Super PACs are paying for a new wave of attack ads on candidates in the Oklahoma gubernatorial and attorney general’s races ahead of the June Republican primary. These independent groups can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money in elections as long as they don’t coordinate directly with candidates.
The true sources of their funding can sometimes be hard to find. The Super PAC Oklahoma Conservative Coalition, whose donors include wealthy supporters of gubernatorial candidate and former House Speaker Charles McCall, is funding negative ads against McCall’s opponents.
Super PACs can also conceal the identity of their backers through shell companies or dark money groups that don’t have to disclose their donors. The group Electing a Conservative and Honest Oklahoman PAC, which has purchased negative advertising in the Republican primary for Oklahoma attorney general, is funded by the dark money group Conservative Agenda for America.
The Frontier could find no records to show the donors behind Secure Oklahoma PAC, another group running ads in the state attorney general primary.
We used public records and other sources to fact-check claims in some of these political ads.
Claim: Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who is running for governor, “stood with the ACLU to allow transgender surgeries for minors.”
Source: An ad paid for by the Oklahoma Conservative Coalition made this claim.
Fact Check: Mostly false
The ACLU and other groups sued Oklahoma officials, including Drummond, on behalf of families with transgender children and medical providers in 2023, arguing that a state law that banned gender-affirming care for minors was unconstitutional. Drummond’s office defended the state law in court but also signed an agreement with the ACLU allowing transgender youth to continue to have access to gender-affirming care while the lawsuit was ongoing.
Oklahoma ultimately won the case. The U.S Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in August 2025 that the state can restrict access to medical procedures to protect the well-being of minor children.
Drummond praised the decision.
“My office mounted a vigorous defense of this commonsense law to protect children, and I am grateful the battle is now won,” Drummond said at the time. “Thanks to this critical victory, our children will no longer be subjected to the lifelong consequences of these damaging procedures.”
Ryan Martinez, chairman for Oklahoma Conservative Coalition, said the group believes its ad is accurate.
-Brianna Bailey
Claim: Gubernatorial candidate Chip Keating had to resign as Oklahoma Secretary of Public Safety “after violent crime spiked and domestic violence hit a 10-year high.”
Source: An ad paid for by the Super PAC Oklahoma Conservative Coalition made this claim.
Fact check: Mostly false
Violent crime rates indeed saw a spike in Oklahoma and nationally throughout the 2010s and in 2020. But it’s not clear that Keating had to resign because of increases in crime rates.
Keating’s campaign said his resignation came after he had served a two-year commitment to be a member of Gov. Kevin Stitt’s cabinet. Keating served as secretary of public safety from early 2019 through the end of 2020. In comments at the time, Keating referenced this two-year commitment. The governor’s office did not respond to questions about why Keating resigned.
The Oklahoma Conservative Coalition ad cited a 2021 article from the Oklahoman that detailed rising murder rates, which one expert attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic and increases in substance use, mental health issues and gun purchases.
Oklahoma Conservative Coalition said the group stands by its ad.
-Kayla Branch
Claim: Gubernatorial candidate Mike Mazzei tried to raise taxes on Oklahoma families and tried to kill an income tax cut.
Source: An ad paid for by the Super PAC Oklahoma Conservative Coalition made this claim.
Fact check: True
State lawmakers passed a bill in 2014 that triggered an automatic income tax cut based on the state’s future revenue projections, rather than actual revenue collections. Despite a looming massive budget shortfall due in part to low oil and gas prices, the provision triggered a cut of the state’s top income tax rate from 5.25% to 5% in January 2016. Mazzei authored a bill in response in an attempt to roll back that .25% income tax cut, as well as eliminate a provision that allowed taxpayers to deduct from the taxes they paid to state and local entities to partially offset that year’s shortfall. The Oklahoman published an editorial on Feb. 28, 2016 about the legal challenges the bill would likely face. The bill ultimately died without receiving a full Senate vote.
-Clifton Adcock
Claim: Keating “spent years on the board of a hospital while they operated a transgender center, offering puberty blockers, cross-sex hormone therapy and gender transition treatments to Oklahoma children, mutilating our kids with harmful procedures.”
Source: An ad paid for by Oklahoma Conservative Coalition made this claim.
Fact check: Mixed
Chip Keating previously served on the boards of the University Hospitals Authority Trust and OU Health. He also served as a board member of the Children’s Hospital Foundation from 2010 to 2020 and as president in 2018.
Oklahoma Children’s Hospital previously housed the Roy G. Biv program, which offered “gender-affirming hormone therapy” and advertised to help “find surgeons who perform gender-affirming surgeries.” Gov. Kevin Stitt signed a bill in 2022 that ended the program.
The type of boards Keating served on generally oversee a hospital’s administration and finances.
OU Health did not respond before The Frontier’s publication deadline.
-Ashlynd Baecht
Claim: Republican candidate for state attorney general Jon Echols “was the architect of one of the largest tax hikes in Oklahoma’s history.”
Source: An ad from Secure Oklahoma PAC made this claim.
Fact check: Mixed
Echols was not the sponsor of legislation to fund a historic pay raise for Oklahoma teachers in 2018. But he was the majority floor leader for the Oklahoma House of Representatives at the time and worked to negotiate “tweaks” and secure support from his fellow lawmakers and Gov. Mary Fallin’s office after an earlier proposal failed, according to a 2017 interview he gave the Associated Press. The resulting revenue package raised taxes on oil and gas production, cigarettes, gasoline and diesel fuel to help fund the teacher pay increase.
-Brianna Bailey
Claim: Oklahoma Secretary of Energy and the Environment Jeff Starling, who is running for attorney general, worked for a law firm that “pocketed $1.4 million from communist China.”
Source: A group called Electing a Conservative and Honest Oklahoman PAC produced an ad with this claim.
Fact check: True but misleading
Jeff Starling worked as an attorney for McGuireWoods LLP, a prominent Virginia-based corporate law firm, until June 2012. The ad appears to reference federal lobbying records showing that McGuireWoods Consulting, the firm’s public affairs and government relations arm paid Dandong Port Co. about $1.48 million for lobbying between January 2012 and April 2015. Dandong Port Co. is a port and rail company based in China along the North Korea border. The company was partly owned by a local government and by a businessman who had served as a deputy to China’s National People’s Congress.
Starling’s biography says he worked in McGuireWoods’ litigation department, while the work for the Chinese port was handled by its lobbying affiliate. Starling is not listed on the filings.
-Garrett Yalch
Rating system:
True: A claim that is backed up by factual evidence
Mostly true: A claim that is mostly true but also contains some inaccurate details
Mixed: A claim that contains a combination of accurate and inaccurate or unproven information
True but misleading: A claim that is factually true but omits critical details or context
Mostly false: A claim that is mostly false but also contains some accurate details
False: A claim that has no basis in fact
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The Frontier launched in 2015 as Oklahoma’s premier investigative outlet.
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