OK: Walters Wants To Take Local Mess National

Oklahoma's Education Dudebro In Chief Ryan Walters has produced a steady stream of ugly. That hasn't stopped; in fact, it's apparently seeking a national audience.

Walters drew headlines for moves like explaining that Tulsa Race Massacre was not about race. He called the teachers union a "terrorist organization." He also proposed a host of rules for restricting reading, mandatory outing of students, searching out the dread CRT, and backing it all up with threats to take away a district's accreditation if they dared to defy him. And he followed the Chris Rufo playbook and announced his intent to ban DEI from all schools. Walters wants to see the state "champion religious freedom," like the Catholic "public" charter school that the state is trying to launch (and their Republican attorney general is trying to stop). Somehow, "religious freedom" means to Walters that the Ten Commandments should be posted in every single classroom in the state.

In keeping with the screw-ups he orchestrated before taking office, Walters managed to fumble away a bunch of grant money and piss off staff--staff who were sympathetic to his agenda--to the point that they walked out.  And he's still cleaning up after fines from his campaign for office. 

He went out of his way to stop a sixteen year old trans student from changing some paperwork. His reaction to the death of Nex Benedict was such a mean-spirited reactionary mess (one part "we want students to feel supported" and two parts "LGBTQ students must be hold the hard truth that their existence is an ugly terrible lie") that 350 groups signed a letter demanding he get the hell out of office, as he has fostered "a culture of violence and hate." Walters is a prime example of the kind of faux christianist MAGA strain running through too much of our country these days, drawing targets on marginalized people, calling them all manner of ugly names, signaling that the power of the state will be used to silence and erase those people, and then denying that any of this creates a culture of hate and violence. It's spectacularly unChristian behavior offered in the name of Christ. 

And yet, Walters apparently senses that he's destined for bigger things on a broader stage. 

Jennifer Palmer of Oklahoma Watch reports that Oklahoma taxpayers have helped Walters hire a PR firm that, among other things, is sending out pitches like this:

An open letter called for Ryan’ (sic) immediate removal from office for, the letter claims, “fostering a culture of violence and hate against the 2SLGBTQI+ community in Oklahoma schools.

Ryan responded to the letter saying: ‘[this is a] standard tactic of the radical left, and they will stop at nothing to destroy the country and our state.’

Want Ryan on to discuss?

Palmer was ahead of this story, reporting back in November that the Oklahoma Education Department was looking to hire a PR firm to provide print and digital op-eds to national outlets, provide national bookings, coordinate national events and appearances for executive staff, write speeches and handle some communications. That included a minimum of three op-eds, two speeches and 10 media bookings per month. This in addition to the in-house comms department. It sure looked like Walters wanted to be bigger.

So Oklahoma has hired a PR firm from Virginia to craft pitches like the one above and presumably to deliver all that national exposure Walters is looking for. 

The firm is Vought Strategies, They seem like a great fit. Their website includes a testimonial from Jim DeMint calling the firm's founder, Mary Vought, "one of the best conservative communicators and public relations specialists in the nation." Mary Vought has been at it for a decade; previously she did coms work in the US Senate and House of Representatives, working for folks like Ron Johnson and Mike Pence; she's also a senior fellow for the far right Independent Women's Forum, and  the executive director of the Senate Conservatives Fund, an outfit that endorses the likes of Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Rick Scott. And she cranks out pieces like this one for the Daily Caller in which she writes "as a parent" (not a conservative PR operative) that she doesn't want her daughter reading naughty books. Or slamming NIH for Fox News. Or noting a Wall Street Journal profile of Walters, saying "we proudly stand beside our clients as they fight to protect our children and parental rights."

In short, she seems like just the person to be running PR for whatever it is that Walters is trying to do with his profile.

Meanwhile, in Oklahoma, where he was elected to serve an actual function, Walters draws cranky comments from legislators about his lack of transparency, and reports that he's mostly out of the office. Asked about the expense of $30,000 of taxpayer money to hire Walters some PR services, his regular patron, Governor Kevin Stitt said a whole lot of nothing. 

It continues to look as if the taxpayers of Oklahoma are not getting anything like their money's worth out of Walters. Hard to say what job he is auditioning for at this point, but it seems easier to say how much Oklahoma taxpayers should have to pay to fund his clip reel-- $0.00.