U.S. President
Donald Trump's push to build the Western Hemisphere's largest aluminum smelter in rural
Oklahoma has divided the state's Republican voters and emerged as a key issue in the contentious race to be the next governor.
The two Republicans who will face off for their party's nomination on August 25 have taken opposing views, underscoring the willingness of some conservatives to buck Trump and use industrial projects as campaign leverage.
“I'm not going to let it be built," Gentner Drummond, the state's attorney general, said at a
candidate forum last month with his opponent, former state Senator Mike Mazzei. "We have to protect farmland."
The
$4 billion smelter project would be the first in the U.S. since 1980, but it has attracted some opposition from the community where it is slated to be built.
It became a major campaign issue in May after Trump endorsed Mazzei for the June 16 gubernatorial primary. Mazzei had opposed the smelter
until the day Trump endorsed him
.
Mazzei, who runs a Tulsa wealth management firm, said in a statement that he is "proud to stand with President Trump and support a project he's made clear is a national security imperative." Mazzei's campaign turned down multiple interview requests.
Drummond
filed a lawsuit from the attorney general's office days later to block Emirates Global Aluminium and Century Aluminum
(CENX.O) from building the smelter, a move opponents characterized as an attempt to use the project as a campaign wedge.
The strategy worked. Neither candidate garnered 50% of the first-round vote, forcing an August 25 runoff. The winner is likely to win the November general election in the deeply Republican state, where nearly two-thirds of voters supported Trump in each of the past three presidential elections and where a Democrat has not won the governor's mansion in 20 years.
U.S. President Donald Trump's push to build the Western Hemisphere's largest aluminum smelter in rural Oklahoma has divided the state's Republican voters and emerged as a key issue in the contentious race to be the next governor.
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The project, which received a $500 million U.S. Energy Department grant, is central to Trump's plans to boost America's minerals production. Roughly half of the aluminum used in the U.S. is imported,
much of it from Canada. The proposed massive aluminum smelter in Inola, Oklahoma, plans to draw its electricity from the local regional power grid.
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