Ryan Walters’ personal vanity campaign needs to end, but Oklahoma Republicans couldn’t stop it

State Superintendent Ryan Walters speaks with reporters after a meeting of the Oklahoma State Board of Education on May 23, 2024, in Oklahoma City. (Photo by Nuria Martinez-Keel/Oklahoma Voice)

Most PR campaigns are aimed at building a positive image.

But from the looks of Oklahoma education Superintendent Ryan Walters’ national publicity push, he’s only breaking down his relationships here at home.

And embarrassingly, our other elected officials are allowing it to happen.

Walters is paying a Virginia-based communications company as much as $200 an hour to write his opinion pieces and book his media appearances. Records show his agreement with Vought Strategies could be costing taxpayers up to $5,000 a month.

Nothing in state law seemingly prohibits elected officials from doing that.

While most of our GOP officials, including Gov. Kevin Stitt, often use their platforms to highlight that our state is open for business and explain the logic behind their keystone policy accomplishments, Walters is out there tilting at imaginary foes and spreading dissension.

He is using our tax dollars — and the platform we’ve given him — to generate a slew of at best cringeworthy and at worst cruel headlines. None of those inspire confidence in our schools and teachers or contain much substance at all when it comes to addressing the complex reasons we rank at the bottom in academic outcomes.

On Fox News alone, he has falsely accused our school administrators of pushing “woke ideology,” called the groups representing our teachers “Marxist” and published a hateful column that misgendered Owasso High School student Nex Benedict — whose suicide sparked nationwide outrage over anti-LGBTQ+ bullying. He further claimed that the “truth” about the nonbinary teen’s death was the latest “ collateral damage in the woke mob and corporate media’s efforts to smear school choice, traditional values and the Oklahomans who believe in them. ”

How should Oklahoma children feel when the man in charge of their state’s public education makes them feel unwelcome and unsafe?

Apparently, Walters doesn’t care.

But in an informal survey, he has been doing a good job getting his message out there. When I ask out-of-staters whose name they recognize — Stitt or Walters — it’s almost always Walters. Aside from his name, though, they tend to know few concrete details about our school system, our need for quality teachers and what — if anything — our state is doing to improve academic outcomes.

Given that, it’s no wonder a bipartisan group of lawmakers tried to clip Walters’ wings by passing legislation in the final days of session that would force him to slow his roll.

Unfortunately, they did it in a really clumsy way.

Through Senate Bill 1122, they attempted to ban the State Department of Education from spending our tax money to secure media interviews, to pay for public relations or other promotions unless required to participate in a federal grant program.

Stitt vetoed the bill, saying it could go farther than his colleagues in the Legislature intended. As explained in his veto message :

“It is reasonable to assume that it could be interpreted to prevent SDE from recruiting teachers to teach our school children; prevent SDE from addressing constituent concerns, and prevent any number of routine public communications needed for a state agency overseeing thousands of employees and a majority of our students.”

Then Stitt, himself, may have tried to slow Walters’ media machine. But if so, he, too, blundered.

He issued an executive order prohibiting hiring outside public relations firms if they’re “sole sourced” contracts. That’s government jargon for contracts issued without competitive bidding.

“It makes no sense for state agencies who pay the salaries of communications staff to outsource work to PR firms via sole source contracts,” Stitt said of his decision. “It’s wasteful and we’re putting a stop to it statewide.”

The problem is the executive order apparently will do nothing to slow Walters’ vanity campaign.

His in-house PR team wasted no time trumpeting to the world that the governor’s order wouldn’t have any impact. As it turns out, Walters did seek bids for his PR contract.

So unless Stitt is quietly targeting some other unnamed agency — or he knows something we don’t — it seems like his executive order is worth little more than the paper on which it’s printed.

On one hand it’s easy to see why Republicans would want to ban Walters’ relationships with outside PR vendors. The reckless public relations strategy undermines their own efforts in trying their darndest to bring new development and people to the Sooner State.

But most of those same Republicans have voted in favor of the same points that Walters spouts like banning diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

It’s almost as if Walters’ focus on his own ambitions, rather than helping the students and teachers in the state where he was elected, is forming fissures within the Republican Party.

Maybe they can figure that out by writing their own columns or having their own internal staff do it for them.

They won’t pay someone $200 an hour to do it.

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