Stitt discounts Cornett’s tenure as OKC mayor
WEATHERFORD — Kevin Stitt brought his runoff campaign for the Republican gubernatorial nomination to the stronghold of rival Mick Cornett this week and said he could beat the former Oklahoma City mayor in his own backyard.
“We are not giving up any counties,” Stitt said in an interview here Tuesday. “We think we can win in Oklahoma City.”
Stitt, chief executive of a mortgage company based in the Tulsa area, took aim at Cornett’s message that his role in Oklahoma City’s growth has prepared him to be governor.
Stitt called Cornett “a nice guy” but said Oklahoma City manager Jim Couch, who has held the position since November 2000, “is the guy that is — no nonsense — running the city.”
Stitt said, “The mayor of Oklahoma City isn’t even the chief executive of the city. It’s a city manager run system. And the city manager has been there for 20 years and he’s the one that hires and fires and motivates and sets strategy.”
In response on Wednesday, Couch said, “More than any other person, Mick Cornett played the primary leadership role in Oklahoma City’s renaissance. Would the Oklahoma City Thunder be here without Mick? No. Would MAPS 3 have passed without Mick? No. The Core to Shore project was his vision. There was no better city spokesperson in the country.”
Speaking here Tuesday in Custer County, which Cornett won on June 26, Stitt told 20 people who came to see him at a local restaurant, “I don’t think we need the mayor of Oklahoma City to be the next governor. We don’t need a governor of Oklahoma City for sure. We need a governor for all four million Oklahomans.”
Stitt had public events scheduled this week all over the state, while Cornett’s campaign spokesman said Cornett’s lone public event this week was a speech to young farmers at Quartz Mountain on Saturday evening.
Cornett had told the Oklahoma Republican Party that he would attend a party-sponsored event in Oklahoma City on Saturday evening at which Stitt is planning to appear. Cornett canceled his appearance on Wednesday, according to a party official.
Runoff elections are
scheduled for Aug. 28.
Cornett, 59, finished first on June 26 in the 10-man Republican primary for governor. He received 132,806 votes, 29 percent; Stitt, 45, received 110,479 votes, 24 percent.
Stitt has reported about $5 million in campaign contributions, with $2.8 million coming from personal loans.
He said Tuesday he has not put any personal funds into the race since a $606,000 loan on June 16 but that he expects to add more of his own cash before the runoff election.
“I want to win this race,” Stitt said. “So we’re going to do what it takes to win
the race. But I’m not going to blindly fund it either. I’m trying to match dollar for dollar (with donors). We had to put a little bit more extra in that last quarter.”
Cornett, who served 14 years as Oklahoma City mayor and was a local television reporter before that, won strong margins on June 26 in the Oklahoma City metro area, which has three of the state’s four counties with the highest Republican registration — Oklahoma, Canadian and Cleveland.
Stitt was in Oklahoma County on Monday and plans to return on Thursday. He held a public event in Canadian
County on Tuesday.
Stitt, who got to the runoff by edging out Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb, the early favorite in the GOP race, told people here and in El Reno on Tuesday that his success was proof voters were looking for someone who hadn’t been in politics before.
He said in an interview, “My message doesn’t change. I still have the resumé that people are looking for, the outsider that people are looking for. I’m going to keep hammering that message home that the guys that got us into this mess can’t get us out of it.”