There are 10 candidates for Governor in the upcoming Republican primary election on June 26th.  If no candidate receives over 50% of the vote, then the top two candidates will duke it out on August 28th.  I only consider 6 of the 10 candidates to have any chance of making the run-off – Fisher, Stitt, Lamb, Jones, Cornett and Richardson.

Dan Fisher is what I call a true conservative. He believes in small government (both state and federal), low taxation, fewer regulations so the free market can actually work, state sovereignty, and he is pro-first and second amendments with a desire to increase state protections in these areas. A man of his word, Dan will govern just like he campaigned.

Dan Fisher is for proper government.  By that he means that our state government should focus on core functions (education, corrections, law enforcement, infrastructure, etc) and stay out of frivolous expenditures where government tries to pick winners and losers. A good example of frivolous expenditure is the subsidy our state has given to wind energy, exceeding over $100 million per year in recent times.

As Governor, Dan will work to return control of education to its rightful stakeholders: local citizens and their local school boards. Focusing attention on spending alone distracts us from focusing on the inefficiencies and over-regulation in our bureaucratic system. Our education dollars should be spent on teachers, classrooms, and students – not on duplicative administrative costs. The spending silos should be eliminated or reduced and spending decisions made at the local level.

As a former teacher and the husband of a teacher Dan supports the pay raise for teachers, but he is against the recent tax increase to fund the pay raise.  He is a signor of the petition to repeal the tax increase because he knows that the money for the pay raise is available without the tax increases.  The increased taxes simply grow government in the long term. The tax increases were nothing more than the liberals classic use of a “crisis” to achieve their long-term objective of more government spending and bigger government.

A pastor, Dan Fisher served two terms in the State House of Representatives.  He knows the Oklahoma swamp. Politicians are addicted to borrowing and spending, and  state bureaucracy is infected with waste, fraud, and abuse. Every agency should be thoroughly examined. However, Dan realizes that the Governor cannot change everything on his own. Dan believes the key to a successful term as Governor is strong principled leadership tempered with the spirit of diplomacy and effective use of the bully pulpit of the Governor’s Office.

None of the other candidates in the race for Governor are really true conservatives. Todd Lamb, Kevin Stitt and Mick Cornett all have a tendency to support the growth of government and increased taxes.  Stitt is the frontrunner in some polls, but he has serious legal problems in several states where he and his companies have been banned. Gary Richardson, to his credit, is also a signor of the tax petition, but my beef with Gary is that he ran for governor as an independent in 2002, receiving 14% of the vote and assuring Democrat Brad Henry won the race.  Gary knew that he could not win and he would siphon votes away from Steve Largent, the Republican candidate, and that is exactly what he did. I figure that if he turned on us once he sure might turn on us again.

All six of the candidates say they are pro-life, but I doubt five of them would do anything more than support laws to further regulate the legal murder of the unborn.  Unlike them, Dan Fisher wants to abolish abortion in Oklahoma and he has a plan to do so.

I will vote for Dan Fisher for Governor on June 26th.