A little ways down in Tres Savage’s unflashy but thorough and fair profile of Mike Mazzei from earlier this week, just as he’s getting into the ethical complications around the $11 million in personal loans that powered Mazzei’s squeaker of a primary runoff win Tuesday night, Savage stops to recount an event earlier this month where Mazzei retreated from the press not once but twice. It’s really quite extraordinary. Here, you should read it for yourself.
“I’m just going to talk to my friends,” Mazzei said, rushing off and cutting a line of attendees at the elevators of OKC’s BancFirst Tower.
During the forum with his “friends,” Mazzei appeared at ease in the crowded room, speaking more confidently and effectively than he had two nights prior on TV, name-dropping every elected official in the audience and proclaiming his tax cut plans would help Oklahoma “stop losing energy company headquarters like Devon to Texas.”
After the forum, Mazzei spoke with three or four attendees about his tax plans, and as dozens of people stood in line to reach the elevators, Mazzei delivered a one-liner when asked by NonDoc whether he had a moment to answer two questions.
“Apparently not,” Mazzei quipped, sprinting a few steps up the Petroleum Club’s staircase before slowing down, pulling himself up the rest of the way with the handrail and ultimately catching an elevator down from the floor above the event.
So for those keeping score at home: the betting favorite to become Oklahoma’s next governor, who won an ill-attended primary runoff by just over 2,000 votes on the strength of a whole lot of his own money and an endorsement from Donald Trump, is running away from NonDoc.
Anyway, you should read Tres’s story, which points out Mazzei’s strange opinions about the state education system and even stranger tendency to accuse those asking questions of him to be spreading misinformation.