Tom Guild, the Democratic nominee in Oklahoma’s Fifth Congressional District, faces an uphill battle against the well-funded Republican incumbent. In an interview with CapitolBeatOK, Guild reflected, “The latest poll I saw nationwide showed that Congress’ approval rating now is about 13 percent. It’s a wonder that it’s in double digits, the way they have been behaving.

“First of all, they seem to not “get it” – that public education is essential to our democracy. It’s essential to our economy.
 
“Just as an example, the Republicans are playing games with a law that would extend the 3.4 percent interest rate for college student loans instead of letting it rise to 6.8 percent. When you think about how far we are behind in competing in the world economy with a lot of other countries, we need a lot more, a much higher percentage of college graduates, so that they can go on to the high-paying careers, and have good jobs, and fulfilling jobs.
 
“If you add to the college debt, I’ve seen some statistics that say that the average for debt carried by college graduates in the United States is around $30,000. If you start out your working life with a $30,000 debt, it shouldn’t surprise anybody that we’re falling behind in the world economy.”
 
As for jobs, Guild is a proud progressive who backs President Barack Obama’s economic agenda. He said the chief executive, “put forth the American Jobs Act, and it had some really good ideas. First of all, for some infrastructure repairs. You don’t have to go but a mile or two on Oklahoma streets and highways, or over or undermeath bridges here in Oklahoma, to know that we desperately need to take care of our infrastructure.
 
“We have crumbling schools, roofs that week, equipment that is faulty, and we have all kinds of things that we need to take care of here domestically. Those would create a lot of jobs.
 
“Also, we need to hire back a lot of our first responders – firefighters and policemen that have lost their jobs in the economic hard times that we’ve just gone through. And, we need to hire back teachers.
 
“One of the things, I can tell you from experience – teaching in the classroom for 30 years – is that whatever anyone says I can tell you for sure, you have a lot more time and can have a lot more time and be more effective in teaching if you have small, manageable class sizes of 25 rather than 40, 45, 50 or 60.”
 
Guild has long been critical of the role of large political contributions in American campaigns. He told CapitolBeatOK:
 
“The big money in politics has been swallowing up our democracy. The “Citizens United” case made it even worse. Now we have the unregulated Super PACS. A lot of times, depending on the type of ad they run, they don’t even have to identify their donors. Or, they identify their donors so late that it can’t impact on the vote.
 
“We’re going to run a campaign against an incumbent that will have a million dollars to spend. We’ll probably have a hundred to $250,000 if everything goes just right. So, we will be outspent 10-1 or 4-1 or something along those lines. Probably, closer to at least 4-1.”
 
The University of Central Oklahoma professor emeritus continued, “People should not be able to buy an office. Political action committees that fund candidates shouldn’t be able to buy a candidate, or a congressman, or a president or a state representative.
 
“Really, that is demeaning and disabling to our democracy. I am truly worried that … some time in the near future, we make wake up and find there is no democracy left.”
 
Guild concluded the interview, conducted at his campaign office along Interstate-44 on Oklahoma City’s near-northwest side, with what he called the “Reader’s Digest” version of his campaign priorities.
 
Top issues, he said, include, “Social security, which my opponent wants to privatize. That would destroy the system. It would take the revenue stream away.
 
“He has voted twice in 2011 and 2012 for the Ryan budget, which would kill Medicare and replace it with a voucher. That would basically destroy Medicare and take us back to the days where about 30 percent of our elderly are in poverty.
 
“Also, campaign finance reform is desperately needed. We at least, at the very least, we need full disclosure immediately of all donors to all candidates and to all PACs.”
 
Guild seems an underdog in the district that anchors politics in what has been called “the reddest of the red states.” He is running a straight-forward issues campaign based around contemporary Democratic party themes, giving central Oklahoma votes a clear choice against the conservative Republican incumbent.

U.S. Rep. James Lankford, an Oklahoma City Republican seeking reelection in November, explained his motivation for joining a Rally for Religious Freedom in Oklahoma City this weekend.

He said, “Religious freedom is a core principle. Obviously, the founding of the country was based around religious freedom. You can go back to the very beginnings, 1620, and watching the transition of individuals who came here for the sole purpose of religious freedom and escape. This a country where it’s been very important, to Thomas Jefferson and writings from that era.

“Now, that’s being challenged … on multiple grounds. Most obvious of those is the HHS [mandate] ruling, telling religious organizations that they’re going to have to change their perspectives on contraceptives, on sterilization, on abortafacient drugs, or be fined.

“The real focus of that? A lot of people talk about contraceptives. The real focus is a religious liberty issue. Can this administration, or any future administration, say to a religious organization, ‘I know what your doctrine is, but we have a different doctrine.’ That religious organization has to change their doctrine to the administration’s doctrine, or we’ll fine as a federal government.

“Just Catholic hospitals are facing a $150 million fine next year, if they don’t change to the Obama doctrine for what their perspective is on contraceptives. That is a true religious liberty conflict there.

“Can an administration do that? I would disagree on that. Quite frankly, when these kinds of cases have gone all the way through to the court, the Obama administration has lost.”

Lankford pointed to a significant prior conflict between the Obama administration and a Missouri Synod (Lutheran) church school. He noted the Obama administration had opposed the firing of a private school teacher, explaining, “They claimed they had been fired for certain grounds, and the Missouri Synod school said no, they had been fired for different grounds and they’re a minister, and religious denomination has an ability to define who their ministers are.

“The Obama administration argued, ‘No that’s not true, this is normal standard practice and we’re going to stand up and tell this church who their ministers will be.’

“Well, the lower courts all stood by the Obama administration, and it went to the Supreme Court. … This Supreme Court threw that out 9-0.  The Obama administration lost 9-0. Said no, churches have the inherent right to define who their minister is, and the government can’t step in and do that.

“If you’ve got Elena Kagan and [Sonia] Sotamayer voting against this administration, saying, ‘No, there’s religious freedom, and you’re fighting against it,’ I think it will be just as clear in future days dealing with the HHS mandate, as well. But we’re got to get to that.”

Turning to the issue of the controversial health care law itself, pending a U.S. Supreme Court decision in the next few days, Lankford agreed with analysts who say the states will have flexibility to address health care anew, if the High Court strikes down “ObamaCare” in whole or in part. He also said Congress should act:

“Congress should take up individual bills, shouldn’t try to do a big giant 2700 page bill to replace it. We should take up individual parts. There are serious issues about the health care delivery system in America. There are inequities there, so we should take them up a piece at a time, and allow people to debate them and work them out.

“We should also get back to the states. If you go back three years ago, four years ago, lots of states were looking at state-driven options, for how to deal with this.

“This is part of the issue with Mitt Romney’s argument, and everyone around him. Massachusetts, years ago, was experimenting with how do we address this issue, as a state.

“Multiple states have taken it up, Oklahoma with ‘Insure Oklahoma’ and all that we have experimented with. We need to give states more latitude to start having state solutions in this. They all stopped as soon as the President’s health care law started working through, three years ago.

“We need to restart on those, but that’s very difficult to do and it’s time consuming. The states should be able to pick up what they were already starting on, and be able to finish that. We also have responsibilities as a federal government to step in and take on some of these issues as well.”

Note: CapitolBeatOK interviewed the first term congressman at his downtown Oklahoma City office on Broadway (Automobile Alley).

In the last three years, Tulsa education law firm Rosenstein Fist and Reingold has gained an increasing share of Oklahoma’s public education budget – some say too much.

By its website’s account, the law firm represents at least 300 of Oklahoma’s 520-plus school districts. Rosenstein has a heavy concentration of clients in northeastern Oklahoma.

The Tulsa Public School (TPS) District spent nearly $800,000 on outside legal fees during the 2010-2011 academic year, according to a school district spending report CapitolBeatOK obtained from open records resources.

For several years, legislators and others involved in education have complained about outside legal fees, in broader terms than Rosenstein Fist’s take.

Oklahoma City – where the public school district is similar in size, demographics and issues to Tulsa — spent $180,000 the same year, the education spending report shows.

Oklahoma City’s district officials say having an in-house attorney has helped contain costs. She is Tammy Carter, who earns approximately $93,000 annually. She is a full-time employee, based on an open records request fulfilled by Tierney Tinnin, a district spokesperson.

CapitolBeatOK reviewed legal fees for hundreds of public school districts, and most were under $10,000 per annum. Some were under $1,000, during the 2010-11 cycle.

Rosenstein has expanded its involvement in other aspects of education. During last year’s legislative session, Rosenstein helped beat back proposed legislation to cap hourly legal fees at $250.

Some points of interest over the last few years:

• Rosenstein secured $14.7 million in federal grants to increase programs in TPS’s existing magnet high schools. This consisted of $11.7 million and $3 million grants.

• In 2009, Rep. Chris Benge (then Republican Speaker of the House) announced Rosenstein attorney Karen Long, a Democrat, was being appointed to a five-year term on the Oklahoma Ethics Commission board. Brad Henry was then governor; Long became chairman of the commission, a post she still holds.

• The law firm was very involved in the founding of and deeply involved in the on-going operations of both school lobbying firms EdOklahoma and Heartland Consulting. Although Rosenstein shareholder J. Douglas Mann, arguably the firm’s key player, was instrumental in launching both, news announcements appear to distance the law firm from the lobbying firms. Jana Burk moved over from Rosenstein to work as a grantwriter for EdOklahoma. Heartland partners with former U.S. Senator Don Nickles of Ponca City (now a Capitol Hill lobbyist, who on Thursday, June 21, left the board of the Chesapeake Energy Corporation).

• Both entities offer services such as charging school districts monthly retainers for their services – to seek federal grants and federal earmarks. Tulsa Schools paid Heartland $180,000 in one recent year.

• Heartland and Rosenstein both took credit for obtaining multiple grants and earmarks totaling $5.5 million for a Chinese (language) immersion grant for the Jenks public school district. They worked with former Sen. Nickles and Sen. James Inhofe, both Republicans. Some time in the past year, the federal grant program was been shut down by the U.S. Department of Education, the Education Department’s web site shows.

Rosenstein has represented the Tulsa Public School system for over 80 years, said Superintendent Keith Ballard.

Having served in the superintendent’s post now for four years, Ballard recently announced he would leave next summer, saying among other things he wanted to spend more time with his grandchildren.

A point of contention came at a Tulsa Board of Education meeting last summer, when board member Anna America said contracts should not be automatically renewed each year without exploring costs from other vendors.

She voted to renew the Rosenstein $95,000 annual retainer anyway, but said she’d be very reluctant to do so again without some research about legal charges.

Why, CapitolBeatOK wondered, were Tulsa’s legal expenses so high during the 2010-1011 school year?

“It’s related to a number of things,” Superintendent Ballard said. “We’re had some lawsuits, a lot of it has to do with our teacher effectiveness initiative.

“We’ve had a lot more instances of personnel issues since we’ve adopted tougher standards, We’ve hired an in-house counsel to try and bring that [$788,000 in 2010 legal fees] number down. We have not had in-house counsel.”

The Tulsa district’s teacher evaluation initiative has drawn support in the community. A briefing last winter made it clear it is more “home grown” than competing proposals, including one preferred by the current leadership of the state Education Department.

Ballard said the grant writing services Rosenstein provided predate his hiring.

Ballard said to his knowledge, Rosenstein’s grant-writing services don’t constitute part of the school district’s outside legal expenses.

Several years ago, Rosenstein hired Keith Ballard’s son Matthew Ballard as an education attorney, according to a Rosenstein web site press release.

However, Superintendent Ballard said his son does no work for the Tulsa school district. Rosenstein managing partner Mann leads the TPS work, Superintendent Ballard and other sources said.

Ballard said he disclosed his son’s work at Rosenstein when he interviewed for the TPS job four years ago.

News reports confirm that the younger Ballard works for smaller districts, particularly for the Claremore Public Schools. He also does work for other small northeastern Oklahoma school districts, news reports show.

In any case, a check of state education law (confirmed by the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office) shows that Matthew Ballard’s working for Rosenstein constitutes no conflict of interest.

Ballard said the $14.7 million in federal grant money has been a major coup for Tulsa schools. It has been spent to bulk up programs in the district’s four magnet high schools Assistance Program and assist “high risk” students by offering them more challenging school work.

“The money was intended to expand the offerings at four existing Magnet schools,” said Superintendent Ballard. “The grant money for those Magnet schools ran out last year,” he said. “Of course we still have the programs that are going on in those schools and we’ll have to carry them on. I think they’ve been very successful.”

“We have over 400 kids involved in the culinary arts program. I think work is going well at Central in the fine arts program. I’m very pleased with what’s going on at Webster in broadcasting and digital media.”

Below, in a representative sampling, is a listing of some of the higher outside legal bills Oklahoma school districts paid during 2010-2011. It is not presently known if Rosentein still represents each of the districts.

Tulsa: $788,000 (has been represented by Rosenstein)

Stillwater: $645,000 (has been represented by Rosenstein)

Jenks: $335,000 (has been represented by Rosenstein)

Lawton Public Schools: $217,000 (has been represented by Rosenstein

Norman Public Schools: $219,000 (has been represented by Rosenstein)

Union (in Tulsa): $213,000 (has been represented by Rosenstein)

** Oklahoma City Public Schools: $180,000 (not a Rosenstein firm client, employs in-house counsel)

Kiowa: $135,000

Bartlesville: $107,000

Enid: $93,000

Duncan: $82,000

Shawnee: $81,000

Midwest City/Del City: $73,150

Broken Arrow: $66,160 (represented by Rosenstein)

Ponca City: $53,000

Moore: $50,000

Edmond: $46,000

Hilldale: $44,000

Western Heights: $44,000

Guthrie: $41,172

Total in this sample: $3.6 million