Earlier this week, FOX23 sat down with gubernatorial candidates Gov. Kevin Stitt and Joy Hofmeister.
The Republican and Democrat spoke about inflation, abortion, the death penalty, and election security.
In the second half of this series, we asked the candidates about education, the response to the pandemic, immigration, and drug issues.
Education
Q: You’ve stated that you are an advocate for teachers, you want to increase their pay yet Oklahoma teachers haven’t had a pay raise since 2019. Their average pay of $54,000 still ranks below the national average of $64,000. So why should teachers support you?
Gov. Stitt: “Yeah, well, you know, when I was running for governor, I said, we have to pay market. And so I gave a teachers a huge pay raise in 2019. Like you said, I’m glad you mentioned that, I put more money in public education than any other governor in history, I put 300 million in the pension plan to make sure all retired teachers were taken care of gave a COLA increase. So really excited about our record. And we’re number one in the region out of the seven state region in teacher pay. When you look at cost of living adjusted, we’re number 21 in the country in teacher pay cost of living adjusted, and some other things. Those are the things I look at. And if we need to do another teacher pay raise, I’ll absolutely do it.”
Q: Now you’ve been the State Superintendent for eight years. What responsibility do you take for some of that teacher flight and where we rank in education?
Hofmeister: Absolutely, it is the most important issue in education right now. And so from the first 10 days in office, we have called for the teacher pay raise that was needed to be able to be competitive, I believe, as a businesswoman that we have to pay market. And we saw a teacher pay raise come after three years. And that brought us to the regional top. But that only lasted for about six months. So until this state doubles down, and works to support our children, and make certain that they have what they need, we can have very high standards, we pass rigorous academic standards, accountability, transparency, but you can have all of that without the people on the team to support our kids, we will never have the workforce, let alone the individual success for each child. And we have to have that and this is on the ballot. And our governor doesn’t get the connection between a strong education system, how that impacts the property value of every Oklahoman and what it takes to have a competitive, excellent, well rounded education for all kids in Oklahoma, I get that.
Pandemic
Q: Now, one of the biggest things, of course, that happened during your first term was the COVID 19 pandemic, was there anything that you think you would do differently if something like that were to happen again?
Gov. Stitt: “You know, that’s, um, thanks for asking me that, because Oklahoma and saw how I lead in that. And I took a lot of bullets. It was it was an unknown virus, people didn’t understand what to do. Some governors were literally shutting their states down. They were saying this business is non essential. So let’s close that down. They were dictating and mandating that kids don’t go to school. And I took a different approach. I said, listen, this is a virus. And if I could snap my fingers and have zero cases, I would do it. But that’s not reasonable. And I’m going to give be transparent with the data. That’s what I told Oklahomans. I told all my state agencies, let’s be transparent with the data. But we don’t put our constitution in the attic, just because somebody in Washington DC tells us to , and you know, there were there were governors shutting churches down. And I kept everything open. And I’m so proud of how we handled that. I gave our hospitals the PPE they needed, the protecting the PPP, they needed. We did we were transparent with the data we get give our schools some extra funding to stay open. So really proud of how we’ve done that. And now you’re waking up to the learning loss that’s occurred in other states, and Oklahoma is so much ahead of these other states.”
Q: What would you have done differently if you were governor at the time or if something like that ever happens again, which of course all of us hope it doesn’t?
Hofmeister: “Oh, my goodness, it’s a very good question. So we saw a governor who turned through four state epidemiologists in the first year of the pandemic. He didn’t want to take their information. And we have to listen to experts and as governor discern. We did not need a mask mandate in this state. But we needed a governor who led by example. We needed to support our hospitals. And I’ve talked with many hospital administrators who wish they had a partner as a governor during a crisis time like that.”
Q: Did they say what they would’ve wanted the governor to do differently?
Hofmeister: “The governor didn’t have the back of hospitals that were experiencing the surges, and the governor was not working together, whether they are rural hospitals or those in this metro area, they are eager for change. The other is this is a governor who took the pandemic relief dollars that were intended millions of dollars that were intended for making its way making a way successfully through the pandemic. And he turned it into a boondoggle by moving our public health lab out of the community where research was happening, and moved it into another community in the middle of the year in the pandemic. And that particular 30 some million dollars has never produced the kind of testing that we would require or had prior to the governor’s abrupt move. This is a real issue.”
Immigration & Marijuana
Q: Do you agree with what the governor of Florida and Texas have been doing by taking illegal immigrants, migrants who have crossed the border illegally? It’s a big problem, and have sent them to either sanctuary cities or where Democrats are in control? And would you do that here?
Gov. Stitt: “You know, I went down to the border with Governor Abbott and looked at that, and I know Governor DeSantis there’s a difference between, you know, border security and immigration, right. I think people conflate those two, we need, we definitely need to change our immigration law. Because we have fantastic workers, we need more workers. We need more immigration, we need more people coming to our country, our Hispanic community in Oklahoma, I absolutely love. I have such a great relationships about 12% of our population here in Oklahoma. But we have to know who’s coming across the border, the fit and all the drugs haven’t strong borders, we have to do that. And that’s what’s so shocking about the president United States right now totally ignoring the southern border. So do I agree with them? making an issue out of it? Absolutely.”
Q: Do you agree with what’s happening? Or how would you handle the crisis here?
Hofmeister: “Well, first, I want to say it’s very important that we do have security within our state, and that we are working with law enforcement to be able to better protect Oklahomans. But any kind of work that is at a kind of a national arena, around political issues in another state is really not what I am focusing on. I will keep my focus today on the people of Oklahoma, our property, our ability to have Oklahoma family owned farmland, not foreign land that under Governor Stitt’s watch, we now have 1.5 billion acre... million acres.. 1.5 million acres that are foreign owned, and we are losing a lot of these safety needs due to bad actors in the medical marijuana grow industry.”
Gov. Stitt: “We passed 10 different laws this year, I put a moratorium on new licenses, because we were seeing that thing get out of control. The foreign nationals, the drug cartels, were coming in setting up shop and illegally selling marijuana across our state. And that’s just a gateway drug to some of the others. And we know that was part of the plan. And so we’ve hired 80 new officers to get control of that marijuana industry here in Oklahoma as well.”
Fentanyl
Q: What are you doing that perhaps maybe we don’t know about to try to combat fentanyl since it’s the number one killer right now believe people 18 to 45?
Gov. Stitt: “Yeah, I mean, listen, I met some folks and talk to the folks who are just getting overrun in Arizona right now. Drug debt deaths. We know it’s coming. It’s already here in Oklahoma, it’s going to continue to get worse. So our Bureau of Narcotics is telling me where it’s coming from. And it’s all coming from the southern border. And that’s why, as governors, I meet with the other governors around the country, that’s when we’re pleading with this administration to secure the borders.”
Q: So what could you do as governor to try to combat this epidemic right now?
Hofmeister: “It is an epidemic. And it is where we do have to partner with many different groups, state agencies, health departments, local health county offices, but also law enforcement, with education with our mental health providers. We have many people that could be a part of the solution. And this is just one of many areas that if we pull together, if we work together, we can do really important work. That’s life saving for Oklahomans. And I’m committed to that.”