Ep 101: Gov. Kevin Stitt — the Businessman Governor Standing Up to Special Interests
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We love our police were a law in order state. They have a seventy five percent penchant plain. In other words, if you're an emo klauber, you worked there for twenty years, you cap out of one hundred and sixteen thousand years seventy five percent at your retirement for life, eighty seven thousand hours year.

That is a lot of money. The police lobby came into the capital and they said, seven, five, since not enough, we want to go to many percent. This will take our pension plans right? And I veto.

We just had our annual courage awards and my policy institute, the sister institute, where we partner with and celebrate courageous policy leaders. Governor Kevin state of oklahoma was a successful businessman. He saw some really big issues with the state, major budget deficit.

Lots of this function motola PH. He said to go in and not like a business. Oklahoma now is growing one of the fastest states in the country. Budget surpluses, doing amazing work, been really bold on great issues like choice and otherwise, and is really stood up to special interest. Really interesting to hear from him even in a ruby red state, as he'll tell you, all seventy seven counties, one for the right in this election, even there, there is a lot of special interest, not our things.

to fight as well. But Kevin sits a bold leader, and I think you'll enjoy here from him everywhere what's on the country in the election gulab. I think you're the only stay where every one of your counties a voted for president. True is all seventy seven.

I don't know. You saw there a mame going around that there is no perfect state and they were no, wait minute, lama. Every single counting went trump. And trump t loves bragin about that. All seventy seven counties.

You begin your career in the private sector. You found to get way more years in two thousand built into a national company. I think you started with a thousand dollars. The computer tells about your own journey.

I grew olam. I I, big, triple stand up with everybody twenty six years. And we have six six kids from yeah twenty six years, twenty four thousand and and I I grew up in Norman. Dad was a pastor and then I moved to went to school and water oil estate.

I was always entrepreneur r want to to have no business and so um starting my company like a lot of us uh entrepreneurs with a thousand dollars in the computer and then grew that over the next twenty years. And I grew up over a thousand employees bottle bank um and you just was kind of live in the american dream. Um and then really the reason I ran for for office two thousand eighty, I never ran for office before.

H but I started seeing my state struggle and we were having billion dollars during deficits. We will have a teacher walkout. As I travelled other states, I saw the all the state pride and these other states, and then I started thinking and look and and see who was running.

And IT was just more the same, just the same career politicians. And and then I realized, our founders never envision politics to be like a profession, like a climb. The latter, they thought you were going to be a successful business person or farmer venture, and you go leave that to go serve your country, your state.

And that's what I promised to the home and I would do. And and uh, today, we've got the largest savings account we've ever had. Um we've got we've done tax cuts, done more money in the education than any other governor in my first five years and I did for twenty five years before I got there.

amazing more money to school choice. And anyone else do relatives size your state? What would you say to your fellow business? Leers want to get involve in politics.

More guys step up. So I on tuesday night, I mean, wednesay morning, I felt like the sun was a little brighter in IT. And what I remind oklahomans and really americans is, I mean, if if you look at the results of the people running for office versus president trump, I mean, running state government specifically is really a lot like running a business.

There's thirty thousand eight employees in lahoma. We were a state of four million people. We have a twenty two billion dollar budget, and that's what we love present. True, because of I went for free markets and it's so much bigger than just the people at the top of the ticket.

And if you think about you personalities that people kind of vote for this person or that person, but really you have to think about energy policy, you have to think about regulation policy, foreign policy. You mention that um you know sanctions on iran, all the good things that are gonna en with the trump administration, uh, is so much bigger than one person, is actually the free markets that we believe in that there was a huge win for the american people. Uh, inflation going down, all the things that we believe in.

Uh, it's going to be a great next four years. Look at markets. The markets were up like four point four percent just over the last three days with the trump presidency.

where we're very excited about god can steal for us to see a lot of really positive things. I believe in a ball for western and civilization. I think this battle is is a really tough and we really have to fight to when I think there's really dangerous ideological cancers.

How could we be more bold in this fight? Are you seeing this even in your state? Is there other ways the woke nonsense gets in the thing, cohen, and how you thinking you're fighting?

I mean, there there's just a everything is a fight and you said at best, when you're up, they're talking if you if you're moving the needle, if you're actually making change, they're going to come out of the woodwork and you're going to fight you. I mean, this is just unbeliever, our school choice plan. So I tell people all the time, I say, listen, rich people already have school choice.

They could put their kids at any school they want. They they're going to move to a certain district based on the school. If your kids started getting into, you know, hanging out the wrong crowd, if your daughter was hanging off the wrong crowd, if i've got into drugs, you would do whatever could to pull your kids.

But i'm telling you guys, if any of you were governor and you would have to talk to the single month or the single dads that were like, governor, what am I lose to do? I don't have the resources. I can't move my kid.

And then during covin, I was one of the only governors in the country, by the way, that refused to do a mass Mandate, say, why. But we had we had a couple of big school districts. And like a lot of stage, you know, it's kind of the independent of the school districts that were closed now told of public schools was closed for three hundred and fifty five days.

I hammed them every day because the moms that would tell me, governor, my first writers, not learning in how to read on zoom right now, and I have to go to work during the day. And and I would have been the biggest hippocras my kids were in school entire time, right? And that's what drove me crazy about some of the other governors from the other side of the eye.

Their kids were were in private school, and they were saying that what is safe to go to public schools? So I really got passion about school choice, and I know what my own six kids, not all of them learn the same way. And so we pass what I think is the best school choice plan in the country. Now every single family has up to seven thousand, five hundred dollars of a refunded able tax credit to go to a school of their choice and is just amazing and our people all over the state coming up and thanking me, they didn't know how they could pay for that uh, regular working people and just so thankful that now they have options. And you know why you talk about free market principles, jex competition in the education system, and now everybody has to get Better.

And you've also shown tremendous courage. We mentioned on the issue of homelessness ness. This one is important for a lot of reasons.

First of all, there's the use number of people suffering with bad, but second of all, uh, and this country gos receive over hundred billion dollars of funding from governments now is actually probably not hire them at the last administration started not reporting anymore how much to to their friends run ng s and these things tend to be unaccountable, attend to be corrupt, and they tend to want to like make problems worse because that's what they justify more funding. So it's a very, very broken system in our country. And of course, because of that, they really attacked anyone to goes after them. As you had the protesters in your office trying to intimate you like, why was this important you and and take us through .

that soga leaders have to leave. So I I remind my staff like, you know, governor, there's this many people that don't want us to do that. And i'm like this there there are some people onna complain if your ice screens cold, right you cannot please everybody um but in this situation is pretty tty straight forward to me.

We want okon to be the most business friendly state. And if you've got homeless camps, if you have you know um people camping out on public places around your city is super hard uh, for people to want to go to business there. They want to bring their family there.

And we don't want to be we're not being cabalist. We're not going to be in hard on that. We we just do not believe building hammons. We want to build a tramp ee for people for these some of these services, right? Well, um I don't think thrown money at this problem is the right solution.

And so we ban obviously camped on kind of public places, and then we had to change the law of our police, of his mental health addiction. And and so our police at first could not weren't allowed to take anybody except to jail. So we had the right different laws to make sure that they can take him to a treatment center.

exactly. And so we put more, we put a lot of money in mental health. We set up what's called be a neighbor, because I believe that more government is not the solution.

Ronal right and set of us know most of time, government is not the solution. Government is the problem. yeah. And and I believe that, especially i've been on the inside now.

So we set up be a neighbor and and really at the of the day, to change society is a neighbor. Walk with the neighbor. And so engaging the churches, we just rolled out our faith based initials and oklahoma n of a password. And I know that people's hard are to help people in in different situations. So we're just trying to use the the government to connect and to promote some of those non on profit, some of those churches, whether it's homelessness, mental illness, uh, incarceration coming out of incarceration, coming age, out of forest care, all those type of situations.

I love IT. And, you know, on the board of wrong rag and library, he said the scarious eight words in the english language are, hear from the government here, help republic governor deeper red. And i'm curious, so we know there we're non personal animation, obviously of the liberty said liberty items are line with the right much more often.

But I feel like a special interest in our country on on both sides on, i'm curious being a deeper and state, what were the biggest of schools you face? Are there other special interests? Are the things that go against you from that?

I tell people in business such a pure, you know, way to make decisions you get together. And I we believe businesses are trying to take care their customers, their employees, the trying to take care in the environment, trying to do the right thing. And in what what I realized, because i've never been in politics, that you could hire a lobby st, and you could go to the state capital and you could get legislation written that would be supportive of your business or your industry. And is just so this heartening for me to think about um when when the right decision is really clear what to do uh and the money is always on the yes side and i'll give you couple examples.

But I mean what mean money on the yes side? I tell people all the time that that that you know oklahomans aren't coming to me and in hiring A L lobby's to say no, right? The only the money is on the yes side is going to benefit someone.

There are the ones that have the money to hire the lobby's to go hip up the legislature, to get up past. I'll give me perfect ample this session. So pension plans for police, right? Uh, we support our police in oka home.

And I give your story after story, i've given a pay raises. We love our police were a long order state, okay? They have a seventy five percent pension plane. So in other words, if you're an emo klahowya regular place after you worked there for twenty years, you cap out at one hundred and sixty thousand years seventy five percent at your retirement you get for life eighty seven thousand thousand year. That is A A lot of money in the private sector.

How much would you have to spend? We probably have actually in here that can tell us, or insurance people, if I want, how much, how many million would have to give you to guarantee the eighty seven thousand of a life. And that is probably follows to my wife, right? entered.

I passed the way too. So a long store here. But so last session, the the police lobby came into the capital and they said, seven, five, since not enough, we want to go to nine percent. Okay, so now that hundred sixteen thousand goes to one hundred four thousand.

Well, this will take our pension plans right? And I Z to right, I Z to that bill, well, all the the police stand up in the gali and they are start running ads stip you tes police bb blog and i'm like, no, I love the taxpayer and this this is unbelievable amount of money to give because here's the deal. As soon as they get ninety percent, yes, what the highway patrol, because that was only municipally the highway patrol, the teachers, every other fireman, every every other pension fine would come next year with their, with their hand out.

And the police all get up in the gallery. They put so pressure on the legislature that they overturn the vita. And so that's a perfect example.

help. You have to, you have to be bold. The lady that ran the bill lost her primary, by the way.

okay. So lahoma's know these legislature are just so in bed with the lobby as the special interests groups. And I can get very this hearts, me, for the taxpayers.

this a little bit more about policy. You said an ambitious goal for slashing red tape, which I have tells about your progress .

on one you think about and and you think about red tape. I pass several different executive orders, and one of them was, if we're going to do, we're going to promote ate rules or rule is from a state agcy, right? So if you're going to add another rule, we want you to go through and scrub the list and get rid of two rules, right?

So pretty, pretty easy to do because over a hundred years we became a state nineteen thousand seven. You just get these rules and these laws and these things that are duplicated IT just comes up business. And so we've done that.

Uh, the other thing that I did that really upset, you know, the apple card a little bit with the state, with the, with the government is I passed assigned A O that said, if you don't have a partment done to business within forty days, it's free. I love, okay, because we want we want government to be moving at the speed of business and partner is a big deal, huge deal. If you have shovel ready sites, if you have these municipalities that are that are stopping development, you talk about housing Prices and why that's happiness because the developers aren't allowed to get those lots develop to seven.

One of our friends here does amazing policy work that done was forty five days for texas. You beat us with thirty days. So is a good one.

Are you? Are you open to and set causes, for example, on regulations? Like what else can we do to stop the regulatory state? You looked into some of those things. One of our new policies, we think they are regulations should just automatic go away every eight to ten years unless they're justified by the staff with the data because they just waiting many of them.

What do you think? Oh, one hundred percent. yeah. We should be putting in a sunset provisions for state agencies. There's a way to many boards, commissions.

But even on the sunset is so frustrated for me as governor that a sunset will come up and they'll send me a legislation that says, well, let's keep IT going for like another three years, all right? And i've, we tell them, and my favorite want to do, and I don't know how how this crowd really like this one, but O E T A right? So state public state, uh, state funded television and i'm like, why are we in the television business? Why do I spend taxpayer dollars? And then they just attack me.

Well, you're not going to be able to the street and big bird. Like I don't know, i'm sure that other stations are going to pick that programing up. I don't know why I have to fund this. And this is just super liberal. And the programing that they do, the induction of the kid.

even the red state, they always do, always see the anti market stuff in these .

problems hundred percent. And then, but the legislature hope they cave to pressure they overall. The so you would think that that because then all the lobby comes in and all the people come in, oh, we can't let O E T A fall apart. The sun will come up tomorrow if we don't have a state agency. That's all have to tell you.

He got to work on .

the courage for some of these legislators with.

I need some of the a the job on school choice, which we talked about, is very important. I think about the money for size your states on potentially record. Other than that, how do we push back on on some of public education issues? Our country, in the local home, Thomas jeffson, one of our founder of our country, he thought he had that public education, but the number one reason he gave was that you want to teach the kids and teach our citizens in a democracy about the dangers of despatie m, about the dangers of what today we call socialism, right? And in the dangers of big government, as literally the reason I had thought we had education, it's funny to me because he feels like publicis ducato in opposite right now. I like them about big government to hate our country and to want C R T N D I and all this nonsense, like what else who we be doing there to fight them.

Obviously assign executive order that ban D I teaching in our universities. We've done that. Bin carson has a great program called little patria that were rolled and out through the state, oklahoma, uh, for elementary kids to teach this patriotic about our founding fathers and the greatness of our country. Um so but I think the other thing that I to talk about real quick and education is we have lost our way, telling you it's pretty simple when I sit down with with our higher ed, with our career tax with with common education and i'm saying, guys, it's really simple.

Let's get every kid a ready for the workforce and let's that's mere the businesses of what the workforce needs they have with our education system now and and i'll give you a quit example so when I first became governor, uh the the big hospital CEO came to me and just said, we don't have enough nurses. We need more nurses. Some like no problem on the governor. I can fix this up.

Uh so I go to the university of calm a health science and IT and i'm like tell me how many how many nurses you are you're kick in out every year and they said, well, governor, it's complicated the'd never rent any question um you got to ask like twelve questions deep C E O S in the room know that the first question I want to spend in a circle um but two hundred and fifty finally get the answer two hundred fifty I said how many applicants are you well we get about five hundred and fifty applicants and I like well in business if I have five hundred and fifty people that want to do business with me, and they have the ability to pay and the ability to do IT, i'm gna figure out a way to do and then they start there. A credibility and student to faculty racial, you know, blab lab blows. So then you yet to ask couple more questions, where how many student of raw let's go find and then you keep asking these.

And then my favorite press conference was a couple years ago and and at the O U. hel. Science center in the president, joe haris and I got up there and we probably announce there were six hundred nursing applicants to ou nursing school.

And we accept that all six hundred. And I just think that's a perfect example. You have to push some of these folks because of them is just a lot of work. The other thing is in education we need to start focusing on um you know the careers if you go, if you go to the universe of all calm or OK estate, you get an engineer degree, you let me find in a job but if you get to assembly study the group, yeah you're in trouble right? And we talked about that earlier.

Um so every kid is not going to go to college, but so we just set up I went to Normal high school and we just set up an aviation high school in Norman. So now if you want to become an A P mechanic, when you're a freshman in high school, you can go to this special high school. And by the time you graduate, your name p mechanic.

And american airlines is five thousand employees are in told oklahoma than we've got. Take a air force base with thirty thousand employees. They need more amp.

mechanics. And the american airlines executives are set in the sea level room with them. And I was asking them these questions, and I said, governor, you know what? We start in A M.

P. Mechanic in tlc, oklahoman. I said, what's they said, seventy thousand a year. I went home and I told my son, I said you were become an IP making and and then I and then they said, I said, how many of you all started as an A P mechanic? This is the sea level room.

And then like forty percent, the room raised their hand, because then you can go on to get your bag, and you can get your masters, and you can work your way up. But we need to be taking outside the box. And I think germany, these other countries do a Better job of the premierships. Any kids ready for the workforce?

amazing. We love transparency, accountability for these places and act. Turns out the majors that are useful tend to be a less ideological, the one they're not useful. So IT works out for our goals. You know, I want to ask your term with that is governor what you hope to achieve that any of your second time.

your plans to do next? yes. So I was just talking to mr. Weekly about and you know, one of the things we're going to do is a contract with oklahoma, and we're going to roll this out. It's probably i'm probably spoil in to here for if it's on T V. For recordings, but uh, it's a contract with oklahoma that we're going to get in our constitution, what we call table.

And basically, IT is a limit to the growth of state government and it's limit to you take a base year and is living to inflation plus population growth because the question always ask is, how looks should government be right? And in my state of state last year, I use this example to try to encourage us to keep, keep spending down, is I gave two examples of two states, florida, new york. Okay, about the same size population.

New york is actually smaller now. The floor. So new york, about one thousand, nine point eight million.

Florida, little over twenty million. So let's talk about their budgets. You would think they are about the same size, same population.

New york is two hundred and thirty three billion is the state budget. What do you think? Florida a is hundred and fifty billion, okay? And Flora has a zero percent in contacts.

New york east ten point nine plus the city tax in new york city. They're in a death spiral. We know this in business.

They can never catch up. And the wealthy is leaving. The taxpayers are leaving.

All they can do is race taxes. They can't cut IT. You look at their pension.

And so if I can limit the growth in state government and oklahoma, if I would have have that they want an office, I would be, I would have been able to cut taxes more and more and more than i've already done. But what happens is government can never spend enough your money. It's just so true. And and so when I am the businessman and governors, our economies been booming, were top ten of people moving into our state. And when we have a billion or surplus, the legislature just tries to spending because they want to .

play sanc laws to everyone. Lastly, I want to ask you an amazing business or what do you play next after .

you're done your right now, my plan is to go back to the private sector. I that's what I promised oklahomans that I would do and go live about the same rules that we've had to create. And and and I just think that's what we supposed to. And i'll plod and two on the next person, and and we will see if, uh, you know, uh, obvious ly ready to serve our country anyway. Anyway.

we are, you opto tic about the future of our country.

I misc, especially trap the wide house. It's not this. We.

but thank you for your courage. thanks. You've been in a moto government.