open primaries: a way to improve Oklahoma's public schOOLS

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March 21, 2022

Several weeks ago, a Tulsa World column provided for sorry reading to anyone who cares about the future of Oklahoma — and especially for those who were graduated from Oklahoma’s public schools.  

The piece from writer Bob Doucette (“Public education’s 30-year neglect needs a real cure, not half-measure treatments”, Feb. 13) called out the state’s woeful and depressing underperformance in education.  The column detailed Oklahoma’s staggering failure in educating our most valuable resource — the state’s children. We sit at the bottom of all measures for educational attainment. 

In the same edition, there was an op-ed from Margaret Kobos of Oklahoma United for Progress (“Oklahoma’s political middle could gain a voice with open primaries”) providing a potential curative to address the continued distressing state of our public schools.  

While Gov. Kevin Stitt aspires for the state to break into the Top Ten, we are not likely to achieve this anytime soon. We are so far from being at the top that only sleight-of-hand, wishful thinking and obfuscation can convince anyone this is an attainable goal in the near term.  

While it is a politician’s job to lead constituents to success and engage in boosterism for the state, our elected leadership is another example of politicians offering platitudes while failing to lead. They are misleading Oklahomans on our abject failure at encouraging higher student achievement.  Their rhetoric is designed to make Oklahomans believe the unbelievable — that we can go from the bottom to the top if only they get reelected.  A recent proposal to give every parent a piece of the public education budget to use as he or she pleases in the form of vouchers is another way of destroying public education.  

Stitt would be well-served to admit our failures — the result of many years of Oklahoma’s failing to set education as a top priority — and set realistic goals to move us incrementally forward.  

As the canard goes, “Rome was not built in a day,” and Oklahoma’s pitiful educational system will not be transformed by magical thinking. Stitt would rather spend time arguing with American Indian tribes about sovereignty and cutting taxes for those not needing any further tax cuts.  

Stitt could take a lesson from a previous Republican administration. The last effort to improve educational attainment was when Gov. Henry Bellmon and the Legislature passed HB 1017.  Unfortunately, fear of success led to an attempt to repeal it the following year. That attempt failed, but most of the reforms demanded in the legislation — increased teacher salaries, decreased class sizes, new infrastructure, enhanced teacher training, and many others — never took hold.  These pesky reforms were simply too much for the bureaucracy to swallow or find the funds to undertake. Why worry with reforms and make the effort to offer quality education when 47th is good enough?  

A potential solution to this longtime political failure is Senate Bill 1754. Sponsored by Sen. Lonnie Paxton, R-Chickasha, it would provide for open primary voting in Oklahoma. It has been referred to the Rules Committee, likely to be forgotten.  

If this bill were to move forward, it would allow Oklahomans to avoid the partisan ghettos leading us into niche policy decisions that benefit the few at the expense of the many. 

Hopefully, a similar bill will be introduced in the next Legislature.  Oklahomans might find better leadership by expanding our ability to pick good candidates for office regardless of party affiliation.  When we refuse to allow nearly 20% of our voting population (independents) to vote in open primaries, we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to pick the best person for the job — people who could get the job done in areas like education reform.  

The move of Joy Hofmeister from the Republican to the Democrat Party is an example of our current system’s dysfunction. She left because her party’s base would not elect her in the primary for governor.  In an open primary, she would not have needed to change affiliation. 

I believe many Republicans want high-quality public schools, but not enough of them are in the Legislature.  If we want to tackle the great public problems of our time, we need pragmatic, idealistic elected officials. These public servants would be less beholden to the extremes on either side of the political spectrum.  

A way to get there is by allowing citizens to vote for the candidate they regard as the best fit for the task at hand, regardless of the voter’s party affiliation.  

By correcting a system that allows hyper-partisan politicians to take control and drive an extremist agenda, we can get to the pressing needs that can make Oklahoma the great state our current leadership says it wants — but fails to deliver. 

Ross O. Swimmer, a Tulsa attorney, is a former principal chief of the Cherokee Nation and former assistant secretary of Indian affairs with the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. He is special trustee for American Indians at the U.S. Department of the Interior and a member of the Tulsa World Community Advisory Board.