Candidates for Oklahoma’s statewide offices, such as governor, attorney general, and lieutenant governor, are kicking off their campaigns. While candidates and campaigns are very important, equally if not more important is what those candidates would accomplish—and how they would accomplish it—if elected.

Oklahoma has great opportunities and significant challenges. To address both requires candidates to be willing to discuss them on the campaign trail and commit to “do hard things” to help lead the state to meet those opportunities and challenges.

In campaigns, there is a great temptation to rely predominantly on message-testing and polling to determine a candidate’s message. While candidates most definitely should address major themes and desires from voters, leadership also requires thinking about what must be done for the sake of the future—even though it doesn’t seem as urgent as the next budget request from a tax consumer or what a poll says is important at that moment.

Three key areas warrant the attention of statewide officials.

The first focus of statewide candidates should be growth, specifically of taxpayers, their families, and the private sector. Given the enormous challenges that taxpayers face from the incredible size and expansion of government at all levels, working families and job creators are looking for environments to locate that incentivize the best possible growth and opportunities for their families and employees. 

Oklahoma faces incredible obstacles to growth, including our penalty on work—the personal income tax—and our more than 141,000 state agency rules, regulations, and mandates. Sadly, the government posture in Oklahoma is that regardless of performance or the outcomes of billions from the taxes collected, intentions are what matter and the government is entitled to continue to extract from taxpayers.

The second focus of statewide candidates should be the workforce—specifically, the workforce needs of taxpayers, their families, and the private sector. Despite multiple billions of taxpayer dollars from all levels of government for K-12 public education and higher education in Oklahoma, outcomes are abysmal, especially in reading, writing, math, and science proficiency. States like Florida and Mississippi are demonstrating that with focus and accountability, there is a better way that improves outcomes.

The third focus should be performance. Today, Oklahoma’s state and local governments are extracting billions of dollars from the pockets of Oklahomans at a rate of approximately $22,000 per household. Once candidates win, there is an enormous incentive to be allergic to details, to strategy execution, and to intense assessment of how the government is performing.

If Oklahoma is going to be all it can be, it is going to require statewide candidates to be tirelessly focused on incentivizing growth, doing the hard things to foster a vibrant workforce, and holding the government accountable for its performance.