ICYMI: School Freedom Fund Oklahoma Targets Drummond in New OK-GOV Ad
Washington, D.C. – Club for Growth Action’s affiliated School Freedom Fund Oklahoma launched a new ad slamming Gentner Drummond for donating to Joe Biden’s 2020 Presidential campaign and failing to defend President Trump during impeachment. The ad is part of a $4.3 million buy and will air on broadcast cable news, addressable satellite, CTV, and radio beginning on May 13th. Alexandra Samuels covered the launch in an exclusive report for Bloomberg.
“Gentner Drummond is an outspoken opponent of school freedom and has gone out of his way to oppose President Trump,” said School Freedom Fund Oklahoma President David McIntosh. “We will spend whatever it takes to keep him out of the Governor’s office.”
Click here to watch TDS, a School Freedom Fund Oklahoma ad hitting Drummond for opposing President Trump.
Click here to read the full coverage from Bloomberg.
STORY EXCERPTS:
Club for Growth-affiliated groups are pouring $4.3 million into Oklahoma’s governor’s race in another push to make school choice and religious education a centerpiece of Republican politics.
The ads target Republican state Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who is running to replace term-limited Gov. Kevin Stitt (R), who was first elected in 2018, setting up an open race in Oklahoma this year. Nine Republicans, including Drummond, are running to succeed him.
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School Freedom Fund Oklahoma, which is affiliated with Club for Growth Action and School Freedom Fund, said it plans to spend on broadcast cable news, addressable satellite, CTV, and radio advertising beginning Wednesday.
“Gentner Drummond is an outspoken opponent of school freedom, and we’ll spend whatever it takes to keep him out of the Governor’s office,” David McIntosh, president of School Freedom Fund Oklahoma, said in a statement to Bloomberg Government.
The group has tied its campaign directly to Drummond’s opposition to St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School and his role in the US Supreme Court dispute over the proposed school.
The campaign is one of the clearest signs that national conservative organizations are treating school choice—and, especially, religious charter schools fights—as a litmus test in Republican primaries.
Drummond drew backlash from conservative education advocates after opposing public funding for St. Isidore, a proposed Catholic charter school that became one of the country’s biggest legal and political fights over public education and is now central to outside conservative groups’ case against him in the governor’s race.
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As attorney general, Drummond argued the proposed school violated state and federal constitutional protections barring publicly funded religious schools. Supporters cast the fight as expanding protections for religious liberty in education, following recent Supreme Court rulings on public funding and religious institutions.
The Oklahoma effort follows aggressive intervention campaigns by Club for Growth Action and allied groups in Republican primaries in Texas and Tennessee, where outside organizations spent heavily to defeat GOP lawmakers who opposed school choice legislation.
In Tennessee, School Freedom Fund and allied groups spent heavily in Republican primaries last year against lawmakers who stood in the way of Gov. Bill Lee’s (R) school voucher plan. Four Republican incumbents lost after getting hit by a flood of outside ads focused on school choice and parental rights.
The organizations deployed a similar strategy in Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott (R) made education savings accounts a centerpiece of the 2024 primary campaign after roughly two dozen House Republicans blocked his school-choice proposal during the prior year’s legislative session.
Club for Growth Action and allied groups said they ran 36 unique television ads across 14 state House districts targeting incumbents who opposed the legislation. Their efforts helped reshape the Texas House and eventually cleared a path for Abbott’s education agenda.
The groups said they invested nearly $8.5 million during the Texas House primaries and runoffs.
The Oklahoma campaign suggests that outside conservative organizations are increasingly prepared to carry that political strategy beyond legislative contests into statewide races as education policy becomes a more defining divide in Republican politics.