Oklahoma’s Republican AG jumps early into race for open governor’s seat

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Oklahoma’s Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who has at times pushed back against his own party’s governor and other politicians who sought to push religion into public schools, announced Monday his candidacy for governor.

Drummond’s announcement at the Osage County Fairgrounds in Pawhuska, near his family’s sprawling ranch, kicked off an early start to the 2026 campaign season in one of the nation’s reddest states.

“I’m not running for governor so I can bow down to party bosses,” said Drummond, 61, a rancher and banker from one of Oklahoma’s most prominent landowning families.

A U.S. Air Force veteran who flew dozens of combat missions as a fighter pilot during the Gulf War in 1991, Drummond touted both his military roots and his work during his first term as attorney general shutting down illegal marijuana grow operations that flourished after Oklahoma voters legalized medical marijuana in 2018.

Drummond also enjoyed an early endorsement from the Oklahoma State Fraternal Order of Police, a 6,000-member organization whose executive board voted unanimously to back him, said FOP President Mark Nelson.

Drummond is the first official candidate in what is expected to be a crowded field of Republicans seeking to replace Gov. Kevin Stitt, who cannot run again because of term limits. Other possible candidates include former state Sen. Mike Mazzei, a former top budget advisor to Stitt; State Superintendent Ryan Walters, an ex-teacher and Stitt’s former education secretary; former House Speaker Charles McCall, an Atoka banker; Lt. Gov. Matt Pinnell, the former national state party director for the Republican National Committee; and Chip Keating, Stitt’s former secretary of public safety and the son of former Gov. Frank Keating.

“I would say that Drummond starts with the highest name ID of anyone we’ve discussed, and he has very few negatives, but it’s way too early to handicap the field overall,” said Pat McFerron, a longtime Republican pollster in Oklahoma.

Drummond, who defeated Stitt’s hand-picked Attorney General John O’Connor in 2022, has occasionally clashed with Stitt on a number of topics, including the governor’s support of what would be the first publicly funded religious charter school in the U.S. Drummond argued before the state Supreme Court that the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board violated both Oklahoma law and the state and federal constitutions when it voted 3-2 in 2023 to approve the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City’s application to establish the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual Charter School.

Drummond also has been critical of Stitt’s confrontational approach to relations with many of the Native American tribes in Oklahoma and has indicated he supports more of a partnership with the sovereign nations.