State Sen. Kenneth Corn
Democrat Candidate for Lt. Governor

Democrat Kenneth Corn entered the 2010 race for Lieutenant Governor on January 21st, 2009,  vowing to bring new hope for a new Oklahoma that focuses on the needs of families, main street businesses and schools in the face of troubling economic times at home, nationally and overseas.

The Corns were living in Monroe, Oklahoma when Kenneth was born in 1976. His dad and mom moved the family around the state to towns like Meridian, Waurika and Heavener trying to scratch out a living. Ray, a U.S. Navy veteran, built mobile homes, drove a truck and worked a variety of other jobs over the years. His mom worked as a nurse’s aide or in child care centers.

To Kenneth, life is all about responsibility, hard work and determination– all lessons he learned at home. His drive made him co-valedictorian of his high school class and he graduated with distinction from the University of Oklahoma. He overcame a childhood reading disability to do both. If it hadn’t been for hard-earned scholarships and the help of his “godmother” Sou (Sue) Morse, Kenneth would never have stepped foot in a university classroom because his family didn’t have the money to pay for college.

The same effort he gave in school, translated to Scouting, where he became an Eagle Scout and a member of the Indian Nations Executive Council for the Boy Scouts of America. Kenneth also is the first and only two-term state president in the history of the Future Business Leaders of America. Scouting led him to become an avid hunter and fisherman and a strong supporter of the 2^nd Amendment.

His meteoric rise to the leadership ranks of Oklahoma’s Legislature began with his election in 1998 to a small House district in Southeastern Oklahoma. He was in China studying abroad with the help of scholarships when he decided to run for the Legislature. In a huge upset, Kenneth beat four other Democrats and a Republican to win the election.  At the time he was sworn into office, Kenneth was one of the youngest people ever elected to the Oklahoma Legislature.

In the House, he swiftly rose to become the Democratic caucus secretary. In his first year in office, Kenneth became the first freshman lawmaker in 30 years to be appointed the vice chairman of a major committee – the Revenue and Taxation Committee. He was elected to the Oklahoma State Senate in 2002 at the age of 25, making him the second youngest senator in state history. He took the seat of the late Larry Dickerson, who had been one of his political mentors.

At 32, he’s got a girlfriend, Courtney, and a mortgage on a little place in Poteau.

I sat down with Sen. Corn recently in his campaign headquarters and we talked about his campaign for Lt. Governor.  Here is part of that conversation:

I was first elected to the Oklahoma House of Representatives in 1999, replacing Joe Hamilton, long time member of the Legislature. I served in the House until 2002, when then Sen. Larry Dickerson passed away,  and I ran for his seat in the Oklahoma State Senate, and was elected to the Oklahoma State Senate.

Larry had been my political mentor when I was younger, and I can remember when Larry came by to see my Mom and Dad in his first race for the Senate, and I was outside in the front yard playing with my trucks, and he stood there on the front porch talking to my Mom and Dad about politics.  I could hear what he was saying to them, and I thought, ”Boy, I think I’d like to do that someday!”.

So I eventually got to know Larry, and he mentored me and it was a real special privilege to get to serve in the seat of the guy who inspired me to get into politics to begin with. But I would gladly give up the seat if I could have Larry back here, because he was such a great friend.

Serving in the Senate now for the past 7 years, I have had more of an opportunity to have an influence on policy, because I get to serve on more committees than in the House.   Sometimes in the House, you kind of get cornered into one area of expertise or one committee, whereas in the Senate you can branch out into more areas. There are also fewer members in the Senate, so we get more of an opportunity to have an impact in several different areas that are beneficial to the State. For me, being a policy “Wonk”, that is great because I really like to get things done, so it fits me personally better than being in the House.

For example, I currently serve on the Appropriations Committee, the Judiciary Committee, Insurance, Group Health and Retirement Committee, and the Education Committee.  When I first came to the Senate, I also served on other committees, such as Finance Committee, Sub-Committee Chairman of the Public Safety and Judiciary, and I was on Criminal Jurisprudence, General Government, Tourism and Agriculture, so I have been on every major committee there is in the Senate, which has given me a good broad background.

Not only do I serve on the committees, but I also try to go out and see what the state agencies are doing that are under our committees so that I will have an understanding of the issues when we come back to the Capitol, and I’m just not depending on lobbyists and staff members telling me what is happening, because I have actually been in the field to see it myself.

One of the things I am really proud of is that the first large amount of money that went to roads and bridges in this state was from legislation that I was the chief architect of, which we put in an appropriations bill and we finally worked out an agreement between the House and the Senate, and at the time, was the largest investment in roads and bridges from the State, and I was pretty proud of that. Since then, I have worked on things like removing the trigger that we put in place in the formula, because our roads and bridges are extremely important to our State and to its economic development.

Of course, I have also worked on things like raising teachers’ pay and also giving teachers their health insurance in Oklahoma.  I have been working on that one for some time now.  I also wrote the law that overhauled CLEET and how we train our law enforcement officials, Senate Bill 920, and then I’ve done some work in the retirement area as Chairman of that committee, so there are lots of things that I have been able to do as a Senator that have specifically helped a lot of people and their way of life.

I think that the atmosphere at the Legislature is more partisan now than it was when I first came out here, and I think that is unfortunate for the people of Oklahoma.  You know I always said that the State Senate always prides itself on being a body where we were Senators first and left our party registration at the door, but unfortunately it is not that way today.  I think we have got to get back to taking care of the people’s business, because a good idea is a good idea regardless of what party it came from.  I think you can look at my own legislative record, and you’ll see that I have reached across the aisle to be authors with Republicans on the House side a number of times, and even in the Senate I have partnered with Senators from the opposite party because I am about getting things done and that is the most important thing to me.

Now don’t get me wrong, there are always times for partisan rhetoric, but that is during the campaigns.  Once we get elected, we become representatives of the people of Oklahoma and we need to get their work done.  Mostly, when you talk to people on the streets, they don’t really care if it’s democrat or republican, they care about whether something is getting done.  And I think that is the great frustration that people have with government right now, I don’t think it is with democrats or republicans specifically, it’s both of them.  They are tired of the partisan mess that’s going on and they just really want someone to do the work.  There are too many issues that are out there that need serious leadership, and I think the people are looking for candidates that are willing to work on issues and leave some of this other partisan stuff aside.  I was talking to a guy the other day, and we were talking about some of the stuff that is going on in Washington, DC right now, and he asked me what happened to the leaders we had in the 1950’s and 1960’s, who sat down in a room and hammered out an agreement that everyone could live with, and just move forward?  He said that’s what we need to get back to today, a time when we were more civil to each other, where good ideas rise to the top, and what’s good for the country is good for both democrats and republicans.

If you look at this budget crisis we have in the State right now, it’s going to take someone like a Henry Bellmon-type leader for us to overcome this.  You know, someone who won’t worry about elections but about the long-term direction of our state.  The people of this state are much like Henry Bellmon, they don’t really care whether we are democrats or republicans, they just want us to get the work done. I sometimes wonder where all the Henry Bellmons have gone?

I have spent my entire adult life in public service, and this past year I knew that I was approaching the end of my time in the Oklahoma Legislature.  I have actually had several good job opportunities come available, but after much consideration I decided there were still several things I wanted to do in the area of serving Oklahoma.  I think that Oklahoma can be number one in any area it wants to be.  I mean it can be the pace-setter for the country in areas like education, healthcare, job-creation, but I sometimes question whether or not we have the right kind of leadership that will be serious enough to address those areas.  So what I decided to do was to seek the office of Lt. Governor of the State of Oklahoma, because I believe it is a unique position in state government where you can set an agenda that focuses on key issues for the state and is most of the time, outside the arena of partisan politics arena that envelops almost all other statewide elected positions.  The Lt. Governor is someone who can not only promote the state, but is someone who can work diligently with both democrats and republicans in the legislative chambers to try to do some things that will help create jobs, solve the healthcare crisis that faces Oklahoma, and do some workforce development here in the State, and give our kids an opportunity to go on to college or career tech in Oklahoma.

I think the number one thing we have to do in Oklahoma is job creation.  There is no question in my mind that no matter where you go in the State of Oklahoma, there is a need for good jobs.  Now I differentiate between what a lot of other people mean when they say job creation.  I talk about creating good jobs that have a living wage with them, with retirement and health insurance.  And what we have to do in Oklahoma to get that is to sell the virtues of our state, such as (1)one of the lowest costs of doing business of any state in the country, (2)we are in the central part of the country,  (3)we have a great work ethic.  But at the same time we also have to work on things like workforce development here in our state.  When you talk to CEO’s, one of the things they tell you is they need people with skills, and for me, that tells me that we have some work to do.  A two-year college Associate Degree is the equivalent to what a high school diploma was twenty years ago.  So we need to be talking to our business community about what skills we need to build in this state in order for us to be competitive globally.  I really think that has got to be the chief thing we need to focus on.

I also think we need to put together a road map for the state, economically, because every region of the state is different.  They have different needs, unique cultures and they have different infrastructures that need to be addressed, so I think we need to look at what we can do to make each section of the state grow.

I think the Lt. Governor can be the chief job recruiter, the chief economic developer for the State of Oklahoma.   I want to make the office of Lt. Governor a strong partner with the Department of Commerce, just like the Lt. Governor’s office is with Tourism.  And make no mistake about it, tourism is an enormous economic engine for the state, and we need to promote Oklahoma to bring visitors here as well.  We also need to encourage our people to stay in Oklahoma on vacation and do things here.

In the area of education, the State of North Carolina has a new program called Learn to Earn.  In that state, they are giving a vast majority of the students in their state that are academically successful, who have stayed out of trouble, who have put themselves in the right curriculum course and will give back through public service, their first year of college or career tech free.  And what they are finding is that their dropout rate is declining because the kids see a light at the end of the tunnel, and that they are educating a workforce that allows them to sell their state, because now companies know that if they go to North Carolina there is an educated workforce that allows them to bring the good jobs to that state.  So it is kind of like the chicken or the egg.  We have lots of students who go to school in Oklahoma today, that as soon as they graduate, they leave the state.  Then of course, businesses tell us you must get more college graduates, so we need to sit down and figure out the most appropriate way for us to reach this goal.  I think that if we will educate our own students, give them the first two years of college or career tech for free, that we will develop the workforce we need that will allow Oklahoma to become a powerhouse.  And if people will think about this, in the long term, that investment will reduce the number of people on our welfare rolls, people with substance-abuse problems, people going to prison, all of which will reduce our state budget.

Too often I think the political leaders in our state always want to focus on Texas.  It seems like we always want to beat Texas, be better than Texas.  In football, we always want to beat Texas, but what we are really after is the national championship.  The one thing I believe we have to do to compete is to look globally.  We have to compete with every state in this country, not just Texas, and now with the whole world if we are going to be successful.  That means in Europe, in Asia, and even in California.  It means we have to be prepared as a state to sell Oklahoma to every corner of the globe, and I think we can be successful doing that.

In October of last year, I came back from China where I had been meeting with a Chinese company that wants to build hybrid cars in the United States.  They have figured out that it is economically more feasible for them to build cars in the United States and ship them to the Western Hemisphere from here than it is from their own country.  Those are good jobs, with good wages: why don’t we go after those types of jobs for people in our state?  I think we really have a good possibility of getting that company to come here.  That’s why we can’t be narrow-minded about just competing with states that surround us; we should go for the gold so we don’t lose out.  I have sat across the table from CEO’s my entire legislative career, and I have been successful working to keep them here and bringing some new ones in.  If you check in my Senate district, you will see the growth that has taken place over the last decade that I have been involved in since my time in the Legislature.  I think that is important that we put our money where our mouth is, and I have the experience of actually sitting across the table and meeting and personally negotiating with CEO’s to come to Oklahoma, selling my state, and that’s why I think I would be effective being Lt. Governor for the State of Oklahoma.   I am just like all the other average Oklahomans in this state, I am not from a political family or a wealthy family.  My Dad unloaded trucks at Wal-Mart at night, and my Mom worked as a home health aide.  I watched them work every day, 40 hours a week and still barely made ends meet.  So I know what it is to see people struggle.  I worked in high school mowing lawns all summer, and worked at the school painting, waxing and stripping floors so I could have money for school clothes.   I know what it is like to try to survive out there, and I think I would be a successful Lt. Governor because I know what people in this state are going through.

I also believe that the Lt. Governor should have an active agenda at the State Capitol because it is not enough to hold the title and go to meetings.  I think the Lt. Governor should be proposing real solutions and find both democratic and republican legislators to carry that agenda to the Legislature, and I think because of my legislative experience in both the House and the Senate, I already know the people in the chambers and I know how the process works, and I know how all the agencies in the State work and I know how to get things done.  I also don’t take no for an answer.  It’s easy for someone to tell you no, so if you keep being persistent by not just letting a simple roadblock stop you.