The Oklahoma State Capital

The scope of this series

WHAT THIS SERIES FOLLOWS

How elections in Oklahoma are paid for, and who runs them.

Two changes run through it. The first is dark money: money spent to influence Oklahoma elections without disclosing where it came from. The second is the professionalization of Oklahoma campaigns: races once run by candidates, volunteers and local people giving modest amounts under their own names are increasingly run by paid consultants, political firms and organised outside groups, down to the county courthouse.

The series began with the 2024 race for County Commissioner in Logan County's District 2, which drew organised outside spending of a kind the county's races had not previously attracted. It asks the same questions of elections across the state: who organised the spending, where the money originated, who was paid to run the campaign, what it bought, and what it was intended to achieve.

It carries those questions into the conduct of government by the officials those elections returned, but only where a decision connects back to the money.

WHAT IT DOES NOT EXAMINE

This series is not about any single officeholder, candidate, donor or consultant. Being named in it is not an accusation, and should not be read as one.

Independent expenditure is lawful. Candidates are barred from coordinating with it, and most do not. That a campaign benefited from outside money is therefore not, by itself, evidence that the campaign sought it, knew of it, or owes anything to whoever paid for it. Where we can establish coordination, we will report it and show how we know. Where we cannot, we will say so plainly rather than leave the suggestion hanging in the air. Hiring professionals to run a campaign is lawful and ordinary too; reporting on who they are and how they work is not a suggestion of wrongdoing.

It is not a general audit of any government. Contracts, appointments and public spending enter this work only where they bear on the questions above.

HOW WE WORK ON IT

Anyone whose conduct we intend to describe is told before we publish, in writing, and is given a fair opportunity to respond. Where a response arrives after publication, we add it. Corrections are made openly rather than quietly.