Frustrated with Gov. Kevin Stitt’s February removal of her friend, Kendra Wesson, from the State Board of Education, Sen. Lisa Standridge says she has decided not to support the nomination of Wesson’s successor, Michael Tinney, which means his tenure on the board could end later this month despite already having attended two board meetings.
“I don’t mean this as a smear to [Tinney] at all, not at all,” Standridge (R-Norman) said Thursday. “It’s not anything to whether I think he’s qualified or not. The fact of the matter is that Kendra was fired unceremoniously, and she was doing a fantastic job, and I just don’t feel like she was treated fairly in what she did and sacrificed for the state of Oklahoma.”
Tinney, an attorney who handles title, oil and gas and probate work, said Standridge told him the same thing during a recent meeting about his nomination. While nominations to state governing bodies legally must be approved by the State Senate, Standridge’s ability to block Tinney’s nomination involves a “custom and tradition” of the Legislature’s upper chamber where a nominee is traditionally carried by the individual’s senator.
“I would say this doesn’t seem right,” Tinney said Wednesday. “It seems like you’re holding up progress, the will of the people, the state — people who elected you, all that — for some personal reason, whether it’s just a personal grudge or something like that against the governor.”
Stitt nominated Tinney — along with Chris VanDehende and Ryan Deatherage — to the State Board of Education on Feb. 11 after voicing frustration over board members’ consistent acquiescence to all of State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters’ proposals, including a controversial rule requiring students’ citizenship status to be reported to the State Department of Education upon enrollment at a public school.
“Collecting 6, 7, 8-year-old kids’ addresses and immigration status in the state of Oklahoma, that’s not a public safety issue,” Stitt said at a press conference. “Let’s go after the people that are committing crimes, and let’s not terrorize and make our kids not show up for school.”
While Deatherage and VanDehende took the seats of former OSDE board members Katie Quebedeaux and Donald Burdick, Tinney replaced Kendra Wesson, a member of the Caddo Nation and a Norman resident. Both Wesson and Tinney are constituents of Standridge, who was elected in November to succeed her term-limited husband in Senate District 15.
Standridge said she has been a close friend of Wesson after meeting through Unite Norman, an activist organization formed amid tensions about police funding in 2020. Standridge said Stitt’s removal of Wesson and his nomination of Tinney put her in a “weird place.”
“I just don’t feel that — to replace her with somebody from, somebody in Norman, I just felt was a further, kind of, twist in the knife in her back,” Standridge said. “That’s the way I feel, and I don’t want to be a party to it.”
Upon learning of his appointment, Tinney said officials from Stitt’s office told him “everything was OK” and that they had “worked that out already” with Standridge. But he quickly began to hear otherwise. Tinney said Stitt staffers then told him Senate President Pro Tempore Lonnie Paxton (R-Tuttle) would likely carry his nomination instead — an action Paxton’s predecessor leading the Senate Republican Caucus chose to use in 2019.
But on Thursday, Paxton said he was leaving the decision in the hands of Standridge.
“Originally, Sen. Standridge agreed to carry Mr. Tinney and then told the governor,” Paxton said after a Senate GOP Caucus meeting. “So the governor made the appointment and then, apparently, some reason has changed her mind. As the pro tem, I’ve always told members, ‘I’ll try to help out when I can.’ But, you know, they say it’s a case-by-case basis. And in this case, because she’d already accepted it and then the governor made the appointment, I just didn’t think it was my job to carry that appointment.”
Standridge verified Thursday that she originally signed the paperwork to carry Tinney’s nomination, but after some thought, she said she changed her mind in early March. Although she could not remember the exact date, Standridge said once she made her decision not to support Tinney’s nomination, she went to speak to Paxton. Standridge said she thought Paxton indicated he would then carry the nomination.
Paxton, however, said he does not plan to advance Tinney over Standridge’s objection. Asked his understanding of Standridge’s decision, Paxton said he doesn’t see how Wesson’s removal should affect whether Tinney is qualified for the position.
“If that was the reason, (they are) two separate issues,” Paxton said. “The governor removed the previous member. This is a brand new appointee, and by not carrying this member, it doesn’t bring the old appointee back.”
Senate Education Committee Chairman Adam Pugh (R-Edmond) also said he has no plan to break with tradition and advance Tinney through his committee without the sponsoring senator’s support.
“It is 100 percent [Standridge’s] prerogative,” Pugh said. “If a senator does not want their constituents to serve, that’s their purview.”
Tinney said he feels frustrated and that the whole the situation is “puzzling.”
“I’ve looked it up,” Tinney said Wednesday. “I’m a lawyer. There’s no law that says anything about this, but there is a custom in the Senate that says if your home senator will not present you before the Senate, we’re not going to hear it.”
Tinney described his April meeting with Standridge.
“She felt like Kendra had really been done wrong by the governor, and as a result of that she just didn’t feel right about that and didn’t want anybody to replace Kendra,” Tinney said. “I said I guess I understand that, and I gave her some reasons why that has nothing to do with me and how that’s not my fault. Why would you throw me under the bus? This should be a bigger picture than me — representing the whole district.”
Noting that the two know each other as Norman residents, Tinney said he called Wesson and had a “friendly conversation” after he was appointed by Stitt.
“I’ll give her some credit. I called, and she even emailed me some stuff about being on the board, about Robert’s Rules of Order and things like that,” Tinney said. “I called her just to tell her I appreciated her service and that I felt kind of bad for her and that I didn’t mean to be replacing someone I knew, and she gave me some tips about being on the board. I’ll just leave it at that.”
The day after Wesson’s removal from the State Board of Education, Walters announced the creation of a “DOGE-style education oversight group” and recruited both Wesson and former OSDE board member Katie Quebedeaux to form a “Trump Advisory Committee.” According to the Feb. 12 press release, the committee was established to “fight the liberal DC swamp” and “to take back our schools from the Federal Department of Education.”
At the time, Wesson was already serving on a separate state board. In May 2024, Stitt also appointed Wesson as a member of the Oklahoma State Council for Educational Opportunity for Military Children, serving a three-year term which began July 1, 2024 and will expire June 30, 2027.
“I was elected in November,” Standridge said. “I’ve been here about 10 minutes, so I signed the paperwork, but then I had second thoughts and a cause to just pause and look at what was really happening here, and how I would feel if that had happened to me. I feel like, again, this situation was created. Kendra was doing a great job, and she was not treated, I feel, with respect. She, again, did a great job on the board, and I think that she should not have been treated that way.”
Emphasizing that she has not spoken to Wesson about her decision, Standridge said she is sorry Tinney is upset. But, she said, if the roles were reversed and Tinney were “fired unceremoniously,” she would have done the same thing for him.
Stitt fills lingering State Board of Education vacancy as another emerges
On April 28, Stitt announced his appointment for the last vacant seat on the State Board of Education — one that has remained open for almost two years.
Stitt appointed retired Edmond Public Schools special education teacher Becky Carson on Monday to fill the the board position representing Congressional District 5. Carson succeeds former board member Trent Smith, who resigned in May 2023 after what he described as “four years of war” on the board under the governance of former State Superintendent of Public Instruction Joy Hofmeister.
In October 2023, Stitt nominated international relations expert Alex Gray to fill the seat vacated by Smith, but Sen. Carri Hicks (D-OKC) called Gray “unqualified” for the State Board of Education and declined to carry his nomination. Then-Senate President Pro Tempore Greg Treat (R-OKC) chose not to carry Gray’s nomination in 2024 like he had done for 2019 State Board of Education nominees Jennifer Monies and Estella Hernandez, whom Hicks also refused to support.
With Carson’s nomination, the State Board of Education seemed poised to feature a full slate of members for the first time in two years. However, Standridge’s decision on Tinney’s nomination would lead to another vacancy until Stitt chooses a replacement.
“I believe it’s letting a personal item get in the way of doing the state’s business,” Tinney said. “If [Standridge] didn’t think I was good (or that) I would do a good job, that’s her prerogative not to nominate me. If she didn’t like me, I guess that’s her prerogative not to [carry my nomination.] And the fact, she said, ‘I don’t have any problem with you.’ She told other people, ‘I don’t have any problem with Mike. I’m just not going to do it.’ That kind of bothers me.”
Since his appointment to the board, Tinney and the other new members have clashed twice with Walters on subjects such as board member influence over the meeting agendas and the now-approved social studies standards that Tinney said were not presented in a forthright manner to board members.
Tinney said he did not go into his new position to “make trouble” but that he truly hoped to make an impact on the state’s public education system and provide additional oversight in terms of the board’s practices and policy processes.
“To me, it was an honor to be able to go in there and just represent students and the teachers and try to do the best I can to help our education get better in the state of Oklahoma,” Tinney said. “Now I know that sounds altruistic, but that really was my goal. As long as I’m there, we — I feel like I went in there and stood up for what was right. I saw some things that didn’t seem right and weren’t transparent, and I said something about it, and I felt like [it was] my duty and obligation.”
Paxton said he considers nomination decisions on a case-by-case basis. In this case, he said he has chosen to avoid getting involved.
“I don’t think that’s my role to come in to take care of that,” Paxton said. “And if Mr. Tinney is a qualified person for this job, and he seems like he is, I would hope that she would carry the nomination, but that is going to be up to her.”
Asked about the impact of her decision to reject Tinney’s nomination will have on the State Board of Education, Standridge said that problem falls in the wheelhouse of the governor to fill the vacancy.
“I don’t nominate, so that is in the governor’s court,” Standridge said. “That’s what he wants. He can make that happen. So I — that would be up to him. I’m not in charge of it.”
Regarding the other State Board of Education nominees that must be acted upon by the end of session this month, those members’ senators appear prepared to advance Stitt’s choices. Sen. Regina Goodwin (D-Tulsa) said she has agreed to carry Vandenhende’s nomination.
“I support the nomination. We were in agreement that the standards should be sent back, right?” Goodwin said. “So I do support the nomination.”
Similarly, Sen. Darcy Jech (R-Kingfisher) said he plans to support Deatherage.
“What I know of Ryan is he is doing a great job,” Jech said. “He kind of jumped into the fire. I don’t know why anyone would want to get into that position these days, but I’m thankful there are (such people). He’s a good guy.”
Pugh said he is unsure which Edmond-area senator has Carson as a constituent.
