Tulsa businessman Mike Mazzei hopes to win Tuesday’s hotly contested Republican primary runoff for Oklahoma governor after President Donald Trump endorsed him and sharply attacked Mazzei’s rival, state Attorney General Gentner Drummond.The contest between Mazzei and Drummond for the GOP nomination to replace term-limited Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt — another Trump target — is the biggest one on the ballot in their deeply conservative state. Drummond finished first among the nine candidates in the first round of voting June 16, but only by about 1,100 ballots out of 403,000 cast, and both he and Mazzei received about 26% of the vote.The winner will face Oklahoma House Minority Leader Cyndi Munson. A Democrat hasn’t won the governor’s race since 2006, and the GOP is heavily favored to keep the office in the November general election.
Mazzei, the 61-year-old founder of an investment management firm who served 12 years in the state Senate, received Trump’s endorsement in May. Trump has reaffirmed it several times on his Truth Social platform. In a lengthy post last week, Trump called Drummond a “FAKE Republican.” Trump criticized Drummond for saying in a 2024 congressional hearing that he had no opinion on Trump’s 2021 impeachment after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters. Drummond, a 62-year-old northern Oklahoma rancher and former Air Force pilot, was elected attorney general in 2022.
