Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt has thoughts about toning down political fights. Here’s what he says

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The last time Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma hosted the nation’s governors, it didn’t go so well.

The annual gathering of state leaders in Washington in February was overshadowed by a fight with President Donald Trump, who refused to allow two governors — both Democrats — to attend a White House meeting. As head of the National Governors Association, Stitt successfully pressed Trump to reverse course but got an earful in the process.

Trump, who carried each of Oklahoma’s 77 counties in 2024, blasted Stitt as a “RINO,” meaning Republican in name only, and criticized the term-limited governor’s performance in office.

Stitt is again hosting his colleagues this weekend, this time on his home turf in Oklahoma City as he turns over leadership of the National Governors Association to Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat and one of the governors Trump had sought to exclude. In an interview, Stitt discussed the dust-up with Trump, warned against efforts to federalize elections, and expressed concern that a mammoth federal government has contributed to the country’s tense political climate.

Here are highlights of the conversation, edited for length and clarity.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: You’ve spent the past year working closely with governors from both parties. What have you learned?

STITT: We agree on much more than we disagree. I was never in politics until I ran for governor. I’m like everybody else. I’m watching Fox News. I’m in my camp, and the other guys are in the MSNBC camp, and we’re over here thinking the other people are bad. But when I get in these roles and I meet the governor of Maryland and the governor of New York and these other governors, I realize that, literally, we’re all Americans.

AP: You’ve talked a lot about states’ rights. Going into the midterms, are you confident that states will be able to conduct their elections without interference from Trump or the federal government?

STITT: You know, I do.

First off, I don’t think that we should federalize the elections at all. I believe that is a state issue. The states should control their own elections. Should we make sure they’re done fairly and U.S. citizens are voting? 100%. I think there’s broad agreement with that. Oklahoma, literally, all of our absentee ballots have to be notarized. We have to know who they are. And then they have to be in by Election Day. So they’re all counted, and then when the polls close at 7, we drop all the absentee and early votes counted. Bam, you know what they are at 7:01.

It is weird that in a swing state, in a certain county, it takes them a month to count the votes. So rightly, you should be questioning some of these things. But Oklahoma does it the right way, and those are the things that I’m responsible for. But, yeah, I trust our election process.

AP: But if you were to look at those vote swings, do you trust governors of those states to look at that as opposed to Washington?

STITT: 100%. I don’t think we should federalize that. Because then you’ve got a pendulum swing. What about the next guy gets in office and the next guy and the next guy? The system that we have with 50 different states is the right system.

Now, the Save America Act, making sure that we know who’s voting, I think that’s a very legitimate thing to do.

AP: You pushed back against the president when he wanted to exclude two Democratic governors from a White House meeting. The president had some words for you as well at the time. As a Republican, how do you disagree with the president?

STITT: All I simply said was, “Hey, we can’t call this a National Governors Association meeting if you’re not going to have all the governors there.” And so, to President Donald Trump’s credit, he said, and I think he was getting bad information from staff at the time, but, yes, we talked, and all the governors were invited to the business meeting. He excluded a couple of governors from the dinner. But that’s all I basically said. I didn’t want to get on the bad side of the president. But we have a good working relationship.

I’m trying to do what’s best for Oklahoma. In that case, I was representing the National Governors Association.

AP: It sometimes seems that when Republicans push back against the president, it’s often when they’re leaving office. Should there be more open and frequent disagreement?

STITT: Well, I mean, sure. If there’s something that we fundamentally think is going to be bad for our country, we all should say something. Every citizen, regardless if you’re a Republican or a Democrat, we should say, “Hey, that’s the wrong approach.”

AP: How do we bring down the temperature in politics?

STITT: I think one of the reasons the temperature’s so hard, so loud and divisive, is because of this one-size-fits-all, huge federal government.

Then we want whatever idea we have, then we want everybody to do it across the country. And that is not how our founders set it up. They thought that New York was different from Delaware, different from Virginia and South Carolina and Maryland.

And that’s OK, and that’s what I tell people. Hey, Minnesota’s elected Gov. Tim Walz. That’s OK. Why does that bother me in Oklahoma? Why do I care what Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s doing in New York City? It shouldn’t affect me.

But politics is becoming like, if Kamala Harris wins, she’s going to try to make Oklahoma like California. We don’t want to be like California. And so I think if we can bring that temperature down and say, “Hey, it’s OK that the states are different and they have different values and philosophies.”

AP: What do you see as the future of the Republican Party?

STITT: I hope we get back to the fiscal piece of our party. Like in 1994, when Newt Gingrich came in with the Contract with America, and President Bill Clinton was in office, we balanced a budget. Now, Congress won’t even vote on a budget — it’s continuing resolutions. And our Founding Fathers would just be like, “What is this? What do you mean they don’t ever vote on the budget? That’s all their job is.”

AP: Do you plan on running for anything again, maybe national office?

STITT: I’m just going to finish my job as governor and plan on going back to the private sector, and we’ll see what happens in the future.