Farm Director KC Sheperd spoke with Jenny Schmitt and Kelly Hines about their Oklahoma State Senate District 47 campaigns and the August 27 election. The seat is being vacated by Greg Treat who is terming out.
An OSU Graduate, Schmitt and her husband, Brad, have a fifteen-year-old daughter and a six-year-old son. She has been a nurse for almost twenty years and has a passion and grit for caring for others. “Being a nurse is public service and being a legislator should also be public service,” she said.
“I had to overcome a lot of things in my life, and because of that, I have developed a passion for caring for others, “Schmitt said. “When I think about what is going on in healthcare, schools, and around the world – I can’t complain unless I’m willing to stand up and fight for my community – these people that I have lived near, known, and spent time with for almost twenty years. Even with the divisiveness in politics, our state and its future need people who want to champion Oklahoma and our values. So why not me?”
Schmitt admitted that she understands that there isn’t a silver bullet that she can fire to fix everything, but her goal is to represent the wishes of her constituents and focus on what is most important to them.
“From what I’m hearing about the local issues is that they want lower taxes, better education, better healthcare, and they are really feeling the effects of inflation, so who I want to be for them is a champion for those issues,” she stated.
She emphasized that no one returning to the state senate has a background in healthcare and feels that hers will add value to the current senate. “Health affects everyone. Unhealthy children can’t learn. Unhealthy people can’t work. It’s getting more expensive to access healthcare. The bulk of the expenses for our retired folks on a fixed income is healthcare. It punches everyone. Thinking of the senate as a team, there is a big hole in center field and I can catch those healthcare balls.”
Kelly Hines
Kelly Hines grew up in the southeast Oklahoma Mountains in the small town of Whitesboro. He dreamed of becoming a soldier from the time he was seven years old, but his father insisted that he needed to be an officer if he was going to pursue that path. He joined the Oklahoma National Guard when he was seventeen to pay for college. He graduated from East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma, during his six-year term with the Guard. He was offered a Commission as a Second Lieutenant Army Aviation and married his wife of thirty-two years. They have two grown children who also live in Oklahoma.
He was on active duty for twenty-eight years flying soldiers around the world in a helicopter. He served in Special Ops for a short time as well. He retired as a Colonel in 2019, and was offered a job back home in Oklahoma and was glad to return. He is currently Vice President of an aerospace company in Edmond.
Kelly Hines’s path to politics began in War College as he and his peers were railing a staff member about how poorly Congress was doing. The man looked at the group of Colonels and asked them who would do something about it when he left the military. Hines also saw a need for leadership in the State Senate, and reached a time in his life when it makes sense to run.
“I’ve always said that if you can’t vote, you can’t complain. I’m taking it a step further. I’m in a place where I can run, and I should run. Right now, I think I’m the better candidate in the race, so here I am,” Hines said.
Foremost in Hines sights is tax reform. He said, “The Governor asked the Senate to look at reducing or removing state income tax. They didn’t take that up. It’s a very hard problem. I don’t think you can just eliminate it, but there is room for adjustment in reducing it in a stair-step way.”
He said that rather than working on reducing state income tax, the Senate went to work on the grocery tax, which he said was a good thing to do, but they still need to look at the much more difficult issue of reducing income tax.
Another issue that Hines wants to work on is education. “The Parental Choice Tax Credit that they gave a couple of years ago is a step in the right direction, but that isn’t fixing education holistically. We still aren’t getting at our underlying issues here in Oklahoma,” he said.
Stemming from his own military background, Hines said that Veteran Affairs is also very important to him. “We are probably in the middle of the pack for states where retired military folks want to live. We need to start retaining the ones that are retiring out of Tinker or Ft. Sill and get our own Oklahomans who joined the military to come back, like I did,” he said. “They are a great, ready workforce. I think they bring a good work ethic to the business site. They are very well trained, a lot of them in aerospace, which is the second largest business in Oklahoma. We need those folks to stay here, and not go elsewhere.”
Why should voters make their mark beside Hines name? “I’m a fan of and the product of the American dream,” he said. “I grew up fairly poor. I worked hard, and the opportunities were there, and I made it to where I am at. I want that to be available to generations to come.
“A few things protect that. One is the Constitution, which I took an oath to serve and protect a long time ago and I still believe in that. The other is putting the right people in office to represent us. That means people who are not afraid to stand up and fight for what is right – not just say they will fight for you, but prove that they will. They need to be true selfless servants rather than there for a resume builder or a title. Lastly, none of us know what we are going to be doing all day because none of us have been in the Senate, but what we shouldn’t be learning on the spot is how to be a leader, how to bring people together from all walks of life, as I did in the military for all of those years. I think proven leadership is what makes me the best candidate.”
To see more from Kelly’s Hines’s Campaign, click here.
To learn more about Jenny Schmitt’s campaign, you can click here.
