Where's the cavalry coming to support Mazzei? It hasn't arrived yet
Two weeks ago, Oklahoma City ABC affiliate KOCO-5 anchor and reporter Chantelle Navarro interviewed Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Mazzei in the wake of his receiving President Donald Trump’s endorsement, and you had to love the way Navarro waded into the big question.
“So,” she said, “you’re saying you did not pay for it?”
Boom goes the dynamite.
Kudos to Navarro for being so direct. From rough and tumble Chicago, perhaps that makes it easier. And a lack of kudos to anybody who didn’t glean what Mazzei had to say, or didn’t say, in reply.
“I think it’s incredibly bizarre and absurd for anybody to think that … President Donald Trump does not make his own decisions about who he wants to endorse,” he said. “And, of course, he’s got a special place in his heart for the people of Oklahoma because he’s quite aware that Oklahoma is the only state in the nation where he won all 77 counties.”
A special place in his heart? Rich.
Of course, I was looking for a much simpler answer.
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying.”
“No, I did not pay for it.”
Something like that.
You know, a denial.
Rather than a non-denial, denial.
Now, I’m not saying he paid for it.
I’m saying when he spoke to Channel 5 he didn’t say he didn’t pay for it.
Interesting, don’t you think?
So, there’s that.
There’s also this.
Now that we’re down to Attorney General Gentner Drummond and Mazzei as the remaining Republican hopefuls in the race, where are the endorsements of Mazzei from his vanquished opponents?
Like, why hasn’t Chip Keating endorsed Mazzei? Why hasn’t Charles McCall?
Take each at their word and they’re the biggest Trump fans ever. True believers. Like NBA action in the ‘80s, they think Trump’s fantastic.
Right?
Keating, after all, couldn’t wait to spend a bunch of state money to build something called the Trump National Laboratory for Energy and National Security. I’m pretty sure I wrote a column about it.
Before McCall chopped a banana in half, the voice-over and lettering on the screen both proclaimed, “Charles McCall. Pro-Trump. Anti-Woke.”
So why haven’t they jumped in over the last week, especially given what Trump called Drummond on Truth Social?
“Gentner Drummond … is a FAKE Republican,” Trump wrote. “The Drummonds donated to SLEEPY Joe Biden, and the totally corrupt Lincoln Project, at levels that are shameful — Frankly, that makes him a Radical Left Dumocrat.”
Why aren’t they falling all over themselves whacking Drummond like a piñata?
It’s true, they have time, the primary runoffs don’t arrive until Aug. 25.
It’s possible, too, they don’t want to back a loser, because Mazzei’s presents creepy as all get out, while Trump’s on course to pay Iran about $300 billion to get out of a war he never had to start, even as getting out of it throws the door wide open for the Epstein files to again dominate the news.
But let me offer another theory.
As candidates, because they have no scruples when it comes to getting themselves elected, no shame they’re not willing to endure, no joke they’re not willing to become, they’ll grovel till the cows come home, slobbering all over Trump hoping to win Oklahoma voters.
Yet, now out of the race, knowing they’ll have no power to wield, they might just be inclined to do the right thing: refusing to sell out the state to a slow-talking, creepy-sounding man who claims to have a plan for everything, who believes every school district in the state is run by a radical socialist, whose numbers do not begin to add up.
It’s true, Drummond himself has done all he could to portray himself as a Trump loyalist, but his heart’s never been in it. The tell has been his attachment to Trump specific issue by specific issue, rather than in full.
Really, when you think about it, his time as attorney general has mostly been about three things, or perhaps only one.
Rooting out corruption.
Preserving the rule of law.
Adhering to the Constitution.
If you’re serious about the last one, maybe the first two just fall in line.
And none of it sounds anything like Trump.
So maybe, though Keating and McCall really, really wanted to be governor themselves, and were willing to sell their soul to Trump to get there, they also know he’s ridiculous, dangerous and dumb and they know Mazzei is too, here for himself, his contributors and nobody else.
Every day they don’t come out for Mazzei, that’s just what it looks like.
They’ll disgrace themselves to win the job, telling themselves they’ll thread the needle between supporting Trump and doing right by the state. But now out of the race, they’re done making deals with the devil.
It’s screwed up, man.
It’s also par for the course and has been for a long time in our Republican super-majority state.