Steak & Eggs at the corner of Taft and Mission in Sapulpa is generally pretty busy during breakfast, but on Thursday morning it wasn’t just the early-bird specials that had people visiting the restaurant.
Near the entrance, there was a man in a red hat that said “Make Turnpikes Free Roads Again”. He was handing out brochures and factoids about Governor hopeful Gary Richardson. In the Veteran’s Hall dining room, you could find the man himself, who in his black suit, white hair and striking smile, bore a sharp resemblance to televangelist Jesse Duplantis.
And like a televangelist, Gary Richardson all but held up a sign saying “the end is near” when asked about his platform.
The end of what, you ask? Why, the end of toll gates, of course.
Make Turnpikes Free Roads Again
Richardson’s website is clear on his message, and his answers on Thursday morning echoed the sentiment: “We don’t know who owns the bonds, who owned the property before the turnpike authority purchased the land. We don’t know how much money the turnpike authority truly spends!” said Richardson.
He also points out that unbeknownst to many Oklahomans, not one dime of the toll gate money comes back to the state treasury. The Oklahoma Turnpike Authority also does not pay any property taxes. “Despite all of this,” Richardson says, “we have never had a Governor in our state call for an independent, forensic audit of the Oklahoma Turnpikes.”
The Turnpike is not the only target Richardson has for auditing. While he says that his administration would audit every single state agency, looking for corruption and waste, he focused specifically on the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority, the Grand River Dam Authority, the state’s private prison system, and the education system. He also intends to audit the Oklahoma Health Department, since it hasn’t been done since 2003.
Not content to let one audit tell the whole story, Richardson also pledged that the top twelve agencies that make up the top 90% of Oklahoma’s budget will continue to be audited every four years.
The Fight Against Corruption
The challenge of fighting corruption and waste might seem to come easier to Gary Richardson, because he’s been through it before as a lawyer. Appointed to the U.S. Attorney’s position of the eastern district of Oklahoma by President Ronald Reagan, Richardson was instrumental in the County Commissioner Scandal that rocked the nation in the early 1980s. Closing out at 230 convictions or guilty pleas, it was the largest public corruption case in the United States.
The scandal—an investigation into Oklahoma county commissioners taking kickbacks and stealing money through fake invoices—involved over 60 of Oklahoma’s 77 counties.
Creek County was not one of them.
Nevertheless, all the convictions were brought to be bear by three U.S. Attorneys: Bill Price, Gary Richardson, and Frank Keating, who would later become Oklahoma’s 25th governor.
Richardson believes that kind of approach is needed to better fund the state without raising taxes. “I’m a git-er-done kinda guy,” he says. “I’m challenge-driven, always have been. I do not believe that raising taxes is the answer to this problem.”
“Plugging The Holes”
“When states around us are doing so much better than we are, it’s difficult to sit back and watch it happen.” Richardson says.
He points out that Arkansas has an $800 million surplus, while Oklahoma sits at a deficit of over $878 million.
“And they don’t have the oil we’ve got. They don’t have the turnpikes we’ve got. But we’ve been told that we must have those turnpikes. My question is why?” he says.
Richardson points back to the Turnpikes and to audits and “plugging the holes” as the answer to several of Oklahoma’s problems, including funding education, lowering taxes and enticing more businesses to come to Oklahoma.
“Removing toll gates off of our Turnpikes will help open the pathways for more business to come to Oklahoma,” Richardson says. “The Governor is the only one with any control over that agency. They have to approve rate increases and approve board members.”
Richardson says that three people—including a former governor—tried to convince him there was no need for an audit of the Oklahoma Turnpike System.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmqHO9aYs6A
In a video posted on Wednesday, Sapulpa Times asked readers for questions they’d like to have Richardson answer. One question given was our state’s private prison system.
“I’m completely against the private prison system,” Richardson says. “Prison is supposed to be a core government service. Oklahoma is number one in the nation for imprisoning women. We’re imprisoning people we’re mad at, rather than trying to rehabilitate them. Something has to be done.”
Richardson also supports stricter guidelines on opiates, and severe penalties for doctors who violate those guidelines.
Richardson was a Democrat until the 70s, when he began to seriously consider a run for Congress. It was at that point he realized his values more closely aligned with the Republican party than the Democratic party and he switched. In several ways, Richardson seems like the he adheres to the traditional Republican value system (pro-life, pro-second-amendment, anti-gay-marriage), but in other ways he’s a stark contrast, with all his talk about auditing, rather than raising the debt ceiling to fix the problem.
“We keep pouring money into the system without checking on where it’s going,” Richardson says.
He also acknowledges that Republicans have not been the perfect party for Oklahoma to this point. “Both parties have gotten us to where we are.” he says.
Richardson strongly believes it’s in his nature to fight for his clients, and believes that if Oklahoma’s citizens were his “clients,” he would fight whatever fights necessary to fix the state.
“I was held in contempt of court eight times because I wouldn’t back down from a bullying judge who didn’t want to give my client everything they were entitled to.”
Richardson says he has never actually received punishment for any of those contempt charges, because he was always within his rights.
Richardson tried unsuccessfully to run for Governor in 2002, as an independent. He received 14% of the vote, placing third behind Democrat Brad Henry and Republican Steve Largent.
Henry beat Largent by a margin of less than 7,000 votes, making Richardson’s 14% a notable amount of support.
Richardson now believes that he has the sort of leadership that is needed to move the state forward, which is why he has not only picked up the chance to run again—this time as a Republican—but has put in his $1 million of his own money into his campaign as an effort to steer clear of special interest groups. “The people of Oklahoma are my only special interest group,” he says.
While the message of his campaign in 2002 is largely the same as it was fifteen years ago, the difference is the leadership calling the shots. Richardson says the need for a change is dire. “We’re not a poor state, we’re a state with poor leadership.”
Learn more about candidate Gary Richardson at https://www.garyrichardson.org
