In deep-red Oklahoma, first-term Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, a rich businessman whose time in workplace has been rocked by feuds with tribal nations and members of his personal celebration, finds himself in a surprisingly tough reelection campaign against Democrat Joy Hofmeister.
Hofmeister, 58, the two-term state superintendent of public colleges who switched events to run against Stitt, has been blasting Stitt for his voucher-style plan to divert public schooling cash to personal colleges.
She launched a 50-stop bus tour via 27 counties in the final week of the campaign to hammer the message, rising from the coach to the 1970 Three Dog Night hit “Joy to the World.”
“It’s a rural-school killer,” she mentioned in her stump speech. “And if you kill the school, you kill the community.”
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Jack Zedlitz, 48, a lifelong Republican who just lately switched to unbiased, forged his poll on Tuesday for Hofmeister on the Crown Heights Church of the Nazarene in Oklahoma City, saying Stitt’s help of schooling vouchers was too dangerous to public colleges.
“One of the unintended consequences is that it will harm some of the most vulnerable school districts that usually educate the poorest and most marginalized communities,” Zedlitz mentioned.
The problem can also be one which resonates in rural Oklahoma, which in 2018 helped ship Stitt, 49, a rich mortgage firm proprietor and political outsider, the state’s governorship. He gained 73 of the state’s 77 counties, many by large margins, after campaigning on bringing a businessman’s “fresh set of eyes” to state authorities.
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt at a campaign rally on Nov. 1, 2022, in Oklahoma City.Â
(AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
“The turnaround that you elected me to do, it is working,” Stitt instructed a crowd of greater than 300 gathered on the Crossroads megachurch on Oklahoma City’s south aspect for a rally final week with U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. A separate rally was held with Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin in Tulsa.
Stitt boasts of record-level state financial savings and funding for public colleges underneath his watch, and the state’s fast emergence from pandemic-related closures that helped the financial system rebound rapidly and preserve the state’s unemployment fee low.
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Jessica Perez, 46, forged her poll Tuesday for Stitt at Oklahoma Christian University and mentioned his oversight of the state throughout the pandemic appealed to her.
“It didn’t make sense to me that you could go to Home Depot, but not to church,” Perez mentioned. “I believe he’s an effective leader. What he says he’s going to do, he does.”
Although Democrats haven’t gained a statewide election in Oklahoma since 2006, Stitt has confronted a barrage of blistering assault advertisements from dark-money teams. The teams do not need to report their donors and have spent thousands and thousands for the reason that June main hammering his school-voucher plan. Other advertisements have highlighted his mass launch of prisoners and a sequence of scandals in his administration, together with a profitable no-bid contract with a barbecue restaurant, misspent pandemic aid funds for schooling and his plans to construct a brand new state mansion.
The dark-money assaults on Stitt and different media boosting Hofmeister observe ongoing feuds Stitt has engaged in with lots of the 39 federally acknowledged Native American tribes, one other problem Hofmeister hit arduous on the campaign path.
In one signal Hofmeister posed a stiff problem, the tremendous PAC for the Republican Governor’s Association launched a late advert purchase linking Hofmeister to excessive fuel costs and President Joe Biden, who misplaced Oklahoma to Donald Trump by greater than 33 proportion factors and stays very unpopular in the state. Stitt additionally loaned his campaign $2 million, bringing his complete fundraising haul to greater than $10 million, greater than triple the $3.1 million raised by Hofmeister.
Independent Ervin Yen, an Oklahoma City anesthesiologist and former Republican state senator, and Libertarian Natalie Bruno of Edmond are also operating for governor.
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