2026 Oklahoma runoff recap

That was a nail-biter! The margin of victory for Mike Mazzei was just over 2000 votes.

At the Mazzei watch party at the Renaissance Hotel, the screens alternated between the official state election board results and Jason Murphey's spectacular statewide precinct map, which displayed the official results as they arrived.

Isn't that division interesting? Indian Territory, eastern and south central Oklahoma, the part of the state affected by the McGirt ruling, went for Mazzei, old Oklahoma Territory went for Drummond, with the exception of the counties around Inola.

Years ago, local TV stations would have offered continuous coverage of an election this significant, and watch parties would have had one or more TVs tuned to their coverage. TV stations used to send out runners to get the results posted on precinct doors to tabulate results ahead of the official tally. When I worked out of KOTV's newsroom on election night 2008, doing cut-ins on KRMG, runners brought in tally sheets from the precincts, which I added into a database to give me an early picture of key local races, like the County Commission race between Sally Bell and Karen Keith.

The media was there, standing on risers in the middle of the room, waiting for Mazzei to speak, but they seemed to be a sideshow. We were getting unmediated access to results displayed geographically.

Another cool feature of the Oklahoma State Capital Runoff Election Command Center was the Arrival Log, capturing the order in which precinct results appeared in the State Election Board results. The very last precinct reporting was in Adair County (010018), detected by the Oklahoma State Capital at 9:56 pm, but the rest of the last 100 precincts in were from Oklahoma and Tulsa counties. The last Tulsa County precinct to report was 720125, 51st to 61st, Peoria to Utica, which was in the tranche of precincts OSC grabbed at 9:46 pm. The first three precincts reporting were from Grady, Harmon, and Texas counties at 7:21 pm. The first Tulsa County precinct came in at 7:36, precinct 720113 with 15 votes, 169 to 129th East Ave, 41st to 61st. Keep in mind that all absentee ballots must be counted before precincts are processed, to avoid the sorts of shenanigans that occur in other states, and this takes longer in big counties. There are a lot more precincts in big counties that have to be processed as well.

We watched as the number of precincts reporting approached 100%. With only a few dozen remaining, you could zoom in on Tulsa County in Murphey's map and see that about the same number of outstanding precincts in Drummond territory -- midtown Tulsa -- as in Mazzei territory -- south Tulsa and the suburbs, and it seemed likely that Mazzei's narrow margin would hold. (This map is from the Oklahoma State Election Board website. Drummond's precincts are olive, Mazzei's are beige. Not exactly a high contrast. Drummond's strength was in the Money Belt and Midtown, I-244 to 71st, the Arkansas River to Memorial.)

The Mazzei watch party was different than most I've attended: The lights stayed on. The music was kept quiet enough for conversation, but the level of conversation sometimes made it hard to hear. I had a great time catching up with old friends from my decades around Republican politics -- legislators past and present, activists, party leaders -- and making some new acquaintances.

Sometime after Mazzei's victory speech, after an hour or so of Mazzei taking photos with well-wishers, after the nominee had retreated to the campaign's private meeting room, a new group showed up, freshly arrived from Oklahoma City. I was told they flew up after the result was confirmed. At the time, I happened to be speaking to term-limited Sen. Shane Jett, leader of the Oklahoma Freedom Caucus and nemesis of the Capitol lobbyist claque, who pointed them out to me: Speaker Kyle Hilbert, the executive director of the State Chamber, the Hilliary brothers, various and sundry lobbyists. All these men, who had either openly or quietly opposed Mike Mazzei's candidacy, who were waiting in Oklahoma City to hail Gentner Drummond's triumph, now came to Tulsa to pay their respects to the victor. It didn't look like they got their hoped for audience. Vae victis!

It was not a great night down-ballot. Conservative James Taylor's $7,000, seat-of-the-pants solo primary campaign was enough to get a ticket to the runoff in an evenly split field, but Franklin's allies defined Taylor as Walters 2.0 while portraying liberal, recently-Democrat Franklin as a competent, experienced, and moderate administrator. To counter that message with the truth, you need enough money and you need to use it strategically to reach persuadable voters. (Note to Jake Merrick fans: Merrick would have run into the same buzzsaw if he had managed to get into the runoff.) Trial lawyer-backed Bob Sullivan beat former State Sen. Marty Quinn by 10 points; a friend who knows the Insurance Commission says that permanent staff there dread the thought of working for Sullivan.

The strongest statewide win of the night, however, belonged to Kevin West, the conservative candidate in the Labor Commissioner race, with 58% of the vote over his CAMP opponent.

The Freedom Caucus lost a stalwart in District 34 State Sen. Dana Prieto. He was targeted by heavy "independent expenditures" (dark money). Overall, my picks won 3 of 6 State Senate seats, 7 of 8 State House seats.

SQ 844 (property tax exemption reimbursement) went down in flames, with three No votes for every Yes. SQ 846 (constitutional voter ID) won with 55%, passing in every county except Tulsa, Oklahoma, Payne (home to OSU), and Cleveland (home to OU).

Dennis McCollough has been elected Wagoner County Commissioner in District 3. He won the runoff with 65% of the vote, and no Democrat filed for either Wagoner County Commission seat.

The Tulsa City Council races were an expected disappointment, although one of the Mean Girls, District 1's Vanessa Hall-Harper, winning 46% of the vote, has been forced into a November runoff against Corinice Wilson, who got 37%. Supporters of Reggie Williams and Mareo Johnson seem to be coalescing behind Wilson; they just want Vanessa out.

In District 2, Anthony Archie won his rematch with Aaron Bisogno by a 3-to-1 margin. Mean Girl Jackie Dutton survived in District 3, 56%-44%. Incumbent Karen Gilbert won another term in District 5, 58%-42%. Pete Regan's $180,000 in campaign cash bought him 6,337 votes, 69% of the total in District 9.

District 7's result makes me wonder what might have been had Dave Perry gotten started sooner with his campaign. Mean Girl Lori Decter Wright was re-elected with 57% of the vote. Dave Perry got 36%, having only started to campaign in earnest about a week before the election. I saw yard signs for Perry around several neighborhood entrances on election day.

District 6 Councilor Christian Bengel held a fundraiser for his "campaign" on August 20 at El Patron. Josh McFarland and Casey Robinson hosted the event, with State Rep. and Republican nominee for Congress Mark Tedford as honorary guest. The weird thing about that is that Bengel doesn't have an election this year. He won two years ago with 70% of the vote.

The City of Tulsa ONG 20-year franchise renewal passed 63%-37%, but it failed in nearly all precincts north of I-244. 49,762 votes were cast for or against that proposition, but the total number of votes for the six council races added up only to 28,969. Bartlesville approved its ONG franchise renewal. Bixby approved all four bond issues, but Prop 1 ($16,650,000 for public safety buildings) and Prop 3 ($850,000 for parks) were close, with a less than 200 vote margin.

Many school bond issues failed: Dale (Pottawatomie County), Hulbert (Cherokee County), Little Axe (Cleveland County), Newcastle (McClain County), Sallisaw (Sequoyah County), Savanna (Pittsburg County), South Coffeyville (Nowata County). In Westville (Adair County), one bond issue barely cleared the 60% threshold and the other fell short.

The tiny turnout award goes to the Town of St. Louis in Pottawatomie County, which voted 7 to 3 to extend OG+E's electric franchise for another 25 years.

The bedsheet ballot award goes to City of The Village, an enclave surrounded by Oklahoma City and Nichols Hills, who voted on 13 propositions: 9% hotel/motel tax (failed), ONG franchise renewal (passed), and 11 charter amendments (8 passed, 3 failed). The three failed charter amendments would have allowed the city manager to live outside the city limits (failed 33% to 67%), would have increased the dollar threshold requiring a public vote to sell high-value city property from $25,000 to $300,000, and would have made it quicker to pass an ordinance and have it go into effect.

Democrats had only two runoffs: Socialist N'Kiyla Jasmine Thomas won the U. S. Senate nomination over attorney Jim Priest, and Herschel Brown won the nomination in House 99 in Oklahoma City. Kevin Hern should have no problem holding the Senate seat for the GOP in November.