Both Republican candidates emphasize education and worker training, but their platforms differ on tax-cutting speed, child care, infrastructure and the role of state investment.
OKLAHOMA CITY — When the State Chamber of Oklahoma asked business leaders last spring what was holding back growth, they did not put taxes at the top of the list.
Now, with Attorney General Gentner Drummond and former state Sen. Mike Mazzei competing in the Aug. 25 Republican gubernatorial runoff, the chamber’s findings offer a yardstick for comparing the candidates’ economic platforms with employers’ priorities.
Both candidates emphasize education, CareerTech and workforce training. But their plans diverge on some of the other issues employers identified, particularly child care, infrastructure and whether available state money should be invested or returned through faster tax cuts.
Workforce is the common ground
The 2026 Business Leaders Poll, conducted by the State Chamber, Oklahoma Business Roundtable and State Chamber Research Foundation, surveyed 401 business owners and executives.
Seventy-four percent identified workforce and education as one of the two most important issues affecting business growth. Only 30% said Oklahoma’s current workforce meets their needs well, even though 81% expect to hire during the coming year.
The most frequently cited hiring problems were too few qualified applicants, employee turnover and gaps in technical skills. Only 13% said Oklahoma high school graduates are well prepared for the workplace.
Both candidates’ platforms respond directly to those concerns.
Mazzei’s plan calls for expanding CareerTech, apprenticeships and trade pathways while strengthening partnerships between employers and schools. He also proposes putting greater emphasis on job-related education in public schools and using employer feedback to guide workforce programs.
“A strong workforce is the backbone of a strong economy,” Mazzei’s plan says.
Mazzei also proposes hiring a statewide literacy director, making reading proficiency by third grade a central education goal and paying Oklahoma teachers at the top of the region.
Drummond’s platform similarly calls for expanding CareerTech and apprenticeships, allowing high school students to earn credit through apprenticeships and strengthening job training and reentry programs.
His education plan emphasizes reading proficiency by third grade, math competency by fourth grade, teacher recruitment and stronger connections among public schools, higher education and workforce training.
Those proposals closely track the poll’s findings. Ninety-seven percent of respondents rated apprenticeships and work-based learning as effective, while 89% supported prioritizing funding for better reading and math outcomes. More than 91% said CareerTech prepares students well for the workforce.
Child care separates the candidates
Child care produced one of the poll’s clearest findings. Seventy-seven percent of business leaders identified access to child care as a barrier to workforce participation.
The concern cut across industries, regions and employer sizes, leading the report to declare that child care is no longer a secondary family issue but a statewide workforce constraint.
Drummond’s platform calls for affordable, quality early childhood care to help children arrive at school ready to learn. His recently released economic plan also proposes investing in rural child care along with housing, broadband and infrastructure.
Drummond has explicitly connected the issue to economic development, saying Oklahoma must address its child care shortage to expand the workforce.
No comparable child care proposal appears in Mazzei’s published platform or in the other publicly available campaign material reviewed by OK Politics Today. His plan discusses workforce training, education and helping families broadly but does not detail how he would improve the availability or affordability of child care.
Infrastructure reveals another difference
Infrastructure was the second major warning in the chamber’s report.
Fifty-nine percent of respondents said Oklahoma’s physical infrastructure compares unfavorably with that of competing states. Forty percent said infrastructure limitations have delayed investment or expansion.
Roads and highways were the most frequently identified concern, followed by utilities and broadband.
Drummond’s platform contains specific proposals for rural roads, dangerous two-lane highways, broadband, water and wastewater systems, industrial sites and energy infrastructure. It presents those investments as necessary to move workers and products and to attract business to rural Oklahoma.
Mazzei describes “smart infrastructure” as part of his economic strategy and proposes reducing permitting delays and other regulatory barriers. His published economic plan, however, places greater emphasis on taxes, regulation, workforce programs and assistance for Oklahoma-owned businesses than on particular infrastructure projects.
Tax plans move in different directions
Taxes have been much more prominent in the runoff campaign than in the chamber poll.
About half of the business leaders surveyed said they pay roughly the right amount in taxes, and most did not identify taxes as their biggest obstacle to growth.
When asked what Oklahoma should do with surplus funds, 59.6% favored investing the money in education, infrastructure and other public priorities. Another 28.2% preferred additional tax cuts, while 12.2% favored building state reserves.
Mazzei has offered the more aggressive tax proposal. His income tax plan would reduce Oklahoma’s top individual rate from 4.5% to 3% during his first year in office and eliminate the tax within six years. He proposes paying for the initial reduction by eliminating deductions, exemptions and what he calls corporate welfare while restraining state spending.
Drummond also supports an eventual path to no state income tax, but he would require each reduction to be supported by verified recurring revenue and tests of the state’s reserves. He says tax cuts should not jeopardize education, public safety, infrastructure or other essential services.
“If Oklahoma can truly afford it, families deserve to keep more of what they earn,” Drummond’s plan says.
On that question, Drummond’s sequencing more closely resembles the preference expressed by most business leaders to protect public investment before making additional tax cuts. Mazzei’s timetable places greater weight on tax reduction as the catalyst for economic growth.
The candidates are closer on business incentives than their rhetoric sometimes suggests. Sixty-one percent of poll respondents said Oklahoma must use incentives to compete with other states, while only 7% favored eliminating them entirely.
Mazzei proposes eliminating incentives with poor returns and restructuring others to produce measurable benefits. Drummond has proposed an Oklahoma First Fund to support Oklahoma-owned businesses while demanding greater accountability for public spending. Both approaches could fit the poll’s call for incentives tied to demonstrated economic returns.
A benchmark, not an endorsement
The chamber poll is not a survey of Republican voters, and it does not endorse or evaluate either candidate. It reflects the views of business owners and executives, not the electorate as a whole.
But it provides a useful comparison between the issues dominating the runoff and the constraints employers say they face.
Both candidates align closely with business leaders on CareerTech, apprenticeships, early literacy and employer-driven workforce training. Drummond’s platform extends that overlap to child care and detailed infrastructure investment, while his slower approach to tax cuts more closely reflects the poll’s preference for protecting public priorities.
Mazzei’s platform shares the business community’s emphasis on workforce preparation and educational outcomes but diverges most clearly by making accelerated tax reduction a central engine of growth.
The poll’s broader message is that Oklahoma employers are ready to expand. Their biggest concern is whether they can find the workers — and the supporting systems — needed to do it.
