Loon Star State North

When Republicans were a super-minority in state offices, they often asserted Oklahoma should be more like Texas, meaning … what, exactly?

Cocky? Self-absorbed? Insufferable?

Nope, we were assured, being “more like Texas” meant being “pro-bidness” – which roughly translates: try to replicate the Lone Star State’s explosive growth by embracing pro-business-at-any-cost policies.

In the decade-plus since gaining control of both statehouse chambers and the governorship, Oklahoma Republicans zealously pursued that strategy: cutting corporate taxes, loosening regulation, and blocking local governments from reining in any corporate excess.

Mission accomplished? Sort of … but not necessarily in ways they imagined or hoped-for.

Take last week, for example: While Texans were riveted to the impeachment trial of Attorney General Ken Paxton, accused of Lone Star-size venality, Sooners were glued to the antics of the state’s Trolling Twins: Gov. Kevin Stitt and Superintendent Ryan Walters.

Stitt amped up his animus for Oklahoma’s tribal leaders, generally, and Cherokee Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr., specifically, by appointing Wes Nofire – Hoskin’s recently defeated re-election opponent – as the state’s new Oklahoma Native American Liaison.

Clever? About as clever as a third-grader’s schoolyard taunts.

Walters, meanwhile, launched a social media tirade against a Western Heights elementary principal who apparently participated in a drag show. Nothing illegal about that.

Then the state superintendent announced a deal to get “American values” videos into Oklahoma schools – propaganda produced by the rightwing Prager U, a nonprofit, not an institution of higher learning. Remember Trump University?

So, in Texas, actual policy work took a back seat to a sensational corruption trial. In Oklahoma, it was schoolyard bullying and performance politics.

We’ll leave Paxton’s problems to Texans to figure out, but it’s clear Loon Star State North isn’t helping Oklahoma market itself as a cutting-edge site for relocation or expansion.

Yes, Oklahoma’s population has grown over the last decade. But so has just about every other state in the sunbelt. As for economic development grand slams? Uh, not so much.

Tesla went to Texas. Panasonic to Kansas. EV startup Canoo chose Oklahoma, but its future remains uncertain in the still-early, wild-west days of electric vehicle development.

To be sure, Texas has advantages over Oklahoma – think: land, population, the gulf coast and more. But Kansas? Arkansas? Tennessee?

Oklahoma does itself no favors when its governor is at war with one of its primary economic engines, its tribal nations. Or when its state superintendent of public instruction prioritizes inflammatory social media videos over the public policy heavy-lifting necessary to elevate under-funded and under-performing Sooner schools – in other words, the sorts of things that really matter to corporate decision-makers.

“Drag queens should not be in charge of our schools,” Walters ranted in one video. “We have been fighting back here in Oklahoma of this undermining of our values, of this undermining of our schools and it has to stop.”

It isn’t clear how such histrionics help improve reading proficiency or mitigate an alarming teacher shortage. What is clear: it’s good for legal business. Walters has been named as a defendant or respondent in at least seven lawsuits filed since he assumed office in January. Who’ll foot the legal bills? Taxpayers.

As for Stitt installing Nofire in a taxpayer-financed, $100,000-a-year position? No serious person would identify Nofire as the right choice to help iron out differences between the state and tribal nations in the post-McGirt era.

Hoskin called the choice “disappointing” but hardly surprising, adding, “We continue to hope for the day in which the depths of knowledge of Indian Country issues on Gov. Stitt’s team deepens. It’s now shallower.”

Here’s how Cherokee Nation Council Speaker Mike Shambaugh put it: “Custer had his scouts. Governor Stitt has Wes Nofire.”

It’ll be up to voters next year to decide how Texas 2.0 is working out for them.