Jennettie Marshall for State Superintendent

While any given RINO is usually better than any given Democrat, the race for State Superintendent of Public Instruction this year is a different matter. I'm crossing party lines to vote for the principled and more conservative candidate in the race, the Rev. Dr. Jennettie Marshall.

Marshall served two four-year terms representing District 3 (north Tulsa) on the Board of Education for Tulsa Public Schools. As a Tulsa school board member, Jennettie Marshall began calling for an audit of TPS shortly after she was elected in 2016. When Republican District 4 board member E'Lena Ashley joined her on the board in 2020, the two courageously pushed for a state audit of TPS finances, which uncovered criminal wrongdoing. Meanwhile, most of her fellow board members (including Democrat congressional nominee John "Flaky" Croisant) turned a blind eye and enabled the fraud and waste that has led to the current round of school closings.

Marshall was a critic of then-Superintendent Deborah Gist and opposed the board majority's annual votes to extend Gist's contract. When Gist resigned, and the board majority decided to bypass the process for hiring a new Superintendent set out in board policy, Marshall and Ashley joined in a lawsuit to hold the district accountable for apparent violations of the Oklahoma Open Meeting Act.

When the audit was released in 2025, Marshall and Ashley held a press conference to review the findings. Jennettie Marshall's wise words about accountability and transparency are worth repeating:

It is incumbent upon us, now that the truth is out, that we help you understand how we got to this point....

What has happened, and it has been consistent in the eight years that I've been on the board, is that we had a culture of doing what we want to do regardless of what the law states or our own policy insists that we do and that was echoed in the report of our state auditor.

Some would ask, "Well, how did you know" -- and I've heard that question -- "how did you know things weren't right?" From day one, when a school district declares that it's having to do a reorganization, which means means that many people lost their jobs behind the financial improprieties and the mismanagement of the district, and the criminal malfeasance of the board, who refuse to do their job.

Most of you have heard me say: "Friendships and kinships sink ships," meaning when we make our decisions based on our friendships and those that we're related to, those that we play golf with, those that we sat down and have a Jack Daniels and Coke with, those are bad decisions, because they are not informed decisions and the board has been guilty of making those decisions, even in the midst of being called out....

We like to use that word, "governance." The board's job is to govern. We're governance. Well, why is it that we go through the fact that we hire people, we do things, and to govern, you have to know and have information? To govern without information, being informed, what that is is a rubber stamp, and that is the problem that has existed over and over again with the district.

I encourage you to listen to Jennettie Marshall's comments, to hear not only the strong message she delivers, but the heart with which she delivers it.

James Taylor, the conservative who lost the Republican runoff to Franklin, writes of Marshall:

I have met with Dr. Marshall and her campaign manager three times, and I genuinely like her. She is a pastor, she is pro-life, she opposes gender-transition procedures for minors, and she is a fighter. In many ways, she is more conservative than Franklin.

Unfortunately, her own party has not stood behind her. The Democratic Party has encouraged voters to support Franklin instead, she is missing from some county party websites, and she has not received financial support from the party. I asked her why she would remain loyal to a party that has not been loyal to her, and I encouraged her to consider becoming a Republican. I believe she would move our state in the right direction.

It's too late, of course, to change parties for this election cycle. Despite the best efforts of the liberal public ed establishment to nominate a white liberal, Marshall prevailed in the Democrat primary.

The same failed educational establishment opposes Marshall in the general, preferring Robert Franklin, the liberal pretend-Republican who considers conservative Christians hateful.

Everything about Robert Franklin's campaign has been phony. When asked why Franklin switched parties to Republican, "a party that had already shown its character or lack of," campaign consultant Fount Holland, who was indicted for his actions in the 2014 Superintendent campaign of Joy Hofmeister (another phony Republican), replied, "To win! It's been two decades since a Dem won statewide and won't happen again in my lifetime."

Note that Holland, who has made piles of money tearing down conservative candidates in Republican primaries for decades, didn't justify Franklin's change of party based on the superiority of Republican principles or the crazy ideas that have become mainstream in the Democrat Party. Instead, he applauded Franklin's move as cynical politics over principle.

Over the years, I've noticed that it's easier for Republican elected officials and Republican Party officials to oppose bad ideas from a Democrat elected official than the same bad ideas coming from a Republican. While Marshall does not profess to be a conservative, she has a record of holding public school officials accountable for their use of public funds and for educational results. Marshall would object and has objected to misdirection of school funds for useless (at best) and fraudulent (at worst) consultants. That's a big part of what's wrong with public schools in Oklahoma.

Another big part has to do with educational philosophy, and the public ed establishment's insistence on buying new curriculum and adopting new teaching methods for novelty's sake, with a veneer of irreproducible social "science" research to justify the cost. Oklahoma needs to recover the lost tools of learning, the methods and techniques that taught generations of Americans who were, on the whole, better educated after 8th grade than present-day students are after 13 years in school. Marshall seems more open to the tried-and-true than Franklin.

The State Superintendent does not have plenary power over Oklahoma schools. The Superintendent serves as chairman of the State Board of Education, but the governor appoints five members of that board, who serve at his pleasure. Whoever is elected Superintendent, Gov. Mazzei needs to appoint board members who are solidly conservative and well-versed in educational matters. (Nathan Phelps, the founding father of Tulsa Classical Academy, ought to be the top name on his list.) Jennettie Marshall has demonstrated that she can collaborate with conservatives for positive outcomes. Robert Franklin has made clear his contempt for Bible-believing Christian conservatives.

Many of my Republican friends have said they plan to leave the State Superintendent race blank on their ballots, because they can't bring themselves to vote for anyone with the label Democrat. James Taylor wrote, "However, a vote for a Democratic candidate is, in my view, a vote for the Democratic platform, and that is not something I can support." I understand that sentiment, but in this case a vote for Marshall is a vote for Marshall's platform, history, and character, which is better than Franklin's in every respect. Marshall has been rejected by leftist Democrats who love Franklin. Which candidate is more likely to staff the State Department of Education with leftist, anti-Christian zealots? Marshall is unlikely to hire the same people who tried to block her election. Taylor's concern would be valid if the State Superintendent had broader powers, or if her election would shift the balance of political power in the state in some way, but that's not the case.

I believe that as good stewards of our precious right to vote, we have an obligation to vote for the candidate who will do the most good and the least harm. I urge conservatives to join me in voting for Jennettie Marshall.