In early October, an unusual ad began airing on television in Oklahoma. It opened with Charles McCall, a former speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives and current candidate for governor, wielding a butcher knife over a banana in a kitchen. Looking into the camera, McCall said, “Let me be perfectly clear: Cutting this banana” — dramatic chop — “does not make it an orange.” The ad went on to tout McCall’s opposition to transgender rights, then concluded with McCall looking into the camera again. “I have a simple message for any lunatic pushing sex change for kids,” he said. Another chop. “You first.”
If you wanted a 30-second summary of McCall’s strategy in the upcoming GOP gubernatorial primary, this ad was it: a maximal serving of culture-war politics. More recently, he produced an ad vowing to stand with President Donald Trump to “crush the threat of radical Islam” and accused one of his opponents of letting “Radical Muslims infiltrate the OK State Capitol.”
When I interviewed McCall in late January, I asked him about the banana ad. A law enacted in 2023, when McCall was House speaker, expressly prohibits gender-transition procedures for minors. Was there an effort underway to roll back the bill? Did the state need to pass an even more stringent prohibition? “There are a lot of people in the state of Oklahoma that are concerned about those value issues, and they want to know where you stand on them,” he responded. “It’s not the only thing we are talking about and have been talking about, but that’s important to the Republican electorate.”