Ryan Walters And The Magic 8-Ball

Wagging The Dog? Signs Point To Yes.

UPDATE: According to media reports, the state Ethics Commission has recommended criminal prosecution of Ryan Walters for violating campaign finance law. Walters' second alleged violation before the Ethics Commission, related to Walters' misuse of his official social media accounts to endorse then-candidate Donald Trump's campaign, is still pending resolution.

Remember the whimsical song from the Sound of Music, when convent sisters melodically ponder, “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?”

We need the good sisters to sing a refrain, substituting for Maria our state superintendent’s name. Not that Ryan Walters can be confused with a rosy-cheeked nun. [He does make my face turn red, however.]

Since the November election, Walters has been outdoing himself with his screams for attention. He somehow manages to find new and new degrees of extreme. It’s been hard to keep up with his outrageous output of provocative bilge.

His most recent outlandish stunt came during an interview with KTUL news anchor Brenna Rose. Walters bemoaned the failure of public schools in “cooperating with law enforcement” on the issue of illegal immigration. In the next breath he crowed with full-throated eagerness that he would support ICE raids of Oklahoma schools “if that’s what President Trump sees fit.”

Let that sink in. He’s advocating the arrest of children in their classrooms. Bear in mind that children residing in this country have the established legal right to a public education regardless of immigration status.

Inviting ICE raids of Oklahoma schools constitutes recklessness of a degree unprecedented even for Walters, and that’s saying a lot. Imagine the anxiety this creates for students, their families, and school teachers and staff. As if public schools do not already have struggles enough, Walters gleefully fans the flames, sabotaging his agency’s mission to support our schools.

Lest we forget, Oklahoma’s academic standing is 49^th in the nation. Whatever efforts he claims he is making to improve this, with this one interview Walters undid it. He is undermining our schools in a cynical, tireless effort to score MAGA-political points. This is a gross abuse of his office, beyond being selfish and ugly. It is despicable.

This malpractice comes hot on the heels of Walters trumpeting that Oklahoma is the “first state in the nation to implement Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of America and Mt. McKinley . We love this move from President Trump.” [He had competition from Gov. Rick Santos of Florida, whose administration referenced “the Gulf of America” in a weather alert the same day.]

Set aside the idiocy of these name changes and Walters’ obsequious fawning by claiming he has incorporated them into “state History standards.” I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised that this claim, like many he has made, is an “alternative fact.” Oklahoma Education policy, in fact, does not include stand-alone History standards. The curriculum standards which include subjects like Geography, Civics, and History are for Social Studies. [One would think that the head of the State Department of Education would know that.]

Also, despite the claims in Walters’ press release, there do not appear to be any updated policy standards reflecting the changes it announced. The state superintendent lacks authority to unilaterally amend existing standards. As he is prone, Walters has jumped the gun, ignoring the roles of the state board and Legislature in that process. This isn’t the first time for him to falsely and prematurely declare that policy changes he favors are fait accompli. He did the same thing with his proposed administrative rules a year ago.

LEAVE THAT POOR DOG ALONE

There is another dimension to all this besides Walters’ quest for publicity.

While he was spewing hot air about the “Gulf of America” last week, the state Ethics Commission announced that Walters is the subject of two separate investigations. As KFOR-TV stated in their lead-in to the story, “Legal experts say two investigations at one time is a big deal.” He is in hot water

Walters’ use of his official social media accounts has long been wildly, inappropriately partisan. Throughout the 2024 presidential campaign, Walters polluted the internet with his support of Trump’s candidacy and abuse of Democratic rivals. He spread his political gospel on multiple social media accounts that were identified as official state government outlets. I wondered at the time how he was getting away with this. It seemed that the state’s ethics watchdogs were either snoozing or looking the other way.

WOKE UP
If the Ethics Commission members were asleep, they eventually woke up. [It is with snarky pleasure that I use Walters’ favorite word “woke” here.] The commission is actively investigating whether Walters broke ethics rules by using official accounts to broadcast “politically charged opinions.”

Of course he did. He does. He will. Dozens of inflammatory examples can be found via a quick internet search, including insulting Democratic office holders and directly urging Oklahomans to “get out today and vote for Donald Trump.” In effect, he turned his office into a partisan, political campaign operation. Walters clearly needs this reminder from the commission that his freedom of speech does not extend to the use of public resources for promoting his personal views as if they are those of the state.

FOLLOW THE MONEY

The commission is also looking into whether Walters violated state campaign finance laws when running for state superintendent in 2022. This has been looming for months. Walters refused the commission’s earlier requests for campaign documents. They have now issued a subpoena for his campaign’s financial records, as they warned him they would if he didn’t voluntarily comply with their request. The commission has not disclosed the specific nature of their campaign finance investigation of Walters.

Walters’ superintendent campaign was run by Matt Langston, a right-wing political hack who has raised suspicion as a possible “ghost employee” for drawing a six-figure salary from OSDE while living out of state and having no job description. Walters himself served as both chair and treasurer of his own campaign committee.

Of note, Walters has filed legally required disclosures that he raised over $85,000 last year in his political campaign fund. Presumably this is money he’s holding for an expected gubernatorial run next year.

COINKYDINK?

Walters' latest performances for the media, then, have these ethical investigations as a backdrop. Is this a classic case of wagging the dog? Is Walters creating deliberate distractions from being in the crosshairs of the Ethics Commission?

Squawking about the Gulf of America and cheering the prospect of ICE raids on schools make it seem so. In the immortal words of the Magic 8-Ball, “Signs point to yes.”

Or is it a mere coincidence that the same week the Ethics Commission made their investigations public, Walters grabbed his bullhorn, blasting his way into the media with remarks too inflammatory for news outlets to ignore?

Meanwhile, Attorney General Gentner Drummond announced that he is running for governor this past week. Has this further fueled Walters’ urgency to grab headlines? Are Walters' rabid aspirations more important than the public trust and support for our state's schools?

I wonder what the Magic 8-ball would say.