Morning Digest: Why candidate drug tests became the No. 1 issue in this GOP runoff
Morning Digest: Why candidate drug tests became the No. 1 issue in this GOP runoffAnd why Trump could see his third governor endorsee go down in flames this month
Note: The Digest will be taking off on Monday—Jeff Singer is moving, and David Nir is recovering from reconstructive knee surgery. We’ll be back in your inboxes on Tuesday! Leading OffOK-GovDueling drug tests have unexpectedly become a high-profile topic in next week’s Republican runoff for Oklahoma’s open governorship, yet another primary where Donald Trump is trying to avoid ending up on the losing side. “I took the longer-window hair drug test. My results are clean,” Attorney General Gentner Drummond tweeted on Monday. He continued by accusing former state Sen. Mike Mazzei, the candidate backed by both Trump and termed-out Gov. Kevin Stitt, of taking “a urine test with a much shorter detection window.” Drummond, who posted the results for his own test, added, “Take the test, Mike. Release the results. Give Oklahomans a straight answer.” A spokesperson for Mazzei, who denies being on any medications as a result of a devastating 2008 car accident, maintained that a second test was not needed. “Mike took the same standard drug test used by the NCAA and NFL, and passed,” his team told the Oklahoma Voice’s Barbara Hoberock. “Drummond won’t accept the result because the truth exposes his attack for exactly what it is, a lie.” Drug tests emerged a campaign issue early this month after Drummond informed Hoberock that he would release one to show if he was taking any medications. While insisting that he was not “suggesting one way or the other” if his rival was fit to serve as governor, the attorney general added, “The results will be available in three days and we’ll publish those and we’ll see if the other candidate feels confident enough in his physical stature to do that.” Mazzei responded by saying that his opponent was trying to falsely insinuate that he was “probably on some unhelpful medication” because of his 2008 crash. Mazzei, who was in the state Senate at the time, suffered a serious back injury and missed many votes for years after the accident. A 2013 editorial in The Oklahoman noted that the legislator, despite winning reelection the previous year, had been absent for “slightly more than 77 percent of votes” in the most recent session, which it characterized as “hundreds more than any other lawmaker.” Mazzei, who was termed out in 2016 and later served in Stitt’s administration, has said that he does not take prescriptions to deal with his injuries anymore, adding that the accident will not impact his performance in office. “I’m back to my old self and I can do all the things I used to do, except swing a golf club, which might be a good thing,” he said in a May video. “It’s an expensive sport.” Mazzei’s performance on the campaign trail, however, has led some observers to question his behavior. “Most charitably, some of Mazzei’s public appearances have just felt awkward and uncomfortable when watching from afar,” Janelle Stecklein, the Oklahoma Voice’s editor, wrote in an essay for the site. Stecklein drew attention to a debate on May 28 ahead of the first round of the primary when a moderator briefly tripped over his words while trying to ask a question. Mazzei responded mockingly with gibberish, a moment met with silence in the room. One powerful Republican, though, was unbothered by that graceless moment. Trump took to Truth Social the very next day to endorse Mazzei in the busy primary, a move that stunned local Republicans. “My phone is blowing up with Oklahoma officials and politicos absolutely SHOCKED at this endorsement,” NOTUS reporter Reese Gorman tweeted of Trump’s decision to support Mazzei, a candidate Gorman said “started the race as almost an after thought.” But while Mazzei had already been rising in the polls before Trump took his side, the intervention by MAGA’s master elevated him into a frontrunner. Drummond, who had been the target of an expensive negative campaign by the far-right Club for Growth, took first place with 26.3%, while Mazzei finished just behind with 26.0%. Stitt joined Trump by endorsing Mazzei in the second round, which state law mandated because neither candidate secured a majority of the vote in the primary. Drummond’s team, though, soon began unsubtly asking questions about the candidate’s capacities. “As voters begin paying attention and realizing there is something not quite right about Mike Mazzei, he is withdrawing from forums, avoiding public scrutiny, and hiding from the very people whose votes he’s asking for,” Drummond’s campaign manager charged last month. Matters escalated recently when a debate moderator asked whether candidates for governor should “voluntarily present tax returns and health information.” Calling himself “an absolute open book,” Drummond said he “would be happy to take a drug test today” and was “happy to disclose” his tax returns. Mazzei likewise said he’d share financial and health records, though he didn’t mention anything about drug tests and balked at the idea in subsequent comments to the Voice. But Mazzei later changed his mind. On Monday, he released a urine test and provided The Oklahoman with a letter from his doctor saying he was healthy. His top ally, however, wants Republicans to pay attention to other topics. Trump took to Truth Social on Tuesday to reaffirm his support for Mazzei and use his post to savage Drummond as a “FAKE Republican” who had “donated to SLEEPY Joe Biden.” Drummond withstood attacks over that donation four years ago during his ultimately successful primary challenge against Attorney General John O’Connor, a Stitt ally. Drummond responded at the time by saying his wife had made the contribution from a joint account when she was “mad,” but that she’d “immediately asked for a refund and got the money back.” That incident didn’t prevent Drummond from beating O’Connor, but his enemies have continued to highlight it during his campaign for governor. A Club for Growth affiliate ran commercials about it during the first round of the primary, and Trump this week labeled the couple “Radical Left Dumocrats.” In the same social media post, Trump also hit Drummond for suing to block a proposed aluminum plant outside Tulsa. Drummond says the project’s owner, the Dubai-based Emirates Global Aluminium, needs to provide more details about how it will address pollution and waste before it can move forward. Drummond’s backers have aired ads attacking Mazzei for supporting the plant, but those commercials don’t address any environmental concerns. “Shocking: MAGA phony Mike Mazzei wants to hand $1 billion in taxpayer money to a Muslim country to build a smelter plant that area farmers and neighbors oppose,” says the narrator for a group called Make Oklahoma Great Again. “Taxpayer cash handouts to Muslim countries when times are already tough for Christian Oklahomans? Sorry Mike, that’s not America first. It’s America last, and it’s immoral.” Limited polling has shown the two candidates locked in a close race. Mazzei led 44-38 in an early August internal poll for the Club for Growth from Pulse Decision Science. But a survey conducted around that same time by Cole Hargrave Snodgrass & Associates, a firm that’s not affiliated with either candidate, found the candidates tied at 44 apiece. Whoever wins the Republican nomination next week will face state House Minority Leader Cyndi Munson, who won the Democratic nod outright in June, in what’s long been one of the most conservative states in the nation. Election RecapsCA-14State Sen. Aisha Wahab secured victory in the all-Democratic special election for California’s 14th Congressional District on Thursday when the Associated Press called the race. Wahab holds a 53-47 advantage over Melissa Hernandez, the president of the board of Bay Area Rapid Transit, with the Associated Press estimating that 95% of the vote is in. Wahab, the daughter of refugees from Afghanistan, will be the first Afghan American member of Congress once she’s sworn in to succeed Democrat Eric Swalwell, who resigned in disgrace in April. Wahab and Hernandez will face off again in the fall for a full term representing the southern East Bay in Northern California. FL-09Former Defense Department official Dan Green will be the Republican nominee against Democratic Rep. Darren Soto in Florida’s newly gerrymandered 9th District, the Associated Press projected on Thursday. Green, who loaned his campaign over $1 million, outpaced dairy farmer Ben Butler 25-24 in Tuesday’s primary. Green and Soto will now square off for a seat in the Orlando area that Republicans radically transformed from a Democratic-leaning and predominantly Latino constituency into a conservative seat whose eligible voting population is majority-white. Donald Trump would have carried the new 9th 58-41 in 2024, though he would have won it by a smaller 53-46 spread four years earlier. Soto, though, is seeking a fifth term despite the odds. “There’s a lot of Democrats and independents who did not show up the last couple elections,” he told Central Florida Public Media in May. “But I can tell you, in the … new proposed seat, Trump is actually underwater by 2, 3 points, according to new polls … because the economy is struggling in a lot of these areas, right? So it’s tough, but winnable.” HouseDCCCThe Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee finally added state Auditor Matt Dunlap to its Red to Blue list for top candidates on Thursday, two-and-a-half months after he defeated the committee’s pick in the Democratic primary for Maine’s open 2nd District. In addition to Dunlap, the DCCC also elevated four other Democrats in competitive races, including retired Army Brig. Gen. Leela Gray in Florida’s 13th, former federal prosecutor Zach Dembo in Kentucky’s 6th, retired Vice Admiral Nancy Lacore in South Carolina’s 1st, and former Rep. Tom Perriello in Virginia’s 5th. Just before Maine’s primary, the DCCC and the House Majority PAC intervened to help state Sen. Joe Baldacci, viewing him as the stronger option to defend the conservative 2nd District against former GOP Gov. Paul LePage. However, Dunlap defeated Baldacci 52-48 in a ranked-choice runoff, leading to a long standoff with the committee over whether it would embrace him. Baldacci, though, immediately endorsed his former opponent, and Dunlap’s campaign repeatedly expressed its optimism that the DCCC would eventually bring him into the fold, as it did on Thursday. The 2nd District, which voted for Donald Trump by a 54-44 margin, remains one of Democrats’ most difficult defensive holds this year, but retiring Rep. Jared Golden was able to narrowly flip the seat in 2018, the last time Democrats felt similar winds at their backs. Dunlap’s ascension to Red to Blue, meanwhile, leaves just one notable Democrat out in the cold: climate activist William Lawrence, an outspoken progressive who defeated two more moderate candidates in Michigan’s swingy 7th District earlier this month. However, on the same day the DCCC updated its list, HMP released a new poll from Global Strategy Group giving Lawrence a narrow 49-47 lead over Republican Rep. Tom Barrett. Combined with HMP’s hefty ad reservations targeted toward this race, it’s a sign that Lawrence, too, might earn the DCCC’s support as well. Poll Pile
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