Oklahoma voters recall white supremacist, reject supporters of Ryan Walters

Oklahoma voters have recalled a white supremacist city council member and rejected school board candidates who backed a state takeover of Tulsa schools.

In Tuesday’s election, voters in Enid, about 100 miles north of Oklahoma City, recalled council member Judd Blevins, who admitted to attending the Unite the Right white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, the Associated Press and other outlets report. He also once led an Oklahoma chapter of Identity Evropa, a white supremacist group that no longer exists.

Blevins, who was elected to represent Enid’s Ward 1 in 2023, has denied being a white supremacist. At a candidates’ forum last week, he said his motivation to attend the rally and join the group was “bringing attention to the same issues that got Donald Trump elected in 2016: securing America’s borders, reforming our legal immigration system and, quite frankly, pushing back on this anti-white hatred that is so common in media entertainment.”

He will be replaced by a fellow Republican, Cheryl Patterson, who said she wanted to return Enid to “normalcy.” While out campaigning Tuesday, she told NBC News, “Enid is not a town that promotes white nationalism or white supremacy in any way. And the people are good. And I’m hoping that the results of the election will show that.”

Connie Vickers, a Democrat who led the recall effort along with her friend Nancy Presnall, was satisfied with the result. “We won,” Vickers told NBC. “Blevins lost. Hate lost.”

Wade Burleson, an Enid minister who had supported Blevins, is a member of Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters’s faith advisory committee. Burleson had called the recall effort a “race-bait trap” and said “communists” and the “mainstream media” were trying to “divide the world over race,” according to an earlier NBC story.

In Tulsa, voters rejected school board candidates who supported Walters’s proposal for the state to take control of the city’s public schools. Walters is well known for his far-right views, including anti-LGBTQ+ stances.

The Tulsa school district serves a racially diverse population, and the majority of its students are considered “economically disadvantaged,” PBS NewsHour reported last year. Walters has asked the state school board, a separate entity from his office, to revoke the district’s accreditation, which would allow the state to take over its management. But the board has not done so.

“Walters has blamed Tulsa Public Schools’ low academic performance on poor leadership and alleged financial mismanagement,” according to PBS NewHour. “He also cited ‘woke ideology,’ using appropriate pronouns for students, and allegations of an infiltration of the Chinese Communist Party in classrooms as causes of the district’s ongoing woes.”

The district is making progress, however, Superintendent Ebony Johnson said this week, TV station KTUL reports. And in Tuesday’s election,” all three school board candidates in Tulsa who oppose Walters’ moves to take over the school district won their races, a resounding rejection of his aggressive rhetoric threatening a state takeover of the school district,” notes a Human Rights Campaign press release. “Newcomers Calvin Moniz and Sarah Smith and incumbent John Croisant had all spoken out publicly against Walters’ threats. Smith’s opponent was a vocal supporter of Walters, while Croisant’s opponent was inspired to run after Walters called teachers unions ‘terrorists’ and was supported by far-right activists.”

“Ryan Walters has run roughshod over local officials and elevated hate groups and extremists as he runs the Oklahoma State Department of Education into the ground. Tuesday’s election results show that voters have noticed, and they’ve had their fill of him,” HRC spokesperson Laurel Powell said in the press release. “He has been too busy crying about a supposed ‘woke mob’ whenever anyone tries to hold him accountable instead of focusing on the wellbeing and education of the kids of Oklahoma. He’s wildly out of step with what parents in Oklahoma actually want for their kids — safe schools and an education system that supports them and meets their learning needs. This is just the latest proof point that Oklahomans want Ryan Walters out of office.”