Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are not exactly two peas in a pod, but in policy and governing style they're close to it. So if Oklahoma Republicans like Stitt, they'll like DeSantis.
That seemed to be the message Saturday afternoon as DeSantis brought his 2024 presidential campaign to a small but packed event venue in far east Tulsa.
In introducing DeSantis, Stitt went through a checklist of similarities between their administrations and declared himself "officially, 100%, endorsing Ron DeSantis."
Stitt is the first governor to endorse DeSantis.
DeSantis own list of achieved gubernatorial objectives, covered during a roughly 20-minute speech to several hundred sweating supporters and prospects at the F&E Creek Event Center, 18280 E. 11th St., sounded remarkably similar.
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School choice. No mask mandates or shut-downs for COVID-19. No DEI or ESG. No "transgender ideology." Absolutely nothing "woke." Strict abortion laws. "Liberal" judges ousted.
"Conservative polices work," DeSantis said. "Oklahoma is a great example of that. Gov. Stitt can put points on the board as any governor in the country."
DeSantis gave "wokeness" quite a bit of attention.
"We are declaring war on woke ideology, because woke ideology represents a war on truth," DeSantis said.
Of course, one person's truth is another's lie, and DeSantis never really defined what he meant by "woke," but his crowd got the message. Anything that challenged individual freedom, or what Stitt referred to as "traditional family values," was not to be tolerated.
"I was one of the few governors in the country who refused to do a mask mandate (because of COVID-19)," Stitt said in his introduction of DeSantis. "Guess who the other governor was? Ron DeSantis.
"We held the line during COVID when freedom itself hung in the balance," DeSantis said. "I refused to let my state descend into some kind of Faucian dystopia where people's livelihoods were destroyed. … We chose freedom over Faucianism."
The reference to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the federal government's top epidemiologists, raised the issue of whether the policies pursued by DeSantis and Stitt, which to a large degree ignored the advice of Fauci and other medical experts, turned out to be the correct ones. DeSantis seems to think they were — or that enough voters believe they were.
"We will usher in a reckoning of the federal government's disastrous COVID-19 lockdown policies," DeSantis said later in his speech. "The lockdowns, the mandates, the Fauciism. Those policies were destructive. Those polices were wrong. We're going to hold agencies … accountable for their failures because we should never have let this happen to our country."
Attempts to direct policy through such things as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion — DEI — and Environmental, Social and Governance — ESG — must be stopped.
DEI and ESG, DeSantis said, are based on lies, and his administration is and would be rooted in truth — an assertion disputed by many who do not fit the demographic profile of Saturday's crowd.
But it played well with those who were there, which is really what matters for a candidate to trying to take out a frontrunner — former President Donald Trump — with a 30-point lead in national polling.
DeSantis said he plans to be back in Oklahoma several times — "in a cooler venue," he promised — before next year's primary. And he has some allies in the state.
Besides Stitt, former 1st District Congressman Jim Bridenstine, a fellow Navy veteran elected to the U.S. House of Representatives the same year as DeSantis, spoke on the Florida governor's behalf.
Several legislators, including Rep. Terry O'Donnell, R-Catoosa, and Sen. Joe Newhouse, R-Broken Arrow, attended and sat near the front of the house.
"Oklahoma," said Stitt, "loves Ron DeSantis."
