Jones cites budget expertise in run for governor
Editor’s note:
This is the sixth in an occasional series about the candidates for Oklahoma governor.
Gary Jones tends to get deep into the weeds.
He’s a numbers guy, a certified public accountant who has been the state auditor and inspector for seven years.
So as he campaigns for governor, his knowledge of budget numbers and processes sometimes overwhelms opportunities for sound bites and slogans. Not to mention that it possibly bewilders listeners.
“We don’t need three different groups doing a budget,” Jones said at a recent forum in Crowder. “And we don’t need an office of budget and accountability because they’re conflicting functions.” When Jones veers off into budget jargon in his stump speeches, his point usually is that he has the expertise necessary to tackle the problems at the Capitol.
“I know how we got here and I know how we’re going to get out of it,” he said at an Oklahoma City forum.
“What you need is someone who can make intelligent decisions based on the facts. I’m the guy who understands it, and I’m the guy who can walk in make the
changes from day one.”
The Oklahoma primaries are on June 26.
Jones is the only Republican gubernatorial candidate to propose tax increases. He recently held a news conference with Democratic legislators to present a tax plan to pay for teacher pay raises.
That might seem odd for the former chairman of the Oklahoma Republican Party who spent years working to defeat Democratic legislators. Jones was party chairman from 2003 to 2010, a period when Republicans won control of the state House and Senate for the first time in history.
He wasn’t the pick of the party establishment, and some grumbled that he broke a sophisticated fundraising machine in place at GOP headquarters.
Jones said last week, “We registered record numbers of voters, identified who was for us and drove our (turnout) numbers up across the state.
“We literally took our party back from the consultants and turned it into a volunteer grassroots organization that was very successful.”
When he first won the job as state auditor in 2010, “people thought I’d be the most partisan person at the Capitol,” he said at a recent forum. “I’ve been the least.”
Doesn’t play well with others
Jones’ work to build a Republican majority in the Legislature doesn’t always seem to be appreciated by the lawmakers who benefited.
Two years ago, state officials sought to move the Auditor and Inspector’s office out of the Capitol, citing building renovations as the reason.
Jones took it as payback for being “a little too vocal talking about how much money the House and Senate is spending.”
He has also proposed that the House and Senate be combined into a single legislative body. And he wants the office of lieutenant governor eliminated or a work requirement imposed on the occupant.
It rankles Jones to see Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb, one of his rivals for the GOP nomination, arrive at political events in a big black SUV accompanied by taxpayer-provided security officers.
Jones sometimes makes reference to it in speeches, saying his wife serves as his campaign driver and security detail, but it’s not clear people understand the implication.
Jones’ most public confrontation with another state official came last year, when the former finance secretary called for Jones’ resignation, accusing him of not catching health department overspending before it became a crisis.
Jones defends himself and his office and says legislators were at fault for not realizing health department revenue had repeatedly fallen short.
“We are the ones who found” the problem, Jones said at a recent forum. “It should have been found by the Legislature.”
Jones has also been embroiled in a dispute with the attorney general’s office over an audit involving the relocation of residents near a polluted site in northeastern Oklahoma. Jones wants the audit released to the public. The last two
attorneys general have refused to make it public.
Draining the swamp
Jones, 63, was born at Fort Sill, and he has spent much of his life in around the town of Lawton, in southwestern Oklahoma. He and his wife, Mary Jane, a former teacher, have a ranch and a cow-calf operation near Cache.
He won a Comanche County commissioner race in 1994 but was defeated in his reelection bid.
As auditor, he has exposed financial misdeeds and corruption in state and local governments, with some of his findings leading to criminal cases and prison terms.
“People talk about draining the swamp,” he told Logan County Republicans earlier this month. “The difference is, I know where the plug is.”
He calls himself a “workhorse, not a showhorse” and talks like a populist.
“If the state income tax is 5 percent and it’s good enough for us, it ought to be good enough for the oil companies,” he said at a Republican gathering last month.
And if he’s not a fan of Republican legislative leaders, he at least has this in common with them: He thinks the state needs more money to give teachers a raise and stabilize the budget.
“It’s really easy to say ‘cut, cut, cut’ because that’s politically correct,” he said recently.
“We need more revenue to make this work. We have to do it based on logic and the real numbers and quit playing games.”