Oklahoma voters won’t choose their next governor for another year, but the Republican primary is already heating up. Recent polling from former Oklahoma House Speaker Charles McCall’s campaign suggests the race between McCall and Attorney General Gentner Drummond is closer than you might think. But as other candidates begin to join the fray, the Drummond camp says that’s not true.
The survey, conducted September 23–25, found Attorney General Gentner Drummond leading with 35% support, closely followed by House Speaker Charles McCall at 33%, while 32% of respondents remained undecided.
The Frontier spoke with pollster Chris Wilson about his recent survey for the McCall campaign and Matthew Parker, Drummond’s campaign chairman, about how the candidates are positioning themselves to voters. The following is a condensed transcript of the conversation. For the full interview, listen to our podcast. The margin of error is 3.5%.
Chris Wilson, CEO of Stratus Intelligence and Senior advisor to the McCall campaign
The Frontier: You released a poll that showed Attorney General Gentner Drummond and former House Speaker Charles McCall essentially in a dead heat. The release that you all sent out earlier this week about the results included a quote from a McCall campaign consultant that said Charles McCall’s message is breaking through. What is that message and why is it breaking through?
Wilson: Well, it’s been a pretty dramatic shift in the last three months. Gentner Drummond … obviously jumped out to a big lead. But the beauty of a big lead at the initial part of the campaign is it doesn’t always translate into a sustained lead. And so we believe the shift is real, and it’s anchored in Charles McCall’s message and the TV ads that have been running on behalf of McCall on foreign-owned farmland, on protecting women’s sports from boys, and linking his background to Donald Trump. … The spots frame McCall as the conservative in the race, and I think it really collapsed Drummond’s perceived edge.
The Frontier: When Drummond declared, he also was in a position of having sort of no one to run against. And a lot of his attention seemed to turn toward fights with Kevin Stitt. It seemed questionable. He’s putting himself in a position of fighting with the state’s Republican leader, right? Does that put him in a position of looking like the less Republican or the less conservative person in the race?
Wilson: Yeah, it absolutely has. Let’s look at Governor Stitt’s record. He is, by any definition, one of the most conservative governors in the nation. But I think there’s been some fights between the two of them that are worth pointing out and have gotten a little bit nasty.
The Frontier: The poll you all released found that the majority of respondents viewed McCall as conservative, but that fewer have been able to say the same thing about Drummond as a candidate. How decisive do you think that perception will be when we get to the primary phase of the election?
Wilson: I think McCall’s conservative identity is important. You got 62% of Republican voters saying they see him as a conservative, including 38% who say he was very conservative. Only 53% see Drummond as conservative. So in the Republican primary electorate, where 67% define themselves as conservative, and 46% define themselves as very conservative, owning that ideological definition is absolutely decisive. And McCall is clearly the conservative candidate.
The Frontier: So your results show essentially a three-way tie. You’ve got Drummond, at a little more than a third of voters, McCall, a little less than a third, and then a third are undecided. What do you know at this point about the third that’s undecided? Who are they? Where do they fall in the landscape of Republican voters and do you have any insight on where they might break between now and the primary election?
Wilson: That number of undecideds always leaves room for movement, no question about it, but the structural indicators are already favorable to McCall. His name ID is rising, and his conservative identity is now stronger than Drummond’s. So even amongst undecideds, that momentum and inertia favor Charles McCall over Gentner Drummond.
The Frontier: So let’s look ahead to next year. Do you expect the primary to be a two-man race between Charles McCall Drummond? Or do you think there are other candidates who have a realistic chance of, sort of, maybe reshaping the field?
Wilson: I think the field is pretty much set. I don’t see a path for someone else, because again, once you identify yourself and define yourself ideologically, it is really difficult for someone else to get in and change that definitional tone, particularly with the Republican primary electorate that exists like it does in Oklahoma.
Matthew Parker, campaign chairman for Gentner Drummond
The Frontier: It’s early October. On the one hand, we’re still over a year from election day, but on the other hand, the all-important Republican primary will be upon us before we know it. Drummond obviously came out of the gates hot. He’s got a lot going for him. He has won a statewide election already, which is very important. He’s got a lot of name recognition in his role as Attorney General. He got an early start on his campaign, which allowed him to raise a significant amount of money and kind of get a head start. Recent polling shows, depending on if you believe the polling or not, that he also has something else – a serious challenger in Charles McCall, former House Speaker.
I know there was polling earlier this year that showed Drummond had a large lead in both support and name recognition with Republican voters, but if this polling is to be believed, the race has changed, and the two are in something of a dead heat. So what are you guys seeing right now? And what do you think about the idea that Drummond and McCall are in a much closer race than it looked a few months ago?
Parker: I don’t believe the Chris Wilson survey that was put out by the McCall campaign. It doesn’t back up what I’ve been seeing and what you see in public polls. And you know, I’m also not one to put so much stock in polls at this stage in the game, but we are clearly in first place. Drummond is a strong candidate with a great image, and there’s no question that he’s in first place. And I think if Charles McCall really believed his own survey, I don’t think that he would have come out with a blistering attack of Chip Keating even before Chip announced, so clearly they see (Keating) as a threat. I don’t believe that they really think that they’re tied for the lead.
The Frontier: Looking ahead, do you feel like it will be a challenge for McCall to campaign on something like education, given that we dropped from 49th to 50th during his time as House Speaker?
Parker: Well, I think the real advantage for getting Drummond is he’s a serious candidate. When he took office in January of 2023 (as Attorney General) there were 12,000 marijuana grows in the state, 9,000 legal grows and 3,000 illegal grows. Today, we’re down to 2,100 grows in the state. He’s been breaking the back of organized crime. ICE is now embedded with Gentner’s team when they go in there to bust these illegal marijuana grows.
We’re already working on these issues and talking about the bold ideas that Oklahomans demand. Frankly, I think Oklahomans are fed up with being 50th. I think they’re fed up seeing homelessness on the rise, not just in our urban centers, but in some of our rural communities as well. I think they’re fed up with our roads, fed up with not keeping up with inflation. They want common sense, conservative solutions. This is common sense stuff that we’re working on.
The Frontier: McCall’s polling shows they believe that he has momentum to capture many of the undecided voters. Regardless of if you believe the polling or not, those undecideds are obviously very important between now and the primary election next summer. How could Drummond reach them and convert them into Drummond voters?
Parker: Well, look, first of all, I mean, I want to reiterate how little regard I have for Chris Wilson’s survey. I mean, again, this is the pollster that tried to tell the American people that Ron DeSantis was beating Donald Trump by nine points. You know, that was never the case. Look, their polling doesn’t match up with what we’re seeing internally … no way do I believe that he’s closed the gap in any significant way
The Frontier: Looking at Drummond sort of as a candidate, one thing the McCall campaign mentioned was that McCall, by virtue of his time as House Speaker and his close association with Stitt, would be considered more conservative by Republican voters than Drummond, who they say Republican voters think of as more moderate. And we are talking about Oklahoma, it’s the reddest state in the nation, and those monikers matter, maybe sometimes too much. Do you feel like Drummond needs to bolster his conservative bonafides to win?
Parker: In our internal polling, Drummond does incredibly well with the most conservative voters in the state. He did on our latest internal surveys we haven’t released, but I can tell you this, like amongst every demographic group, amongst every ideological group, Gentner Drummond had incredible name ID and incredible favorables.
The Frontier: So what will the next six or seven months look like for candidate Drummond? Is it a disadvantage that he has to split time essentially between being Attorney General and being on the campaign trail?
Parker: I don’t look at it as an advantage or a disadvantage. Ultimately, the people of Oklahoma elected him to do a job that he does with his whole mind, heart and soul every single day. And that’s not going to stop. The beautiful thing, though, about being Attorney General, it takes him to different parts of the state and (he) has different connections with people across the state, which obviously we can have campaign events as well as we travel throughout the state. And so he has done a great job of that.
And look, you don’t become a successful businessman, rancher, attorney by not being ambitious and hard-working. He’s going to serve the people of Oklahoma incredibly well, day in and day out. But he’s also going to campaign smart, effective and he’s going to campaign hard all the way through.
