former state Rep. Mark McBride, of Moore; Rep. Dick Lowe, R-Amber; Rep. Michelle McCane, D-Tulsa; Rep. Ellen Pogemiller, D-Oklahoma City; Sen. Brenda Stanley, R-Midwest City; and Sen. Mark Mann, D-Oklahoma City.
One more detail?
When the meeting ended, those attending, happy to see state business get done in the face of a recalcitrant bully lacking the courage to show his face, applauded.
Yet another insane, ridiculous and utterly unnecessary detail?
Attorney general and Republican gubernatorial candidate Gentner Drummond, in yet another tone-deaf moment, chose to rain on everybody’s parade, issuing this post-meeting statement:
It seems neither side can agree on which attorney is best to advise them as they do further damage to Oklahoma’s public schools. The board’s decision to hire a politically connected attorney with little to no experience advising a state board is yet another example of the dysfunction that has plagued public education since Gov. Stitt first appointed Ryan Walters. While Mr. Leonard may be a talented plaintiff’s attorney and has counseled the Governor through various legal battles against Oklahoma’s Native American tribes, he is woefully inadequate to serve as general counsel to the State Board of Education.
Just @#$?%&!^ great.
Maybe labor secretary Leslie Osborn can jump into the Republican primary just to give all the party-switching Democrats planning to vote for Drummond in fear of Walters an option they can be proud of.
So here we are.
The only good guys are Deatherage, Carson, Tinney and Van Denhende.
Sure, they were political selections of Kevin Stitt, our unfortunate governor, who gave Walters political life in the first place, chosen only to stand in Walters’ way, but is it their fault they’ve been made pawns in a childish intra-party political squabble?
It is not.
Despite how they landed on the board, they’ve been doing earnest work since, including demanding a second vote on the state’s new social studies standards, only for senate pro tempore Lonnie Paxton to refuse it because who are Oklahoma’s students, really, in the face of Walters’ ride-or-die supporters, whose support he’s unwilling to challenge.
So there’s that.
Then there’s Stitt, who may get credit for his about-face on Walters, throwing public education a bone, but who only did it to remove Walters’ stench, screw with him, to start and win a fight, to settle a score.
Meanwhile, Walters can’t be bothered to show up to his own meeting, one he’s supposed to chair — prompting, if karma exists, “BABY RYAN” signs and T-shirts at the next protest he inspires — who still sent favored spokeswoman and ’24 Florida State grad Madison Cercy out not to explain his absence, but to offer “Superintendent Walters is focused on tackling the big issues facing Oklahoma schools and is pleased to welcome Ryan Leonard to the team.”
Christ, such a baby.
Finally, there’s Drummond, who, on a day something reasonably good happened, a board not wilting to its corrupt leader’s bullying tactics, could not help but shit upon political rivals instead, Stitt and Walters, not to mention Deatherage, Carson, Tinney and Van Denhende and what did they ever do to him?
It’s on them — Stitt, Walters, Drummond — absolutely, but it’s also on the culture bred by theirs and our one-party, Republican supermajority state.
Without enough Democrats to be dealt with, Republican politicians are left to eat their own rather than negotiate with the other side.
And because the only thing they can agree on is maintaining supermajority status, the one place they won’t go for help to counter the extremists among them them is a too-small Democratic minority.
It’s no way to run a state.
Don’t we know.