With umbrellas in tow, a few hundred supporters braved a light rain to gather inside Jenks’ Five Oak Lodge to hear former Oklahoma State Sen. Mike Mazzei officially launch his gubernatorial campaign.
Friends, family and several local GOP politicians mingled around a cash bar while staff carried hors d’oeuvres throughout the room. When the event officially kicked off, U.S. Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-OK2), who served in the Oklahoma State Senate alongside Mazzei, provided the first official endorsement of his 2026 campaign. Brecheen referenced Mazzei’s faith and his difficult recovery from a spinal injury sustained in a 2008 car accident as the source of his trust in Mazzei.
“If you’ve ever gone through brokenness — whether it be emotional, spiritual, or physical — there is something that happens when you go through brokenness and you come out on the other side and you handle it God’s way,” Brecheen said. “There is something powerful that happens. Mike has that.”
Mazzei, a financial planner and George Mason University alumnus, thanked several legislators by name for helping him decide to run for governor.
“I am Mike Mazzei — husband, father, businessman, former state senator, proud Oklahoman and most important, a follower of Jesus, the Messiah,” Mazzei said. “After much prayer and discussion with family, friends, business leaders, the GOP faithful, state legislators — former ones like Gary (Stanislawski), current ones like Chris Banning (R-Bixby), Mark Lepak (R-Claremore) and my sort of replacement Sen. Brian Guthrie (R-Guthrie) — we have decided to run for governor of Oklahoma.”
During his speech, Mazzei backed conservative policies like eliminating Oklahoma’s state income tax, curtailing foreign land ownership and increasing support for law enforcement. He also discussed his family’s use of in vitro fertilization to have children, a medical procedure that has received growing attention since the Alabama Supreme Court ruled frozen embryos in the state were legally children last year.
“My wife and I wanted lots of kids, but we had some health challenges that made things a little difficult. We went off to Russia and adopted a wonderful infant who is now 29 years old,” Mazzei said. “We did some fertility stuff that worked out better than expected and we had triplets. We had this crazy leftover frozen embryo, so the story is we wanted to give the frozen Mazzeis the best shot at life we knew how, so we did the deal all over again and had kid number five. Who’s technically the quad to the triplets, but he was born two years later after hanging out in a frozen freezer.”
While Mazzei emphasized his support for tax cuts during his 2004 to 2016 tenure the Legislature, he avoided discussing the massive revenue shortfalls that ballooned during his final Senate term and forced a combination of funding cuts and a subsequent tax increases.
“I achieved the record of supersizing individual freedom by cutting income taxes, eliminating the Oklahoma death tax, launching the back-to-school sales tax holiday and eliminating hundreds of millions of dollars in special interest tax credits,” Mazzei said. “I am the guy that killed the billion-dollar boondoggle wind power tax credit.”
Brecheen, known as a fiscal hawk in Washington, cited Mazzei as a mentor in decreasing government spending.
“Mike’s your guy. So I am more than honored to endorse him,” Brecheen said. “He’s just now getting started. He’s already raised — thank you all who were helpful in this — $250,000.”
Brecheen was not the only Oklahoma politician speaking at Thursday night’s campaign launch. Rep. Mark Tedford (R-Tulsa), whose district included the event space, opened the event. Former Sen. Gary Stanislawski also offered words of support for Mazzei’s campaign, while former Oklahoma Secretary of Commerce Sean Kouplen provided a video endorsement for the event.
Mike Mazzei’s years in Oklahoma politics
Mazzei has been involved in politics for decades. In college, he phone banked for Ronald Reagan’s 1984 presidential campaign, and he later interned in the U.S. Senate, according to the Tulsa World. Mazzei appears to have entered Oklahoma politics by the 1990s, with the Sapulpa Daily Herald reporting he was the campaign manager for Republican Pam Ballard in her 1996 campaign for House District 30. By the early 2000s, he would occasionally write in the Tulsa World’s opinion section.
He would later serve as the chairman of the Creek County Republican Party before being elected to Senate District 25 in 2004. During his 12-year tenure ended by term limits, he co-chaired the Senate Finance Committee and served as an assistant majority floor leader.
After a few years back in the private sector, Mazzei returned to Oklahoma government when Gov. Kevin Stitt appointed him secretary of budget in 2019. In 2020, Mazzei resigned from that position, and the following year he entered and quickly left the field for the 2022 Oklahoma state treasurer election. As his 2026 gubernatorial campaign began, he launched the “Mazzei Minute” blog with weekly posts including his thoughts on politics. He posts minute-long videos on his Facebook under the same branding, where he appears to be reading pre-written statements with awkwardly melodic inflections.
4 actively seeking GOP nomination; no Dems announced
Mazzei’s entry into the Republican race for governor officially brings the field to four candidates, while several others are rumored to be mulling their own campaigns. Attorney General Gentner Drummond and former House Speaker Charles McCall have both officially launched their gubernatorial bids, as has longshot candidate Leisa Mitchell Haynes.
Although first quarter fundraising reports are not due until April 30, Drummond announced a $1.6 million fundraising haul this week, while McCall has announced $1.33 million in fundraising. Haynes announced her campaign last year, but campaign finance reports show she raised no money in 2024. She has not announced her first quarter fundraising total. Mazzei officially formed his campaign committee four days before the end of the first quarter deadline, so any fundraising done in the first days of his campaign will appear on his first-quarter report.
So far, the 2026 Republican gubernatorial primary field features significant financial backgrounds, with both Drummond and McCall owning banks and Mazzei spending his career as a financial planner. For Republicans seeking an alternative to the four announced candidates, a few others have been rumored as considering their own campaigns. Former Secretary of Public Safety Chip Keating and State Superintendent Ryan Walters are the two names most frequently mentioned as likely to enter the race. Keating’s background is in law enforcement, while most Oklahomans are familiar with Walters as a former teacher.
Lt. Gov. Matt Pinnell and former Senate President Pro Tempore Greg Treat also come up when discussing the governor’s race. While Oklahoma State University students started a rumor Kayse Shrum was considering a campaign, her resignation was linked to an audit and likely not in preparation for a gubernatorial campaign.
No Democratic candidates have announced a campaign for governor in 2026, but House Minority Leader Cyndi Munson (D-OKC) is a rumored candidate.
