Republican State Chairman David Weston today attacks the Democratic nominee for schools superintendent, John Cox, in a Facebook posting.
The posting contains this image. TMR has asked Weston for more details.
Cox faces Joy Hofmeister on the November ballot. The most recent poll has the two essentially tied with less than a month to election day.
In a news release, Weston wrote:
Cox currently serves as Superintendent for the Peggs, Oklahoma, school district, which is a kndergarten through eighth grade district comprised of roughly 238 students. Among the issues are failures to comply with state law concerning Oklahoma’s Open Meetings Act.
Republican Party Chairman Dave Weston explained, “We have a candidate for State Superintendent who does not understand the need to obey state law by making his board meetings public. And yet this small school administrator thinks he can run one of the largest departments in the state.”
Weston continued, “Openness and clarity have always been the best way to avoid corruption and the Open Meetings Act was designed to encourage and enforce the type of transparency that leads to good government.”
According to state statute (Title 25; Sections 301-314), public officials are required to hold open meetings which include advance notice of time, place and agenda of the meetings in a public venue. School Superintendents are also required to file these items with their respective County Clerk’s office in advance and Mr. Cox has failed to do this in any way.
Republicans further publicized that school board member names, meeting dates and agendas, which are also required by law to be made public on the school’s website, have not been made available by Mr. Cox for years.
“Since early September, the Republican Party has conducted extensive research and made inquiries to locate details about how Mr. Cox is running the Peggs school district, but none of these requests have been met with answers, just excuses that Mr. Cox is unavailable and out of the office,” said Weston.
I really wish he would stop doing this stuff because it is making the state party look desperate. Especially in an election cycle with voters that are sick and tired of negative attack ads. Not to mention… Has their been a single candidate in Oklahoma that has won by this method of campaigning this year? From my knowledge most of them are just sitting at home twiddling their thumbs now because they got beat out in the primary.
Cmon Dave show some class.
Let’s not forget that Joy Hofmeister is the one who is under criminal investigation!
Went to the posting on the party website. THEN checked with Cherokee County Clerk about the documents in question. They are there and were filed timely. Makes us look dumb and petty.