Billionaire Asks Oklahoma Governor To Be Appointed to Mullin’s U.S. Senate Seat

By: Sam Massey

In a time where it feels the world works for only the very rich, reality only continues to confirm those indications. Harold Hamm, the Oklahoma oil billionaire and founder of Continental Resources, reportedly called Governor Kevin Stitt on Thursday night to ask for the Senate appointment being vacated by Markwayne Mullin, who Trump wants to install as DHS Secretary. According to NOTUS, Hamm also called the White House to express interest. Just to make sure all the bases were covered, of course.

Let’s be clear about who Harold Hamm is before we begin the moral critique of his candidacy. He is worth an estimated $18 billion or more, pioneered the fracking of shale oil resources, and has been one of the most influential figures in Republican energy politics for decades now. He organized the now-infamous Mar-a-Lago meeting between Trump and oil executives where Trump reportedly solicited $1 billion in campaign contributions in exchange for promises to roll back environmental regulations. He also recently donated to Trump’s $300 million White House ballroom project. This gives him an unusual tether to the Trump Administration, less a guest and more a direct stakeholder.

And now he wants a Senate seat. Not through a primary. Not through a campaign. Through a phone call and appointment.

The occupation of that seat runs through the 2028 cycle, which means Hamm would be casting votes on Trump’s second term agenda at its most consequential junctures. That includes, but is not limited to, energy deregulation, climate policy, federal lands, the budget reconciliation fights that will define this era. Calling that temporary is a little like calling a house fire a temporary heat source. And there is something almost darkly comic about the requirement that Hamm sign an affidavit promising not to seek a full term, as if the primary obstacle to democratic accountability here is whether Harold Hamm personally stays in the seat. The inconvenience being managed is not his ambition. It is the voters.

Hamm does not need a Senate seat to accumulate more power, because he already has more political and economic power than most people alive. Not everyone can call their Governor requesting to be appointed to the vacant Senate seat. What an appointment does is launder informal influence into formal authority. It turns Hamm’s access as an energy mogul into a government title. It is the next logical step for a donor class that has spent decades buying proximity to power and is now simply cutting out the middleman.

Hamm’s policy demands during the Trump orbit have included opening more federal lands to drilling, weakening the Endangered Species Act, and gutting EPA regulations. Continental Resources, meanwhile, opted out of Oklahoma’s voluntary fund to clean up orphaned oil wells, receiving nearly $1.6 million in refunds over seven years while 1,500 wells went unreclaimed. This is the man asking to represent Oklahoma in the United States Senate.

There are other names being floated for the seat. Mullin’s longtime adviser Donelle Harder, Oklahoma businessman Dustin Hilliary, former AG John O’Connor, Lt. Governor Matt Pinnell, and former Trump official Alex Gray have all been mentioned, along with Reps. Kevin Hern and Stephanie Bice, both of whom are considering Senate bids. Hern, famously, was voted at points to replace Kevin McCarthy during the infamous mid session replacement in October 2023. At least some of those people have run for something before. At least some of them have faced voters.

Hamm has not. He has faced donors, he’s fundraised, he’s developed a close enough proximity and network to get him this close. He has not faced the people of Oklahoma in any democratic sense, and he is not proposing to. He is proposing to skip that part entirely. Maybe this was more normalized before the 17th amendment, but it sure should not be normalized now.

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That is the part that should alarm people regardless of party. Not Hamm specifically, but what the ask represents. When the wealthiest individuals in the country begin treating open Senate seats like board positions to be filled by a well-timed call to the right governor, the question worth asking is not whether this particular appointment happens. It is why we have built a political system where this kind of call is even worth making.

Stitt has not indicated which direction he is leaning. But the fact that Hamm called at all tells you something about how power operates in this era. The fact the phone call happened is the point. It is a demonstration that the informal architecture of influence has grown so sturdy that a billionaire oil tycoon can pick up the phone and ask for a Senate seat the same way you might call in a favor from a friend. And the expectation, however it turns out this time, is that this is simply how things work now.

That normalization is the real threat. Not Harold Hamm, even though he is as much a cancer on the United States Senate as any other corporate shill. Harold Hamm is just the current, visible version of something much older and much less complicated to name. It is called oligarchy, and it is not hiding anymore under the Second Trump Administration.

This article was written by Sam Massey