OKC mayor rakes in cash ahead of 2022 campaign
Mayor David Holt’s re-election campaign has raised $275,000 so far this year in what is already one of the most expensive mayoral races the city has seen.
Holt’s 2018 campaign upped the total by transferring $25,000 to the 2022 committee.
“I’ve run for office three times before this,” Holt said by text. “The first time I ran for mayor it took four and a half months to reach $200,000.
“This time we took in almost $300,000 in two weeks,” he wrote. “I’ve never experienced anything like this. The support has been overwhelming.”
Here are some notable facts from the campaign’s first-quarter report:
• Donors include Matt Payne ($250)
and Rachel Cannon ($1,000), co-founders of Prairie Surf Media, which recently reached a deal with Oklahoma City to convert downtown’s former Cox Convention Center into a television and motion-picture studio.
• Fifty individuals and two tribes gave $2,900, the maximum an individual may contribute per election. Among individual donations, there were 62 of $2,500 or more.
• The campaign took in $23,250 from political action committees, including $5,000 each from the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber and Oklahoma City firefighters.
• Steven Drozd of The Flaming Lips sent $100. Drozd produced a jingle for the 2018 campaign.
The campaign issued a press release saying, “The $276,793 raised between March 15 and March 31 already represents the fourth-highest total ever raised by a candidate for Oklahoma City mayor.”
Holt’s 2018 campaign, when he
raised $468,800 in cash, is second, behind Mick Cornett’s 2014 re-election campaign and ahead of Jim Tolbert in 2004.
Big donors for the 2022 race represent fields such as banking, real estate development, energy, utilities, investing, marketing and professional sports.
So far, there is little evidence of the $25 and $50 donors who can demonstrate the breadth of a candidate’s appeal, but when asked about it, Holt wrote he was “probably not in a position to talk strategy at this point.”
The primary is Feb. 8, 2022. Jason Padgett, a former Hollywood actor turned businessman, plans to challenge Holt, though he has never shown an interest in municipal governance and never voted in a city election.
An attorney, Holt is managing director of investor relations at Hall Capital.
He was chief of staff for former Mayor Mick Cornett and served two terms as a Republican in the state Senate.
Holt was elected the city’s 36th mayor with 78.5% of the vote in the 2018 primary.
He built a network anchored by 1,300 endorsements, campaigning on a theme of OneOKC and a promise to bring marginalized communities to the decisionmaking table.
He capitalized on that support to build a coalition that carried MAPS 4 to an election victory with 71.7% of the vote in December 2019.
Mayor of Oklahoma City is a nonpartisan post. Mayors earn $24,000 annually.