Centrist Independent Voter endorses Attorney General Gentner Drummond in Oklahoma’s August 25 Republican runoff for governor.
Drummond faces former state Senator and state budget secretary Mike Mazzei. The two finished virtually tied in the June primary: Drummond received about 26.3% of the vote and Mazzei about 26.0%. In heavily Republican Oklahoma, the winner of this runoff will enter the general election as the strong favorite to become governor.
Drummond is a conservative Republican, and Centrist Independent Voter disagrees with him on important issues. But this runoff presents a meaningful choice between two candidates, and Drummond has demonstrated something we increasingly value: a willingness to exercise independent judgment even when doing so means disagreeing with his own party’s most powerful figures.
Independence Is More Than a Campaign Slogan
The proposed $4 billion aluminum smelter in Inola has become the clearest example.
President Trump strongly supports the project and has endorsed Mazzei. Drummond, whose family operates a cattle ranch, argues that the smelter poses unacceptable risks to surrounding farmland, air and water and could impose additional costs on Oklahoma electricity consumers. As attorney general, he filed suit seeking to stop the project.
We do not have enough information to conclude that blocking the smelter is necessarily the correct economic or environmental decision. A major domestic source of aluminum could provide real national-security and economic benefits. Environmental policy should be based on careful assessment of costs and benefits, as we explain in our Environmental Protection position.
But the political contrast is revealing.
Mazzei criticized the smelter before receiving Trump’s endorsement and then reversed himself on the day Trump endorsed him. Drummond has continued opposing the project despite Trump’s criticism and says that protecting Oklahoma’s interests is part of his job.
That does not prove Drummond is right about the smelter. It does provide evidence that his decisions are not automatically dictated by presidential preference.
A Record of Institutional Independence
The same pattern appears elsewhere in Drummond’s record.
Drummond challenged Oklahoma’s attempt to establish the nation’s first publicly funded religious charter school. He argued that a state-created religious school violated constitutional protections separating church and state. The Oklahoma Supreme Court agreed, and an evenly divided U.S. Supreme Court subsequently left that decision in place.
That result is broadly consistent with our Educational Content position, although our view is somewhat more nuanced than categorical opposition to public support for religious schools. Religious schools can be effective and efficient educational institutions. The difficulty is ensuring that public funds do not explicitly or implicitly subsidize religious instruction or advocacy. If a workable separation could be maintained, public support would not necessarily be objectionable. In practice, however, maintaining that separation can be extremely difficult.
His handling of the Richard Glossip death-penalty case provides an even stronger example.
After reviewing previously undisclosed evidence, Drummond concluded that Glossip had not received a fair trial and took the extraordinary step of asking courts to overturn a murder conviction obtained by his own state. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately agreed that prosecutorial misconduct required a new trial. Drummond has not declared Glossip innocent and intends to retry the case, but he has refused to defend a conviction he believes was obtained unfairly.
That is exactly the kind of distinction a responsible attorney general should make. Support for law enforcement does not require defending every prosecution. Our Death Penalty position similarly emphasizes that the irreversible nature of capital punishment requires unusually high confidence in the integrity of the conviction.
Drummond has also sought a less confrontational relationship with Oklahoma’s tribal nations than outgoing Governor Kevin Stitt, defending established tribal rights while emphasizing cooperation on economic development, infrastructure and public safety.
Governing Rather Than Performing
Drummond’s current platform contains several pragmatic elements.
He wants stronger vocational education, apprenticeships and CareerTech programs; improved rural roads and broadband; incentives for high-performing teachers; and greater cooperation with tribal nations on economic development. He calls for tax reductions but says they should not come at the expense of schools, roads or public safety.
That last qualification matters. Both Drummond and Mazzei ultimately favor eliminating Oklahoma’s income tax. Centrist Independent Voter has not adopted a position on state income taxes specifically, but we are skeptical of treating elimination of any one broad-based tax as an end in itself. In general, financing government from several sources can reduce the economic distortions created by relying too heavily on a single tax base. Drummond at least acknowledges that the lost revenue must be replaced rather than pretending that several billion dollars of government revenue can simply disappear.
We prefer his emphasis on improving schools and expanding career and apprenticeship opportunities, which overlaps with elements of our K–12 education and vocational-education policies.
Our Reservations
Drummond remains considerably more conservative than Centrist Independent Voter.
We disagree with his opposition to abortion and with Oklahoma’s highly restrictive abortion policies. Our own abortion position attempts to balance protection of reproductive choice early in pregnancy with greater restrictions later.
His immigration rhetoric is also harsher than ours. He emphasizes deportation and enforcement and has campaigned on working with President Trump to remove undocumented immigrants. We support strong borders and enforcement, but we also believe immigration policy must recognize the economic importance of legal immigration and provide workable legal solutions for long-established undocumented residents.
We are skeptical of making elimination of Oklahoma’s income tax a major policy objective. Whether revenue comes from income, sales, property or other taxes, the relevant questions are the incentives each tax creates, how fairly the burden is distributed and whether the combined system finances necessary public services efficiently.
Finally, Drummond’s rhetoric about the foreign ownership of the Inola project has occasionally been needlessly inflammatory. The nationality or religion of an investor is not a reason to reject an investment. Environmental risks, national-security considerations, subsidies, local economic effects and ownership control should be evaluated on their merits.
These are real disagreements.
They do not outweigh the choice presented in this runoff.
The Choice
Mike Mazzei has substantial experience in business, finance and state government. We do not regard him as unqualified.
But his campaign increasingly defines itself through President Trump’s endorsement. Mazzei himself described Trump’s support as the clearest distinction between himself and Drummond after the June primary.
We think Oklahoma needs a governor whose first question is not what the president wants, but what is best for Oklahoma and what the law requires.
Gentner Drummond has repeatedly shown that he is willing to reach conclusions that anger his own political allies. He did so over tribal relations. He did so over a religious charter school. He did so in the Glossip case. And he is doing so again over the proposed Inola aluminum smelter.
We will not agree with all of the decisions he makes as governor.
But we have considerable confidence that they will be his decisions.