But What Can You Do? tracks where 2026 candidates stand on U.S. weapons and funding for the government of Israel. How we check

Jerry Griffin

Independent · Governor, Oklahoma
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Griffin is an independent on the November ballot, a former Tulsa school board member running on schools, taxes and health costs. Nothing located as of September 2026 has him taking a position on U.S. weapons or money for the government of Israel, or on U.S. aid to Palestinians.

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Deep Dive

Jerry Griffin is an independent candidate for governor of Oklahoma and one of five names on the ballot on November 3, 2026. He is 82 and lives in Tulsa, and the League of Women Voters guide to this race gives a working life that runs through the Marine Corps in the 1960s, teaching posts at three universities, seven years as a vice president at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Oklahoma, two years in the Peace Corps, eight years as a major in the Tulsa Police Department, and a seat on the Tulsa Public Schools board from 2020 to 2024. He is running on schools, taxes tied to sustainable budgeting, and the cost of health care. He reached the ballot the way an independent does in Oklahoma, by filing a declaration of candidacy during the filing period of April 1 to 3, 2026, and he is listed under Governor as an independent in the State Election Board's own candidate list.

On the question this site asks, the record is empty. His campaign site is a single page of about 230 words: it says he is free from party control and running for all Oklahomans, and the button on it labelled Dr. Jerry's Positions on Issues does not lead anywhere. The words Israel, Gaza, Palestinian, Hamas and foreign aid appear nowhere on it, nor in his League of Women Voters entry, nor on his Ballotpedia page, which records that he has not completed that site's candidate survey this year or in any earlier race. The fullest account of why he is running, published in February 2026, runs through his record, his view that no independent has ever won a statewide race in Oklahoma, and his readiness to spend a million dollars of his own money, and reaches no foreign subject at any point. An empty record carries no implication either way, and a governor casts no federal votes on any of this.

What could not be read is on his research page with its addresses: his campaign's Facebook page, which returns an error to every request, four other accounts that serve nothing, and four years of school board meetings for which no archive was read here.

You are better placed to change this than we are. Ask Griffin directly, or at a candidate forum, and send us the reply: it goes on this page in his own words, which is worth more than anything we could write about him.

The record

Notable actions

• Qualified for the 2026 general-election field according to the Oklahoma State Election Board.

How this mark works

We track key votes on sending U.S. weapons and money to the government of Israel. A check means every tracked vote they cast came down against sending more, on the side of peace and de-escalation. A question mark means a mixed record: they sided with sending up to half of the time. An X means they voted to send more weapons and money in over half of their tracked votes, even as the way those weapons and dollars were being used became more and more obvious. At exactly half, money this election cycle from a lobbying group we track, or an endorsement from a group that backs sending weapons, makes it an X. Only votes actually cast are counted. Where a candidate has no recorded votes on these bills, the mark comes instead from a reviewed reading of their public record (money from the lobbying groups we track, endorsements, and their own words since January 26, 2024). There an X also covers fully backing the conduct of the war by the government of Israel without significant reservations, and a question mark also covers speaking about Israel without saying clearly where they stand on U.S. weapons and funding. A dash means No Position Found: we found nothing in their own words about Israel, Gaza or the war.

See a dash? Ask the candidate where they stand, then send us their answer and we'll review it and update the mark. Or volunteer to help review candidates.

No recorded votes on the bills we track. We found nothing in their own words about Israel, Gaza or the war.

Research log

The notes behind this card: what we looked at, what we found, and where each item came from.

Every page named below was opened and read on 2026-09-22 unless the entry says otherwise. His campaign site was read in full; it is a single page. Bands: Position (2024-01-26 onward), Reaction window (2023-10-07 to 2024-01-25), Earlier record (before 2023-10-07), Undated. He has held one elected office, a seat on a school board, so there is no state or federal voting record on this card, and the committees this site tracks do not cover a state office, so there is no funding record either.

U.S. military aid and weapons to the government of Israel

  • Nothing located, at any date. No statement of his about arms transfers, weapons shipments, Foreign Military Financing, the memorandum of understanding, security assistance, a dollar figure, a condition on aid, or any bill or amendment on those subjects appears on his campaign site, on his Ballotpedia page, in the League of Women Voters of Oklahoma's guide to this race, in the announcement of his candidacy, or in any report of his campaign read for this card.
  • [Position, read 2026-09-22] A case-insensitive search for israel, gaza, palestin, hamas, antisemit, jewish, zionis, aipac, unrwa, netanyahu, jerusalem, iran, genocide, apartheid, two-state, foreign aid, foreign policy, military aid, middle east and arms sale returns no match on his campaign site, including the code the site is built from, on his Ballotpedia page, in his League of Women Voters entry, or in the announcement of his candidacy. The word foreign appears once in the site's code and it is the name of a drawing element in the software library the page is built with.

U.S. aid to Palestinians

  • Nothing located, at any date. Neither the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, nor humanitarian funding for Gaza, nor the aid pipeline appears anywhere in his published material.

Characterization of the conflict

  • Nothing located, at any date. He has not been found using the words genocide, apartheid, self-defense or terrorism about the war in Gaza, and nothing of his was found on Palestinian statehood, a two-state framework or territorial boundaries.

Related rhetoric and lobbying

  • Nothing located, at any date. Nothing that could be read here has him naming the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is the largest organization lobbying the United States government on this subject, or any other advocacy organization working on it, or money connected to any of them.

Safety and antisemitism (context, not a position on what America sends)

  • Nothing located, at any date. Nothing in his published material addresses antisemitism or the safety of any religious community.
  • A namesake warning for anyone re-checking this record. Jerry Griffin is a common name and a search for it returns people in other states and other walks of life, none of them him. The Oklahoma candidate is Dr. Gerald Ray Griffin of Tulsa, aged 82, the former Tulsa Public Schools board member for District 6 who is the independent on the November 2026 ballot for governor. Every source used on this card was checked against that chain: the State Election Board's list, his Ballotpedia page, the League of Women Voters guide and the announcement of his candidacy all give Tulsa and the school board seat, and his own site gives the same name and office.

What the campaign site and his own pages say

  • [Position, read 2026-09-22] His campaign site was read in full. It is one page and about 230 words. Its own sitemap lists that one address and nothing else. The page says he is independent of both major parties and accountable only to Oklahomans, that he is running for all Oklahomans regardless of party, and that the campaign is built by volunteers. It carries two buttons, one labelled "Dr. Jerry's Positions on Issues" and one labelled "Volunteer to Serve on a Campaign Committee", and a third labelled "Continue Reading" beneath a notice dated May 28, 2026 headed "OKla. First". None of the three leads anywhere: every one of them points at the top of the same page. There is no issues page on this site. The site's own record of itself gives May 28, 2026 as the date it was published and July 26, 2026 as the date it was last changed.
  • [Read 2026-09-22] Ballotpedia's page for him records that he has not completed its 2026 Candidate Connection survey for this race, that he did not complete it for the superintendent's race, and that he did not complete it in 2022 or 2020 either. The page carries no statement of his on this subject and lists no issue positions. It records that he was a member of the Tulsa Public Schools Board of Education for District 6, assuming office on July 7, 2020 and leaving on April 15, 2024, and that he did not run for re-election. It also records that he ran for Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction this year and will not appear on the November ballot for that office.
  • [Position, read 2026-09-22] The League of Women Voters of Oklahoma publishes a guide to this race that covers all five candidates. Its entry for him gives his age as 82 and his home as Tulsa; degrees from the University of Tulsa in 1970 and 1978 and a master's from Southern Methodist University in 1971; and a working life that runs through the United States Marine Corps from 1962 to 1966, teaching posts at Southwest Texas State, Wichita State and the University of Phoenix, seven years as a vice president at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Oklahoma, two years as a Peace Corps volunteer from 1988, eight years as a major in the Tulsa Police Department from 1990, adjunct teaching at the University of Oklahoma, and the school board seat. His positions in the guide are that the state superintendent should be appointed rather than elected, that local control by a board of education gives the best education, school choice, affordability, tax relief tied to sustainable budgeting rather than short-term political gain, job creation through small business and workforce alignment, health spending tied to outcomes, investment in mental health stabilization, public safety and accessibility for citizens with mobility disabilities, and lower health costs through fewer regulations, more primary care, transparent pricing and attention to rural shortages. The guide's headings include no foreign and no national subject, and the words Israel, Gaza and Palestinian appear nowhere in it.
  • [Position, 2026-02-20] The Seminole Producer's report of his announcement, published February 20, 2026, is the fullest account of why he is running that could be found. It says he compared his own record with the rest of the field across executive experience, incumbent defeats, education policy depth, fiscal discipline and constitutional grounding; that he has entered four races in Oklahoma and won two, beating a six-year incumbent in 1974 to become the Republican nominee for Tulsa Police and Fire Commissioner and a sixteen-year incumbent in 2020 for the Tulsa school board; that he confirmed no independent has ever won a statewide race in Oklahoma and names the 1990 and 2002 independent campaigns of Wes Watkins and Gary Richardson; that he had filed a campaign committee for a run at state superintendent, dissolved it and filed a new one for governor; and that he is prepared to commit up to $1,000,000 of his own money. It quotes him once: "This campaign is about measurable performance, disciplined governance, and respect for ideas based on merit rather than label." No foreign subject appears anywhere in it.
  • [Read 2026-09-22] Which voter guides were checked, and how. Four were found for this race and every one was opened and read directly rather than through a summary. The League of Women Voters of Oklahoma guide is the only one that covers all five candidates; it is served as ordinary text and its headings are education, the economy, healthcare, public safety and a heading called other. Oklahoma Voice, the States Newsroom outlet in this state, has published two guides, one for the June 16 primary and one for the August 25 runoff; both cover only the party candidates, both are biographical rather than a questionnaire, and neither reaches any foreign subject. News 9's guide of June 10, 2026 covers what it calls the leading candidates on education, immigration and border security, inflation, economic development and public safety, and names none of the three independents. iVoterGuide, published by the conservative group AFA Action, is the one guide in this race whose questionnaire asks about the government of Israel: it puts the item "Is the United States' relationship with Israel important, and if so why?" to candidates, and Mazzei's June primary profile records "Did not answer" against it, as it does against thirty-three other items on the same form. Its page for the November general election lists all five candidates with their campaign links but publishes no profile, no questionnaire and no answers for any of them, so the question has not been put to him there. No guide built as an application with its answers held in a data endpoint was found for this race, so there was no endpoint to read.

The race

  • [Read 2026-09-22] The general election for governor of Oklahoma is on November 3, 2026. Ballotpedia's page for the race gives the field: "Cyndi Munson , Mike Mazzei , Robert Brooks , Orlando Lynn Bush , and Jerry Griffin are running in the general election for Governor of Oklahoma on November 3, 2026." The same page records that there are no incumbents in this race and that Governor Kevin Stitt was term-limited. The record holds the same five as nominated, with Gentner Drummond eliminated, so there is no disagreement.
  • [Read 2026-09-22] The primary was June 16, 2026 and the runoff was August 25, 2026. Munson won the Democratic primary with 74.9 percent and 129,225 votes, ahead of Constance Johnson on 22.3 percent and 38,414 and Arya on 2.8 percent and 4,824, out of 172,463 cast. In the Republican primary the same day Drummond took 26.3 percent and 105,832 votes and Mazzei 26.0 percent and 104,691, out of 403,099 cast among nine candidates, and the two went to a runoff. Mazzei won the runoff with 50.3 percent and 186,678 votes to Drummond's 49.7 percent and 184,631, out of 371,309 cast. Those figures are Ballotpedia's; the record carries the outcomes and the dates but no shares.
  • [Read 2026-09-22] How the three independents reached the ballot. Oklahoma's filing period ran April 1 to 3, 2026, and Ballotpedia gives the filing deadline as April 3. Brooks, Bush and Griffin each filed a declaration of candidacy with the Secretary of the State Election Board in that period and each appears under Governor, in the Independent column, of the board's own list of candidates for elective office, which the board says will be used as the official proof for printing state ballots: Jerry Griffin of Tulsa, number 00425; Robert E Brooks Sr of Moore, number 00535; and Orlando Lynn Bush of Edmond, number 00578. No primary for independent candidates appears in the board's list or on Ballotpedia's page for the race; the three go straight into the November field. Oklahoma Voice's account of the filing week, published April 6, 2026, puts it the same way: the winners of the two primaries "will face independent candidates Jerry Griffin, Robert E. Brooks Sr. and Orlando Lynn Bush in the general election". Ballotpedia records a fourth independent, Billy Wagner, as withdrawn or disqualified, and he is not in the board's list.
  • The other four candidates' records belong on their own cards and are not narrated here.

Places that could not be read, so nothing is claimed from them

  • His own accounts. https://www.facebook.com/GovernorGriffin/ returns an error to every request, and it is the only account his campaign site and Ballotpedia both list as the campaign's own. https://x.com/JgGriffin opens only as a sign-in prompt, which shows the account joined in May 2021 and has twenty-five posts and six followers; none of the twenty-five is served. https://www.instagram.com/dr.jerrygriffin/ and https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG67sOWdiBwW9dSfrdfZf8g serve no content of his, and https://www.linkedin.com/in/jerry-griffin-292162b/ refuses the request outright. All five addresses are printed here so that anyone who can open them may look. Between them they are a small body of material by the standards of a statewide campaign, and none of it was read.
  • The Tulsa Beacon's report of candidates announcing for state races, at https://tulsabeacon.com/candidates-announce-for-state-races/ , which names him in search results. The page could not be opened. Nothing is claimed from it.
  • Four years of Tulsa Public Schools board meetings, from July 2020 to April 2024. No archive of those meetings was read here. If he spoke on any subject beyond school district business it would be there, and a school board is not a body that takes up what the United States sends abroad.

Not on the card, and why

  • Everything in his League of Women Voters entry and his announcement: schools and the state superintendent's office, local control, school choice, affordability, tax relief, small business and workforce alignment, health spending and outcomes, mental health, public safety and accessibility, his service record and his teaching and police careers, and his account of why an independent can win. Out of scope, and listed above so the absence can be checked.
  • His single quoted sentence in the announcement of his candidacy, about measurable performance and disciplined governance. It is about how he would govern and not about what the United States sends anyone, so it is not published as a card quote.
  • His 2026 candidacy for Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction, which he did not carry to the November ballot. It is about the shape of his year and not about anything this site asks; it is recorded above because it explains the two campaign committees.
  • The records of Cyndi Munson, Mike Mazzei, Robert Brooks and Orlando Lynn Bush. Another candidate's positions belong on that candidate's own card.

Sources retrieved for this card (address; opened or could not open; date)

  • https://governorgriffin2027.com/ , read in full including the program its text is held in (opened; 2026-09-22)
  • https://governorgriffin2027.com/sitemap.xml (opened; 2026-09-22; lists one address)
  • https://ballotpedia.org/Jerry_Griffin (opened; 2026-09-22)
  • https://ballotpedia.org/Oklahoma_gubernatorial_election,_2026 (opened; 2026-09-22)
  • https://www.okvoterguide.com/gubernatorial-candidates/ (opened; 2026-09-22)
  • https://www.seminoleproducer.com/index.php/article/news/griffin-announces-gubernatorial-bid (opened; 2026-09-22; published 2026-02-20)
  • https://oklahoma.gov/content/dam/ok/en/elections/candidate-filing-archives/2026-candidate-filing-archives/2026-candidate-list-book.pdf (opened; 2026-09-22; 66 pages)
  • https://oklahomavoice.com/briefs/candidate-filing-brings-surprises-one-new-oklahoma-statewide-office-seeker-wins-by-default/ (opened; 2026-09-22; published 2026-04-06)
  • https://ivoterguide.com/race/35078/election/1506 (opened; 2026-09-22)
  • https://ivoterguide.com/candidate/89412/race/27984/election/1425 (opened; 2026-09-22; read to establish what that questionnaire asks)
  • https://oklahomavoice.com/voter-guides/2026-oklahoma-primary-election/ and its governor pages (opened; 2026-09-22)
  • https://www.news9.com/oklahoma-governors-race-2026/who-should-i-vote-for-leading-oklahoma-governor-candidates-at-a-glance (opened; 2026-09-22; published 2026-06-10)
  • https://x.com/JgGriffin (opened in part; 2026-09-22)
  • https://www.instagram.com/dr.jerrygriffin/ and https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG67sOWdiBwW9dSfrdfZf8g (opened, no content of his served; 2026-09-22)
  • https://www.facebook.com/GovernorGriffin/ (could not open; 2026-09-22)
  • https://www.linkedin.com/in/jerry-griffin-292162b/ (could not open; 2026-09-22)
  • https://tulsabeacon.com/candidates-announce-for-state-races/ (could not open; 2026-09-22)
  • This is a record of what was checked on 2026-09-22, not a claim that no statement exists anywhere.

Also in this race

  1. ? Mike Mazzei (Republican)
  2. – Cyndi Munson (Democrat)
  3. – Orlando Lynn Bush (Independent)
  4. – Robert Brooks (Independent)

All Oklahoma candidates.

But What Can You Do? tracks where 2026 candidates stand on U.S. weapons and funding for the government of Israel. Every claim on this page goes through at least two verification steps. Open Find Your Candidates for votes, funding and contact details.