Why Mazzei?

Keating: Look, we've missed a real opportunity the last seven years. We need a governor who's going to hit the reset button with the tribes. We've got to get back to compacting. Two issues. There's McGirt, then there's compacting. The tribes are wonderful partners. They're wonderful citizens of the state of Oklahoma. They should be a partner with the state in solving a lot of these problems that frankly are holding us back. And so I think it's an imperative and I'm committed to hitting the reset button with all our tribal partners in the next administration. And then we need an Oklahoma first candidate to lean in on Congress to really narrow in the McGirt issue. McGirt has thrown eastern Oklahoma in a tail spin. And the Supreme Court and Neil Gorsuch did just that. We need someone to go advocate in Washington to explain the severity. It's created a lot of confusion, multiple sets of rules, and we've got to get that fixed for the good of our state.

Mazzei: Our fates are tied together. All Oklahomans and our Native American friends and citizens want good schools, great roads, good public safety. But we can't have a two-tiered system in Oklahoma. One for Native Americans and a separate one for Oklahomans when it comes to taxes and regulations and criminal jurisprudence. We do need respectful dialogue and interaction and no calling people names in the newspaper, no negotiating in the newspaper. But as Oklahoma's next governor, it's my job to be a tough negotiator on your behalf. And in terms of being a tough negotiator, it's high time we required financial disclosure from the tribes during negotiations. They know everything about our finances. We know nothing about theirs. That's not a good business relationship.

At the time, I commented on X: "Finally some differentiation: McCall, Keating, Merrick will roll over for the tribal governments. Only Mazzei says we can't have a two-tier system based on ancestry, and called for financial disclosure for the tribes. (Keating did call for Congress to address the McGirt mess.)"

As I write this, Keating's answer seems better than it did on first impression, but Mazzei's statement was more direct and emphatic, and he promised to be "a tough negotiator on our behalf." That's something that's been lost in all the discussion of tribal sovereignty: If our elected officials are going to take the side of the tribal governments who funded their campaigns, who will represent the interests of the 90% or more of Oklahoma citizens who are not now and never will be eligible to be tribal citizens, no matter how long we live on "the rez"?

To my disappointment, Mazzei side-stepped the tribal questions in the last two debates. The best gloss I can put on that is that he's trying to avoid provoking the tribal governments to fund a dark-money campaign against him.

The idea that Mazzei paying Roger Stone $70,000 as a campaign consultant bought Mazzei the Trump endorsement seems far-fetched, but it's possible that Stone's advice was useful in figuring out how to make the approach.

Many people are bothered by Mazzei's embrace of the proposed aluminum smelter for the old Black Fox site in Inola, the first new aluminum manufacturing facility in the USA in 50 years. While the environmental concerns must be taken seriously, if we are going to bring industrial production back on-shore, plants and factories are going to have to go somewhere. Unlike the rush for data center construction, which looks like a speculative bubble, there's real demand for aluminum and a need to be able to make it in the US, and there are long term jobs not only tied to the factories but to other manufacturers that may choose to locate near a reliable source of aluminum. The sudden attacks on the smelter plan by Drummond, McCall, and Keating look like opportunistic grabs for the marginal number of votes needed to grab a runoff spot in a close race.

My family lived less than a mile south and upwind (most of the time) from the Bartlesville zinc smelter in the late 1960s. I remember wanting to make snow ice cream after a heavy snow, and Mom saying no, because of the black flecks in the snow, as the wind was blowing from the north. That smelter was built in 1907. I have to believe that in the intervening 119 years, we've learned how to capture and contain toxic byproducts of metal refining to limit the risk. The environmental impacts deserve careful scrutiny, but the project should not be ruled out without good reason.

Mazzei's folksy, sing-song style of speaking is off-putting to many. To me he sounds like Tom Bodett from the 1980s Motel 6 commercials: "We'll leave the light on for you." I have no inside info, but I have to think he was counseled to get some speech coaching to come across in a more authoritative way, and that he opted against it as inauthentic. His speaking style has been consistent throughout the campaign.

Listening to Chip is also like a nostalgic trip to the 1990s. Anthony Francis Keating III is the best Anthony Francis Keating II impersonator I have ever heard.

As Thomas Sowell says, "There are no solutions, only tradeoffs." Balancing the pros and cons, Mazzei seems like the best vote to cast on Tuesday.