GOP gubernatorial hopefuls are asked about Step Up Oklahoma.
CROWDER — Republicans running for governor fielded tough questions about Step Up Oklahoma, campaign contributions, water rights and other topics here on Saturday at a GOP meeting that featured most of the announced candidates.
At times, the meeting in this eastern Oklahoma town reflected the class and regional divisions in the party, with one man complaining about the “elites” who developed the Step Up Oklahoma plan of revenue and reforms.
Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett, a Republican candidate for governor, seemed to lose his cool briefly when pressed about the city taking water from Sardis Lake in southeastern Oklahoma.
“Don’t make this a rural versus urban thing,” Cornett, the mayor of the state’s largest city, said.
Tulsa attorney Gary Richardson defended himself for running as an independent in the 2002 gubernatorial race after a questioner suggested that his candidacy cost Republican Steve Largent the race.
Richardson said he had announced his candidacy well before Largent did, and he suggested that Largent was responsible for his loss.
“There’s one person that I’ve never heard say that I caused him to lose, and that’s Steve Largent,” Richardson said.
The forum was the first of the year to feature Cornett and Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb, the top two finishers in a SoonerPoll survey released last month.
None of the candidates
took direct shots by name at any of their rivals. Richardson alluded to two candidates getting tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from members of the Step Up Oklahoma coalition. That reference was to Lamb and Cornett, whose receipts of donations predated the Step Up coalition.
Cornett was later asked whether he had received campaign contributions from Step Up Oklahoma members.
“The leaders of that organization have been supporting my campaign,” Cornett said. “They’re business leaders.”
Oklahoma Auditor and Inspector Gary
Jones made references to the fundraising and self-funding of Lamb, Cornett, Richardson and Tulsa businessman Kevin Stitt, though not by name.
Jones delivered one of the few applause lines at the afternoon forum when he said oil and gas companies had gotten a major tax break on production from wells less than three years old.
“It’s time they pay their fair share like everyone else,” he said.
Jones is the only Republican gubernatorial candidate who has endorsed tax hikes similar to those in the Step Up Oklahoma plan. The rest of the candidates at the forum reiterated their opposition to tax increases, calling instead for detailed audits and more budget cuts.
Lamb complained that there were too many Oklahomans on Medicaid.
“We have over one million people on Medicaid in Oklahoma,” he said. “Out of a four million population, that’s 25 percent. That’s too high.”
In chronically poor Pittsburg County, where the Saturday forum was held, 30 percent of the population is on Medicaid, with the large majority of them children and elderly residents.
Stitt, the CEO of Gateway Mortgage Group, was asked whether his company had loaned money to people who weren’t qualified and then foreclosed on them.
Stitt responded that his company hadn’t been involved with subprime mortgage lending. He said he was forced by law to foreclose on people who didn’t make payments on their loans.