‘I Joined When He Was at 2%’ The strategist behind five decades of Republican victories brought his Trump playbook to Oklahoma.
NORMAN, Okla. — Roger Stone has a simple measure of success in a campaign: Does the candidate end up closer to the White House, or further from it?
When Stone took on Mike Mazzei as a client, the former Oklahoma state senator was registering 2 percent in Republican primary polling, well behind a crowded field of better-known candidates. On May 29, 2026, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social: “It is my Great Honor to endorse MAGA Warrior, Mike Mazzei, who is running for Governor of Oklahoma.” Trump gave Mazzei his “Complete and Total Endorsement,” citing Mazzei’s record as a former chairman of the Oklahoma Senate Finance Committee and the state’s Secretary of Budget.
Stone offered his own accounting on X: “I joined the Mazzei campaign when he was at 2%. He earned the Trump endorsement when he passed Drummond in the polls to take first place and thus was the candidate best positioned to beat that Democrat in November.”
The gap between 2 percent and the front runner in an Oklahoma Republican primary was steep and, at the time, appeared insurmountable. Mazzei was competing against some of the most recognizable names in Oklahoma public life: Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who entered the race as the presumptive favorite with strong law enforcement support; former Oklahoma House Speaker Charles McCall; Chip Keating, a retired Oklahoma Highway Patrol officer turned businessman; and Jake Merrick, the grassroots favorite with a loyal and energized conservative following — all in a nine-candidate Republican field.
A NonDoc survey of 457 Republican voters conducted in mid-May found Mazzei leading the field with 22.1 percent, followed closely by Drummond at 21.7 percent, Keating at 21.4 percent, and McCall at 18.4 percent. That Mazzei had climbed to the top of that field ahead of the June 16 primary was a testament to how much the ground had shifted.
However, the NonDoc numbers tell only part of the story.
A Club for Growth Action poll, conducted by Pulse Decision Science across 608 likely Republican primary voters from May 26 to 28, found that Drummond’s favorability rating had swung 31 points in six weeks: from 18 points net-positive in early April to 13 points net-negative by late May. His favorable ratings dropped 16 points, from 49 percent to 33 percent, while his unfavorable ratings climbed 15 points to 46 percent. “Drummond’s once-commanding ballot lead has evaporated,” the Club for Growth memo concluded, “leaving him just two points ahead of challenger Mike Mazzei.” The timing of that collapse, running parallel to Stone’s work shaping Mazzei’s message and press profile, was not coincidental.
The relationship between Stone and Mazzei began in July 2025, when Stone agreed to a meeting arranged by conservative pastor and political figure Jackson Lahmeyer. Mazzei described the conversation publicly as “fascinating” and praised Stone’s decades of political insight. What began as an introduction became a full consulting engagement, with Mazzei’s campaign paying Stone’s consulting LLC $67,500 through March 2026.
Stone’s compadre in the effort was Barney Keller, a savvy Republican media strategist and producer who shaped Mazzei’s message as opponents trained their fire on the candidate across multiple televised appearances. Together, Stone and Keller built the communications architecture that would carry Mazzei from afterthought to front-runner. Sources close to the campaign say the two men moved Mazzei from 2 percent to 22.1 percent, the climb that made the Trump endorsement not just possible but inevitable.
Stone’s relationship with Trump is forty years old and was forged through federal prosecution, a presidential pardon, and the full arc of the MAGA movement. When Stone believed Mazzei had earned Trump’s attention, he had the standing to say so directly. Shortly before Trump’s endorsement, multiple private and public polls confirmed Mazzei had edged ahead of Drummond, crossing the threshold Stone needed to make the case to the president that Mazzei was the candidate best positioned to win. By the time Mazzei passed Drummond in the polls, Stone had the evidence he needed.
Stone’s credentials in presidential and statewide campaigns are unmatched in Republican politics. He began his career on Richard Nixon’s 1972 re-election effort and went on to work on Ronald Reagan’s victories in 1980 and 1984 and George H.W. Bush’s 1988 presidential win.
In 1980, he co-founded Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly, a Washington lobbying and consulting firm that became one of the most consequential in the Reagan era. The Washington Post, sizing up Stone at age 33, described him as either “the hottest political consultant or the slickest self-promoter in town.”
Stone encouraged Trump to consider a presidential run as early as the late 1980s and managed his 2000 Reform Party exploratory committee. When Trump launched his 2016 campaign, Stone was among the earliest strategists who helped shape its populist framework, a bond that four decades of political combat had only strengthened.
Today, Stone also hosts The Roger Stone Show on WABC radio in national syndication, where he remains an active voice in conservative media.
Stone’s value to a candidate comes down to three things: access, positioning, and timing. Access is the most straightforward, but positioning is the longer game. His long relationship with Trump means he understands what the president looks for before lending his endorsement to a down-ballot race. In Oklahoma, that meant building Mazzei’s profile as a credentialed fiscal conservative with a verifiable record in tax and budget policy, former chairman of the state Senate Finance Committee, and Oklahoma Secretary of Budget. Trump’s Truth Social post mirrored that profile word for word.
Stone operates by what he calls “Stone’s Rules,” a set of strategic maxims built around relentless offensive pressure and defining a race on your own terms rather than an opponent’s.
Applied to a primary, that means staying on message, forcing contrasts on favorable ground, and making rivals respond to your issues and your timeline. Timing is where execution matters most, and Trump’s endorsement arrived precisely when Mazzei had climbed to first place and the field was paying the most attention. It dropped the day after the four-way GOP gubernatorial debate in Lawton, immediately dominating the post-debate discussion and foreclosing any momentum the event might have generated for other candidates.
Stone paid a significant price for his loyalty to Trump. In 2019, Stone was convicted on charges stemming from the Mueller investigation, a prosecution that President Trump later called a miscarriage of justice and corrected with a full pardon in December 2020. Then-DNI Tulsi Gabbard subsequently declassified documents revealing “overwhelming evidence” that Obama administration officials “manufactured and politicized intelligence” to sustain the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, with the DOJ forming a formal strike force in July 2025 to assess the evidence she produced.
The declassified records named Obama, then-DNI James Clapper, then-CIA Director John Brennan, then-NSA Susan Rice, and then-AG Loretta Lynch among those involved in constructing a narrative the intelligence community’s own analysis did not support. It was a recognition that the process itself had been corrupted. Stone emerged from that ordeal with his standing in Trump’s circle not diminished, but reinforced.
Stone has shown little inclination to soften his methods. He has described his approach to political conflict in characteristically blunt terms: “Admit nothing, deny everything, launch counterattack.” In political “warfare” speak, he reiterates that a candidate who stays on offense, defines the terms of debate, and treats every news cycle as an opportunity to press an advantage will win.
Oklahoma Republicans are choosing their next nominee from a serious field of candidates, all running on conservative priorities. Trump’s endorsement has given Mazzei a clear advantage in visibility and momentum, but it has also intensified scrutiny on how each campaign is being run and who is shaping it behind the scenes.
Oklahoma voters will have the final word. Roger Stone has made sure they will cast it with Mazzei’s name at the top of the conversation.
