In some ways, Kevin Stitt is like many of the Oklahomans whose growing interest in state politics resulted in record turnout for Tuesday’s primary elections.
In 12 months, Stitt has gone from a political unknown to the Republican gubernatorial runoff election. All it has taken is hard work, a persuasive message and a few bucks — around 4.8 million of them.
Like a lot of the people who showed up at the polls Tuesday, Stitt had been much more preoccupied with his family and his business than what was going on at the state Capitol. He wasn’t a donor, didn’t go to conventions or spend his time mulling the complexities of the state budget.
He didn’t even vote that often.
But at some point, as he tells it, Stitt became tired of Oklahoma being near the bottom of just about every list it should aspire to be at the top of.
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And, like the 891,000 Oklahomans who went to the polls on Tuesday, he decided to do something about it — only on a much bigger scale.
Stitt decided to run for governor.
Few people outside of the mortgage industry knew who Stitt was when he registered his campaign committee with the Oklahoma State Ethics Committee last July. Certainly he was not as well known as GOP frontrunners Mick Cornett and Todd Lamb.
But Stitt had at least a couple of things going for him that Lamb and Cornett did not: deep pockets and no history with voters. In the era of Donald Trump, a lack of government experience became an asset.
“I am not a career politician” became Stitt’s most frequently used phrase.
Wednesday, one day after finishing second to Cornett and just ahead of Lamb in the 10-way GOP primary, Stitt said he will continue to push that message leading up to the Aug. 28 runoff.
“We’ll keep doing the same thing, getting our message out” he said.
“There won’t be a lot of changes. I am who I am.”
Stitt has proven he has the resources to spread the word. He has put $2.8 million of his own money into his campaign and raised another $2 million from other donors. He won’t say how deep into his own pockets he’s willing to dig but seems confident that he’ll have the money to do what he needs to do.
“I’m going to continue to match (donations),” Stitt said Wednesday. “We’ve actually out-raised everyone else in the race without counting what I’ve put in.”
Stitt made his money building Gateway Mortgage into one of the largest privately owned companies of its kind. It services $18 billion in mortgages and originates $6 billion in home loans annually.
Stitt started the company in 2000 with, he says, $1,000 and a computer. It now does business in 40 states and the District of Columbia.
Stitt and Gateway Mortgage are not without critics. A problem with its Georgia office almost a decade ago caused the company to surrender its license, and it was banned from doing business in that state. Stitt said that sanction was recently lifted.
“We are audited 41 times a year, in every state (and D.C.) where we do business and by (federal regulators) every year,” he said. “We’re a heavily regulated industry. We’ve probably been fined 16 times in 19 years.”
Stitt said that’s not unusual, given the degree of government oversight in the loan business.
He’s also been criticized for rarely voting, except in presidential elections.
“I haven’t been as engaged as I should have been, but I’ve been focused on building my business and creating jobs for Oklahomans,” Stitt said. “If you want a perfect voting record, there are plenty of those in the Capitol. I think that’s the wrong question. The question is who can solve the state’s problems.”
Stitt’s challenge now is to overcome Cornett’s 22,000-vote primary lead. One way to do that, in business terms, is to expand his market share — lay claim to the lion’s share of Lamb’s 108,000 primary voters, or the 102,000 other Republican votes that didn’t go to him or Cornett.
But runoffs are tricky, and the first order of business is to make the people who voted for you in the first round remember to show up for the run-off two months later.
“That’s the challenge,” Stitt said. “The good news is we’ve engaged a whole lot of new voters. They have enthusiasm. Our voters will be back.”
In some ways, the election math is pretty simple. Of the 960,000 registered Republicans eligible to vote in the runoff, more than half live in just five counties — Oklahoma (175,000), Tulsa (171,000), Cleveland (75,000), Canadian (46,000) and Rogers (31,000).
That’s how Lamb carried 41 counties and finished in the top three in all 77, and still came in third in the primary.
Stitt carried only 12 counties, but he finished ahead of Cornett in 32 others and in the top three of all 77.
Cornett was as low as sixth in some counties, but beat Stitt by 21,000 votes in Oklahoma County while losing to him by only 8,000 in Tulsa County. Cornett also had a 10,000-vote combined margin in Cleveland and Canadian counties.
“I had no idea it would be so close, such a nail-bitter,” Stitt said. “I’m very optimistic and figured we’d be in first place.”
Nevertheless, he said he was “thrilled” with making the runoff. “Going in we were not given a chance. This was a monumental victory.”
