Negative campaigning works, especially when it is reinforced by the liberal news media.

Thanks to the wrong-headed belief that lawmakers created the mess in public education, ill-informed Oklahomans have voted in a number of teachers, former teachers and administrators into the Legislature.

The first order of business for these “educators” will be to craft a comprehensive tax increase package to push more billions of dollars into public schools. Most will carefully try to block any meaningful reforms, such as school consolidation or elimination of unneeded administrators.

Perhaps they will turn a deaf ear to corrections’ officials who desperately want to build new prisons. Or they may not want to listen to social service workers who want to multiply the ever-increasing cost of Medicaid. And don’t forget higher education and its thirst for more subsidies.

Oklahoma is awash with surplus revenue and that will grow thanks to the biggest tax increase in state history earlier this year. But it won’t be enough. It is never enough, especially for the teachers’ union.

And these new education lawmakers will have to decide how to navigate Oklahoma’s new liberalized marijuana laws. Law enforcement officials say some changes could wreak havoc on crime.

It’s a tough job. Some former educators are about to get a real-life lesson.