In case you missed it, last week State Representative Jared Deck – a Democratic representative from the Norman area – held a press conference at the Skirvin to call attention to the nearly $11 million(!) Mike Mazzei loaned himself to finance his soon-to-be-successful gubernatorial campaign.
The general gist is Deck wants regulators to look into a bank loan Mazzei took out against his investment firm, whether that money helped finance his campaign, and whether voters deserve to know a little more about the arrangement than “Trust me, I’m a financial advisor.”
Here are some details via the Norman Transcript:
State Rep. Jared Deck, D-Norman, is asking the FDIC and Oklahoma State Banking Department to review a loan to Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Mazzei that could have helped finance roughly $11 million in reported self-loans to his campaign.
A Jan. 13 filing with the Oklahoma County Clerk shows Mazzei took out a loan from Regent Bank and pledged all of his shares in his investment firm, Trinity Strategic Wealth, which reported about $1.54 billion under management in March, as collateral. In the months after the filing, Mazzei’s reported loans to his own campaign were increased from about $3 million at the end of 2025 to roughly $6.9 million by June and about $11 million by mid-August.
I’ll be honest, I don’t really have strong opinions on this.
On one hand, if some guy is dumb enough to borrow millions to run for Governor of Oklahoma, and a bank is dumb enough to actually loan him the money for it, more power to them. We already live in a dumb state, so we might as well make it dumber.