Did you think we could make it through the primary voting season without some low-hanging fruit?
This year, Oklahoma had quite a bit of that — literally. Among all of the political rhetoric that aired here over the last six months, gubernatorial candidate Charles McCall seemed to stand out most with his infamous ad cutting a banana in half as an unelaborate metaphor for sex-change surgeries.
It just didn’t stand out in a good way, it seems.
McCall finished fifth in last week’s Republican primary results, more than 10,000 votes behind Jake Merrick, whose grassroots campaign lacked the millions McCall spent from his own bank accounts and the televised debate stages the former House speaker graced owing to his early polling performance.
As the June 16 primary election approached, I personally enjoyed the hilarious scenarios where one ad promoting a candidate as the most conservative ever to have lived would be followed directly by an attack ad claiming the same candidate is pushing woke, liberal and socialist ideology.
Sillier still was the heavy use of generative AI, where Chip “Referendum” Keating aired a cartoon lampoon of McCall’s banana-chopping ways. Keating finished third behind Gentner Drummond and Mike Mazzei, but you know what they say about the first runner up.
For McCall — whose fruit-splitting ad earned him nicknames like “Charlie Banana” and “Banana Chuck” — his faltering finish below Merrick begs the question of whether his political career has one foot in the grave and the other ….
Based on the precinct and county maps for turnout in the June 16 primary, McCall could be a strong contender for a potential 2nd Congressional District campaign in 2030, assuming U.S. Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-OK2) holds to his pledge of term limiting himself after eight years. Still a lot of things will happen between now and then, not the least of which is seeing a 2026 Republican gubernatorial win the runoff in nine weeks.
Will there be more AI-altered ads in the meantime? Surely. Will they continue to make this entire exercise seem like we’re living in some simulated dystopian future? Well, perhaps we are.
If you didn’t cash out your capitalist gains for a fifth-place finish in a political race, here are the donation links to the Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma and the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma.
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