Donald Trump has endorsed some real winners over the years, and some spectacular losers. Oklahoma’s Mike Mazzei is making a serious run at joining the latter category.
Mazzei wants Oklahomans to believe he’s a financial genius, a principled conservative and a man whose Christian faith guides his every decision. Let’s examine the evidence.
First, there’s the money. Mazzei has poured more than $11 million into his own campaign, including financing via a loan from Regent Bank and using his Trinity wealth management business as collateral. Regent CEO Sean Kouplen served alongside Mazzei in Governor Stitt’s administration and has endorsed him.
Nothing suspicious about that, right? Apparently, Oklahoma’s next Governor is so financially sophisticated he needs a multimillion-dollar bank loan to convince voters he’s fiscally responsible. The arrangement has prompted calls for regulatory scrutiny.
Mazzei could clear up plenty of questions by disclosing the loan terms. Instead, we are left wondering how he will repay this without selling his business, which seems to be the only plausible way to come up with so much money, as this amount has never been raised in Oklahoma by any individual candidate.
Then there’s the Inola smelter.
Mazzei originally expressed serious concerns about foreign ownership and taxpayer subsidies, positions shared by his Republican opponents in the GOP primary. Then, literally hours before President Trump endorsed Mazzei, he put out a post on X singing the smelter’s praises as being exactly what the economic doctor ordered for Oklahoma.
Suddenly, the smelter was a wonderful idea.
Enter Roger Stone, Trump’s longtime political operative, whose associated firm received $67,500 from Mazzei’s campaign. Did Stone arrange the endorsement? Was supporting the smelter the price Mazzei had to pay for Trump’s seal of approval? We don’t know, but the timing of these events was remarkable and the dots seem to all be connected.
Mazzei’s tax plan is another masterpiece of political fiction. Eliminate the state income tax! Abolish property taxes for seniors and veterans! Everybody gets a tax cut! But how does he pay for it, or get this through the legislature? Minor details we get to worry about later …
For a former state budget secretary, you would think he could explain this to voters.
Then there’s his personal testimony.
Mazzei has publicly discussed his struggles with opioids on an appearance of Trinity Broadcasting Network’s “Praise,” where he discussed entering a rehabilitation program following a 2008 car accident.
More recently, he sings a very different tune. In an interview with local influencer Rachel Ackerman, he said opioids made him very sick, so he “quickly” came to rely on his faith and scripture, with no mention of a “medically supervised” program to get off opioids.
Faith and recovery are things to celebrate, but voters might reasonably wonder why his story seems to change, depending on who’s listening.
During the runoff election, Mazzei offered results from a negative urine test, but declined to take a longer-window hair follicle drug test, which would show drug usage over a 90-day period vs 48-72 hours from a simple urine test.
Then there’s an interesting detail from Mazzei’s accident litigation, where Noel Mazzei filed a “loss of consortium” claim, asserting the accident had damaged their marital relationship.
One would think a strong Christian marriage would draw strength from their faith during a period of illness or medical hardship, but maybe it was also an opportunistic way to get paid. This claim and lawsuit that included claims for emotional distress were either settled or dropped altogether, as they went away after opposing counsel requested sensitive records from pharmacies and information from a mental health clinic. Filing a claim is perfectly legal and dropping or settling a case proves nothing improper, but it’s a curious footnote to the story Mazzei tells on the campaign trail.
While Oklahoma voters deserve some semblance of truth, they will likely never get it, as the information around this case has been made inaccessible by the court, presumably because Mazzei was a member of the state Legislature at the time.
Contemporary reports from the time of his accident also indicated Mazzei was missing much of his state senator responsibilities due to a herniated disc, as opposed to Mazzei referring to his “broken spinal complex” in campaign interviews and speeches. What in the heck is a “broken spinal complex?” I’ve asked a few surgeons and nobody knows …
Perhaps there’s a perfectly reasonable medical explanation. A little consistency would be nice, and Oklahomans would probably like to know the truth about Mazzei’s health and history.
Which brings us back to Trump. He had an opportunity to endorse a credible conservative with a coherent governing philosophy. Instead Oklahoma’s next Governor is bought and paid for with borrowed money and an endorsement of a smelter, which is directly tied to a UAE sheikh who is directly tied to the President’s cryptocurrency business.
Trump may be the world’s greatest salesman, but even he can’t make Mazzei look great.
And if Oklahoma’s voters have been paying attention, Trump’s “complete and total” endorsement may become his complete and total embarrassment.