As Oklahoma’s primary campaign enters its final days, an aluminum smelter and some highly unusual developments are proving a familiar truth: every election eventually stops following the script.
By Tim Allen, Managing Editor
One of the lessons you learn after watching Oklahoma politics long enough is that every campaign eventually finds its weird.
No matter how carefully consultants plan. No matter how much money candidates raise. No matter how many talking points are tested and polished.
Sooner or later, some issue emerges that nobody expected to dominate the conversation.
Sometimes it’s a vote from long ago. Sometimes it’s a local controversy that suddenly catches fire. Sometimes it’s a policy dispute that somehow becomes a proxy for a much larger argument.
Whatever form it takes, every election develops its own personality.
And with just over a week before Oklahoma’s primary election, campaign season has entered its familiar final act.
The attack ads have taken over television.
Campaigns are searching for issues that break through the noise.
And now one of the hottest issues in Oklahoma politics is an aluminum smelter.
Think about that for a moment.
If someone had predicted six months ago that one of the defining issues of the Republican governor’s primary would involve an aluminum smelter proposed for a site near Inola, they probably would have been laughed out of the room.
Yet here we are.
The project now sits at the center of a growing political fight between Attorney General Gentner Drummond and former state Sen. Mike Mazzei, two candidates who have emerged as leading contenders in the Republican primary.
The timing could hardly be stranger.
Just days after receiving President Donald Trump’s endorsement, Mazzei’s support for the project suddenly became a focal point of the campaign. Drummond escalated the dispute by filing suit aimed at stopping the project, and an aluminum smelter quickly became one of the hottest topics in Oklahoma politics.
What makes the controversy politically fascinating is that it doesn’t fit neatly into the traditional political boxes.
Trump has lined up on the project’s side.
Mazzei supports the project, at least he does now.
Many voters who support Trump oppose the project.
Some of the loudest criticism has come from grassroots activists and local residents who generally occupy the populist wing of the Republican Party.
For some voters, the project represents jobs, investment and economic growth.
For others, the project isn’t just about incentives. It’s about sending Oklahoma tax dollars halfway around the world to benefit investors they’ve never heard of and don’t trust. Environmental concerns only deepen the skepticism.
That creates cognitive dissonance for a segment of the Republican electorate.
This is, after all, a state that voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump three times.
Yet many of the voters most skeptical of the smelter are also among Trump’s most loyal supporters.
That’s what makes the issue so unusual. It has created one of the rare moments when support for Trump and support for a Trump-backed position are not necessarily the same thing.
When political loyalties collide with local concerns, which wins?
That’s not a question Oklahoma Republicans often have to answer.
But many are being forced to answer it now.
The governor’s race isn’t the only contest showing signs that campaign season has entered its final, and often strangest, stretch.
In the race for state treasurer, questions surrounding official travel and management have generated scrutiny for incumbent Todd Russ.
That’s not the sort of storyline campaign consultants plan for.
Then again, late-stage campaigns rarely follow the plan.
That’s why the final weeks of a primary campaign can be so revealing.
Candidates are no longer campaigning in theory. They’re forced to react to real events. Voters are forced to weigh competing priorities. Coalitions that appear solid on paper suddenly discover internal tensions.
And if you’ve watched enough Oklahoma campaigns, you know the final stretch often feels, well, surreal.
Mailboxes fill with glossy campaign pieces portraying one candidate as a flawless conservative champion while the next mailer depicts the very same person as a danger to Oklahoma’s future.
Television viewers can’t make it through a commercial break without seeing one candidate praised as a hero in one advertisement and condemned as a villain in the next.
As Election Day approaches, campaigns search for any advantage they can find. Small stories become large ones. Unexpected issues become major controversies. Candidates who spent months talking about taxes, schools, roads and public safety suddenly find themselves debating aluminum smelters, travel logs and attack ads.
It happens every cycle.
The lawsuit may succeed. It may fail.
The attack ads will eventually stop.
But the final days of a campaign have a way of revealing things that remain hidden during the quieter months.
They reveal what issues truly motivate voters.
They reveal where political coalitions are strongest and where they are most fragile.
And they reveal that campaigns rarely end the way consultants expect them to.
This year that has meant an aluminum smelter in Inola, a barrage of attack ads, questions about official travel and a final stretch that has grown stranger by the day.
None of it was in the original campaign playbook.
Yet all of it may help decide who governs Oklahoma next.
Every campaign finds its weird.
This year, Oklahoma’s weird just happens to involve an aluminum smelter.
