The following is an edited transcript of portions of the August 27 This Week in Oklahoma Politics podcast on KOSU with host Michael Cross talking to Andy Moore of Let’s Fix This and Jennifer Monies, the senior advisor to the Speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives. We edited the transcript for clarity and readability, and to focus on specific election results.
Jennifer Monies began the conversation with an assessment of the August runoff results. “I think the overall word of the day from the election to me was just weird, and I’ll explain.” After noting that the big question headed into the election was the impact of President Trump’s endorsement of Mike Mazzei in his campaign versus Gentner Drummond, as well as on other less high-profile races, like state superintendent. “I think we can say that it was absolutely mixed across the board,” Monies said. “I think the big surprise from the (governor’s) race was how close it actually was, because if any other candidate had been endorsed by Trump, by Markwayne Mullin, by Kevin Hearn – all these big, heavy hitter Republicans in Oklahoma, a deep red state, they would have won by seventy percent.”
Monies goes on to note that the MAGA candidate did not win the state superintendent race, and that the election was “all over the place in insurance and labor, and so there wasn’t a clear ‘MAGA swept everything’ result. The Senate saw some Freedom Caucus member incumbents lose, so I don’t think there’s a big takeaway from the election, other than it was weird.”
For Moore, the results came down to who turns out in a low-turnout election. “I think the people (who vote in these elections) have very opinionated thoughts on the races,” Moore said. He goes on to liken the pre-election polling map to a weather map with a cold front line drawn diagonally across the state from northeast to southwest. “NonDoc’s map was a gradient with the strongest support for Mazzei in southeastern Oklahoma and Drummond won the northwest part of the state, which makes sense with his ranching background.”
Moore also compared this race to the Kevin Stitt vs Mick Cornett election of 2018, noting that Mazzei was more of an outsider this time than Stitt was then, but the east-west divide was present in that race too. “We had more votes cast in this race, but the population of the state has grown, so we still only saw 29 percent turnout for Republicans,” Moore said. “The number of Republican voters has increased by 36 percent statewide since 2018, a substantial increase, and so even if not all of them show up, you still have a lot of Republican voters show up for a race where we expected 10 to 12 percent turnout.”
Host Michael Cross asked Monies and Moore what they thought about the number of people who said they would have voted in the race if Oklahoma had open primaries, which drew a bit of disagreement from the panelists.
“Mazzei won by just 2000 votes,” Moore said. “This from someone who had the endorsement of one of the most powerful people in the world, right? He also loaned his own campaign something like $12 million. He put in everything he had, got all these endorsements, and he barely squeaked out a win. Had anything not gone his way (including Democrats and Independents voting), I think we might be looking at Drummond as the nominee.”
Monies pointed out that it’s a runoff for the Republican nomination, so “…my opinion is Republicans should be the ones who ultimately decide, and they had their vote on Tuesday; they were very divided. Of course I’ve heard all the Republicans for (Democratic candidate) Munson talk and everything coming out, but I don’t know if that will actually play out over time. Will Mazzei be able to bring the Drummond voters alongside? It got very ugly, and so we will see if Mazzei can actually build a bridge back to the Drummond voters, or whether a number will defect to Munson in the general election.”
In terms of strategy, Moore said he thinks Munson should target a bloc of Republican voters more than Democratic voters, since there is little likelihood Democrats will vote for Mazzei. “I think she should target the Republicans who didn’t show up because they didn’t think either candidate represented them,” Moore said.
In the Democratic runoff for the U.S. Senate seat, newcomer, nurse, and self-described Democratic Socialist N’Kiyla Jasmine Thomas defeated multiple-attempt candidate Jim Priest by a comfortable margin. Moore predicted a steep, uphill battle for Thomas in the general election. “Congratulations to them on their campaign, because it was nice to hear about actual issues, which is a refreshing change for how campaigns typically go,” he said.
Monies agrees that a campaign against Republican candidate Kevin Hearn would be an “incredibly harder challenge” than the runoff election. “He’s very popular, and the field was cleared for the congressman on the Republican side thanks to Trump’s endorsement. And I think if Democrats in Oklahoma think that the way to win is by electing a Democratic Socialist, I think they’re going in the wrong direction.”
This article appears in Not Quite Bedlam.