“State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister is running for governor as a Democrat. The 57-year-old lifelong Republican told the Tulsa World in an exclusive interview that she is changing her party registration on Thursday in order to launch a bid to unseat Republican incumbent Kevin Stitt,” reports TulsaWorld.com.
“’Gov. Stitt is running the state into the ground,’ said Hofmeister. ‘Through extremism, partisanship, ineffective leadership, he is hurting our education system, our health care, our infrastructure…Governor Stitt has hijacked the Republican Party in Oklahoma.’ Hofmeister said.”
“The former public school teacher and longtime owner of Kumon Math & Reading Centers in Tulsa was a political novice when she decided to quit as a Mary Fallin-appointee to the Oklahoma State Board of Education and challenge the unpopular Janet Barresi in 2014. Hofmeister beat Barresi in the GOP primary, carrying all 77 counties, and defeated John Cox, superintendent of a small Cherokee County school district, in the 2014 and 2018 general elections. Changing parties and running for governor first crossed her mind, she said, this spring after a full year of being privy to Stitt’s behind-the-scenes handling of a crisis.”
“’We have a global pandemic, and it mattered who was governor in 2020,’ said Hofmeister. ‘We’ve had 10,000 Oklahomans lost. When you understand now how critical it was to have had a leader who contemplated expert advice and opinion and set an example to help protect Oklahomans, we could have avoided thousands of people dying.’ When asked what she would have done differently Hofmeister answered: ‘I wouldn’t have churned through four state epidemiologists in the middle of a pandemic…The policy was that if you ignore reality, somehow it will go away — when leadership mattered in reducing spread. With that strategy, Oklahomans bore the brunt of COVID in their own lives. ur health care workers are disrespected and stretched to the limit. Just as we’ve seen the lack of respect for educators, our health care providers have been standing alone battling a pandemic without the kind of leadership needed from the Governor’s Office.’”
Hofmeister offered a litany of complaints regarding the current governor’s performance, and her comments read as an indictment of the modern day GOP and what it’s become under the leadership of Donald Trump.