Candidates in Oklahoma’s Republican gubernatorial primary are trying to prove they will be the most in line with President Donald Trump’s agenda — and at least one is taking a page from Trump’s 2024 campaign playbook.
The former speaker of the Oklahoma House, Charles McCall, is going up with a new ad about transgender people in sports, and in it attacked one of his conservative competitors.
“I led the charge to keep boys out of our daughters’ locker rooms and to protect women in sports,” McCall says in the new ad.
“You shouldn’t question where your next governor stands. I stand with President Trump,” McCall says.
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That line is a not-so-subtle jab at one of the Republican front-runners, Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who McCall claims is insufficiently conservative and loyal to Trump. McCall’s campaign launched a website on Sept. 9 called “NeverTrumpDrummond.com,” where they list issues on which they feel Drummond has broken with the MAGA movement. The campaign specifically points to Drummond’s decision to delay Oklahoma’s transgender health care ban for minors, which Drummond argued was not a concession, and his lawsuit against St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which would have become the U.S.’s first publicly funded religious school.
“The McCall campaign is infested with the same anti-Trump political hacks who constantly attacked President Trump and tried to tell us that Ron DeSantis was the best choice for America, so no one should take their lies seriously. Gentner Drummond stands firmly with President Trump and faithfully serves the People of Oklahoma, " Stephanie Alexander, the campaign manager for Drummond, told NOTUS in a statement.
Republicans have attacked Democrats on transgender rights for years, but the issue broke through with voters in 2024 and left many Democrats unable or unwilling to respond. Now, in the 2026 governor’s race in one of the reddest states in the country, the Oklahoma Conservative Coalition, which is backing McCall with $1.6 million, is banking the issue will be salient in a GOP primary.
Republicans spent millions of dollars on anti-transgender rights campaign ads during the 2024 election, with Trump spending about $30 million just a few weeks before the election into ads attacking former Vice President Kamala Harris for her past support for gender-affirming surgeries for trans people. Trump’s ads ended with the statement: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.” Democrats hardly fought back.
McCall’s strategy seems to be touting his own record while knocking Drummond’s. McCall shepherded two major bills to the governor’s desk regarding trans people in Oklahoma: the state’s ban on surgeries and hormones for minors in 2023, and a 2022 bill requiring students at public schools to use the bathroom matching the sex on their birth certificates.
Drummond, the first well-known candidate to jump in the race, was polling with 48% of voters supporting him on a gubernatorial ballot, while McCall polled at 10%, according to a survey conducted in late August by the Republican firm CHS & Associates. (Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s headline-grabbing superintendent of public schools, was left off of the ballot in this survey because he has not yet announced a run).
McCall’s ad is set to run this week on cable and streaming until Oct. 5.
“Boys competing in girls’ sports is just wrong,” a voice over in McCall’s ad says. “Charles McCall put a stop to it in Oklahoma. Others talk a good game; McCall delivered.”
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This story was produced as part of a partnership between NOTUS and Oklahoma Watch.