Oklahoma is not a typical battleground.
President Trump won the state by 34 points in 2024, it last elected a Democratic governor in 2006, and it has one of the highest percentages of registered Republican voters of any state.
But now, national Republicans are making a last-minute $3 million investment in Oklahoma’s gubernatorial race to safeguard Mike Mazzei against Democrat Cyndi Munson. And the Democratic Governors Association, seeing a potential opening in a good year for the party, is investing $500,000.
The race has tightened in the closing weeks. An internal poll for Munson had the race neck-and-neck, but strategists and experts who spoke to National Journal said that despite the closer-than-comfortable margins for Mazzei, the seat will likely remain in Republican hands.
Mazzei barely survived a grueling primary and runoff, heavily relying on Trump’s endorsement to carry him across the line. He defeated state Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who coalesced the more-moderate flank of the party, by just 2,000 votes. Mazzei emerged damaged, thanks to attacks over his support for a United Arab Emirates-backed aluminum smelter in Inola, and had just $151,000 on hand after funding his costly nomination battle through large personal loans.
Oklahoma GOP pollster Pat McFerron said the Republican Governors Association’s $3 million investment helped Republicans get back on their feet to define Munson, who swept the Democratic nod on the first go-round.
“I think it's a little bit of both: one, an insurance policy, and two, a recognition that the Mazzei campaign just didn't have the funds to do this itself,” McFerron said.
But Seth McKee, a political science professor at Oklahoma State University, said Mazzei isn’t as strong a candidate as Drummond would have been. And Hudson Harder, chair of the Tulsa County Democrats, said Mazzei’s nomination gives Democrats “a small window.”
“If Gentner was the nominee, I don't think any money would be spent on this race, if I'm being honest,” Harder said. “And that's not me saying anything negative against Cyndi. I just think that Gentner would have been really able to take all the moderates, pretty much, or the moderate Republicans, and it would have been over.”
McKee said there “are a lot of bitter Drummond supporters” who may vote for Munson. And she’s welcoming them into her camp.
“I'm very thankful to the many who supported the attorney general," Munson told National Journal. "As soon as the runoff was over, they signed up to volunteer, they donated, they're letting me know they're supporting me.”
Mazzei is also still fielding attacks from a deep-pocketed dark-money group over his support for the aluminum smelter.
A newly formed group called the Fairness Corps PAC has aired or reserved $734,000 in ads targeting Mazzei over the issue, warning that “something bad is happening” when a candidate supports “the interests of a foreign corporation in an Islamic nation.” The PAC, which was formed on Oct. 19, is one of the largest ad spenders, outpacing Munson herself, according to AdImpact.
“Mike Mazzei wants to put a Middle Eastern smelter plant in our backyard—350 acres owned by a Middle Eastern corporation with ties to Iran, hurting our farmers and ranchers while giving Oklahoma taxpayer dollars to a Muslim country,” the narrator in the PAC’s sole TV ad says as images flash of Mazzei shaking hands with someone who resembles an official from the United Arab Emirates.
The group, which lists an address in Arkansas according to state campaign finance records, won’t have to report its donors until January 2027.
The DGA announced a $500,000 investment to support Munson in mid-October. A spokesperson with the group said the funds are going to outside groups and entities but declined to say whether that includes the Fairness Corps PAC. Stronger Oklahoma, the group the DGA backed in 2018, has since been terminated, according to filings with the Oklahoma Ethics Commission. National Journal reached out to the publicly listed contacts on Fairness Corp PAC's filing with the Oklahoma Ethics Commission and did not hear back by deadline.
By state law, the DGA cannot directly contribute that amount to Munson directly.
The investment comes at a time when Democrats elsewhere, like Florida and Texas, are clamoring for more support from the DGA. Nominees in both states each got $1 million, but allies have pushed for more backup.
Oklahoma, where the key to a Republican victory is simply turning out the base, is rated more favorably for Republicans than those states, and Munson has a much steeper hill to climb.
Trump campaigned in Durant at the beginning of the month.
“The last couple of weeks have seen Trump's numbers improve in the state," McFerron said. "I don't know if it's the trip to Durant. I think it's just people putting on team jerseys, even though they're frustrated. They don't want the other side.”
Democrats at times have struggled to win even urban counties, including in 2024 when Trump won every single county in the state. And with Republicans dominating in voter registration, other voters are choosing to register as unaffiliated rather than as Democrats, McKee added.
Democrats have had their hopes crushed here before. In 2018, the party pumped in nearly $2 million for Drew Edmondson in the open race against Kevin Stitt, which race raters considered Lean Republican at the time. Stitt went on to win by 12 points.
The $3 million from the RGA could reverse the close polling, McFerron said, as Republicans define Munson on air. The general-election stretch has attracted just $7 million in total ad spending.
Oklahoma Values, the RGA-backed group, is tapping into culture-war issues, airing an ad saying Munson “backed taxpayer funded sex change surgeries even for kids," "voted to let biological men compete in girls' sports," and "pushed dangerous sanctuary-city policies protecting violent criminals, illegals, instead of our families.”
McKee and McFerron said the race will be closer than other statewide contests, but that it’s unlikely a blue wave crests over the Sooner State.
“I think it's going to be a little ripple when it gets to Oklahoma, but it looks real, and I think that the money is speaking to that nervousness, if you will,” McKee said.
