A few days ago, I described the dark art by which the state’s foremost political muckrakers take facts that may be technically true, strip them of context, and weave an entirely new narrative—one that bears little resemblance to the truth.
Those skilled in this art often avoid legal liability by carefully avoiding any statement that, in the narrowest technical sense, their victim could prove they knew to be false.
The now-infamous AI ad depicting Mike Mazzei meeting with and embracing Hillary Clinton—and branding him a “Clinton lover”—is yet another example of this dark art.
The underlying fact is true: In 2014, Mazzei voted for Senate Bill 906, which would have placed Oklahoma in the National Popular Vote compact. It was a terrible vote.
But the extrapolation—that Mazzei loved Hillary Clinton or cast the vote because he wanted her elected—is not established by that vote.
Indeed, the evidence points toward a very different explanation, a much more mundane line of attack: Mazzei likely, and naively, believed the proposal would help Republicans.
Now, more than a decade removed from what I believe was one of the greatest political confidence games ever attempted at the Oklahoma Capitol—a behind-the-scenes story to be told another day—the average Fox News–watching Republican who saw that ad probably has not clue how the National Popular Vote was marketed to Republican legislators in 2014.
But those who inhabited the Capitol world at the time remember it well. Notably, these are many of the same behind-the-scenes players active today.
The lobbyists did not walk into Republican offices and announce that their proposal might one day deliver Oklahoma’s electoral votes to Hillary Clinton.
They sold it as a way to help Republicans.
Consider one of Oklahoma’s best-known political consultants, Chad Alexander.
Name almost any major establishment campaign from the past two decades, and there is a fair chance Alexander has been involved. Most recently, he helped get Jon Echols across the finish line in the Republican primary for attorney general.
More important to this story, Alexander was one of the high-profile advocates for National Popular Vote in 2014.
Consider Exhibit A of how the Oklahoma City establishment was making this case: Alexander’s 2016 personal response to my tweet opposing the proposal, just weeks before Trump defeated Clinton.
That response is important because, just two years after that 2014 vote, it illustrates Alexander still making the same sales pitch used to move Oklahoma Republican legislators toward the National Popular Vote compact.
The argument went something like this: Because Oklahoma’s presidential outcome was considered predetermined, Oklahoma voters didn’t show up on general election day. If there were a national popular vote, disengaged Republican voters would turn out and then vote for Republican candidates all the way down the ballot.
It was convoluted reasoning, but it was presented as a Republican turnout strategy.
The lobbyists did not emphasize how the compact would strip Oklahoma voters of control over Oklahoma’s electoral votes. They did not dwell on the differing election procedures among the states that allow blue state activists to cheat in a way red state voters would never tolerate. And they certainly did not emphasize how the wisdom of the founding fathers has created the Electoral College to favor the standing of rural voters, and that by bypassing this wisdom, Oklahoma lawmakers were committing a great malpractice against those they were supposed to represent.
Instead, they overwhelmed lawmakers with purportedly conservative arguments for supporting it.
I still remember the enormous book National Popular Vote advocates left in legislators’ offices. It must have contained close to a thousand pages explaining why the proposal was supposedly sensible.
I doubt any legislator actually read it. But its sheer size created the impression that there must be an overwhelming intellectual case for the idea.
The lobbying campaign did not stop with legislators. I also remember receiving a call from the leader of one of Oklahoma’s largest and most influential grassroots conservative organizations, informing me that he, too, intended to support National Popular Vote.
The lobbyists knew how to present the proposal to conservative audiences, and they took more than a few conservative legislators to school.
Mazzei appears to have been among them.
That does not excuse his vote.
But there remains an enormous difference between these two claims:
A naive Mike Mazzei cast poorly informed vote for National Popular Vote.
And:
Mike Mazzei loved Hillary Clinton and wanted to help elect her president.
The first claim is supported by the record.
The second assigns him a motive that the record does not establish.
That distinction becomes especially important when considering the political network responsible for the attack.
The operator of the political group airing the AI-generated anti-Mazzei ad was connected to CAMP Political, the firm running Gentner Drummond’s campaign. And Stephanie Alexander—Chad Alexander’s wife and longtime political partner—served as a top Drummond campaign official.
And, of course, who took to the Senate floor to ask Mazzei to support the proposal? That was Sen. Rob Johnson, who, until earlier this year, served as Gentner Drummond’s chief of staff.
Drummond’s independent-expenditure group is asking viewers to reject Mazzei as a “Clinton lover” for voting for a bill sponsored by a man whom Drummond himself later trusted to serve as his chief of staff.
I cannot prove who wrote the ad’s script, but I have no doubt that they understand the circumstances, given their likely association with the same personalities who made the case to Republicans in 2014.
Mazzei deserves criticism for his National Popular Vote vote.
But he deserves criticism for the vote he actually cast—not for a motive invented more than a decade later by political operatives seeking to destroy him.
Mike Mazzei was not trying to elect Hillary Clinton.
He was a Republican legislator who bought the lobbyists’ faux-Republican reasoning and cast a very bad vote.
That may demonstrate gullibility. It may demonstrate legislative malpractice. It may demonstrate the power of well-connected lobbyists to lead Republican officeholders away from the interests of their own voters.
But it does not make Mazzei a “Clinton lover.”
And for political professionals who knew the real history of that 2014 lobbying campaign to suggest otherwise makes this one of the most dishonest attacks of the 2026 election cycle.
And that is a difficult neighborhood to break into.
A “Clinton Lover”? The truth behind that controversial Mike Mazzei AI video.
Click the title to read the full report at Jason Murphey Blog
July 2, 2026 at 08:30AM - J Murphey
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