Former state Sen. Greg McCortney is accusing gubernatorial candidate Chip Keating of financing the political attacks that ended his legislative career and urging Republican voters not to reward those tactics at the ballot box.
Former state Sen. Greg McCortney is breaking two years of public silence to accuse gubernatorial candidate Chip Keating of financing the political attacks that ended his legislative career and to urge Republican voters not to support him for governor.
In a Facebook post published this week, the Ada Republican revisited the bitter 2024 primary campaign that cost him his Senate seat and renewed his criticism of Keating, a Republican candidate for governor.
“Chip Keating was the one who did it,” McCortney wrote. “I’m not here to tell you who to vote for, but I do want to tell you that Chip Keating is the wrong answer.”
The comments revive a political feud that began during McCortney’s 2024 re-election campaign, when outside groups spent heavily on attack ads targeting the senator.
At the time, McCortney had been chosen by Senate Republicans to become the chamber’s next president pro tempore, making him the likely future leader of the Senate. His defeat in the Republican primary ended those plans and reshaped the chamber’s leadership succession.
Months later, a Frontier investigation traced funding for many of the anti-McCortney attacks to Keating and his business partner, Michael Mallick. The nonprofit news organization reported the pair provided $100,000 through a Texas-based company that ultimately financed Advance Right, a political action committee that spent more than $90,000 on mailers, text messages, yard signs and television advertising opposing McCortney.
Keating later confirmed to The Frontier that he and Mallick were the primary funding source behind the effort. He said he became involved after McCortney suggested delaying additional funding for a proposed law enforcement training center in Lincoln County.
“To me, he’s trying to defund the police,” Keating told The Frontier in 2024. “The work we do as citizens is to benefit the men and women in blue and our first responders. And Senator McCortney was going to be a direct threat to that, and so we wanted to get involved.”
In his Facebook post, McCortney said he largely avoided discussing Keating publicly during the past two years, even as Keating launched his campaign for governor.
“I’ve kept Chip Keating’s name out of my mouth as much as possible for two years,” McCortney wrote. “I just tried to move on.”
McCortney also took aim at Keating’s campaign portrayal of himself as a political outsider.
“The political outsider stuff he is selling is a joke,” McCortney wrote. “The dude literally grew up in the governor’s mansion.”
Keating is the son of former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating and served as Oklahoma secretary of public safety under Gov. Kevin Stitt.
More broadly, McCortney said his experience should serve as a warning to voters evaluating attack ads and independent expenditure campaigns in statewide races.
“There are millions of dollars from out-of-state groups attacking candidates in both the governor’s race and the attorney general’s race right now,” McCortney wrote. “If you are willing to mindlessly believe them all, you, and Chip Keating, are part of the problem.”
The post marks McCortney’s most direct public criticism of Keating since the 2024 primary campaign that ended his Senate career and places that contest back into the spotlight as Republican voters make final decisions in the race for governor.
