Negative Ads Escalate In Ed Race
Barresi, Hofmeister trade barbs in latest campaign ads
By Andrea Eger And Kim Archer World Staff Writers
State superintendent candidate Joy Hofmeister called incumbent Janet Barresi’s latest attack ads “despicable” and “deeply offensive” in their accusations that Hofmeister doesn’t support the state’s special education scholarships because she herself is the parent of a special-needs student.
Barresi’s television ad accuses her GOP primary rival of “conspiring with education bureaucrats” to prevent some special-education students from obtaining state-funded Lindsey Nicole Henry scholarships to attend private schools.
Hofmeister’s own television advertising campaign began last week. In it, she questions the association between Barresi and President Barack Obama because of their mutual support for the Common Core curriculum standards, which were just tossed out in Oklahoma after great controversy.
Hofmeister, a Tulsan, said she felt Barresi’s camp had “mischaracterized” her in the ad by “taking brief comments and sentence fragments out of context” from emails they obtained through an Open Records Act request to Jenks Public Schools.