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Primary season is running out, but not before Oklahoma voters cast their ballots in tomorrow's Republican primary runoff. Oklahoma is a reliably red state, so in all likelihood, this is the vote that will determine who leads the state next. As Graycen Wheeler from member station KOSU reports, an industrial aluminum processing facility, a smelter, backed by Trump has divided the two candidates.
GRAYCEN WHEELER, BYLINE: Inola, Oklahoma, is home to just shy of 2,000 people. Twenty-five miles east of Tulsa, it bills itself the hay capital of the world. But Inola is on the precipice of a new superlative, one many residents do not want - aluminum smelting capital of the world.
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DAN CORLE: You can't go to the grocery store without somebody jumping you about the smelter.
WHEELER: That's Inola Vice Mayor Dan Corle speaking at a town meeting in June. Hundreds of people attended to voice their concerns about a proposed $4 billion aluminum smelter. The venture is spearheaded by a United Arab Emirates-based company and promises to double U.S. primary aluminum production.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Now we're going to have the largest aluminum plant in the world being built in Oklahoma. I love Oklahoma.
WHEELER: That's President Trump describing the project at the NATO summit this month. It has half a billion dollars in federal backing and hundreds of millions of dollars in state incentives and tax breaks. Inola resident Christine Roam is worried about it.
CHRISTINE ROAM: Our economy is built on livestock and crops. Our families are built on homesteads. And so we want to see what technologies they plan to rely on and understand how this smelter that is going to be the largest that the United States has ever had, how can they make it safe?
WHEELER: She came to the town meeting to support a moratorium on the smelter's construction. Blocking construction is also being pushed by one of the candidates in the Republican gubernatorial runoff on Tuesday, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond. He's filed an injunction against the smelter to give the state time to study its impact. Ads have popped up statewide against his opponent, former State Senator Mike Mazzei, who supports the smelter. Like this one paid for by a dark money group called Put Oklahoma First, LLC.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Mike Mazzei wants to give your tax dollars to a Muslim country to build a smelter plant in Oklahoma.
WHEELER: But Mazzei has the support of President Trump, who endorsed him in a video.
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TRUMP: He is working really hard to bring one of the biggest and most important economic jobs anywhere in the country, the new aluminum plant. It'll be unbelievable.
WHEELER: Trump's backcking means a lot in Oklahoma, where he carried two-thirds of the vote in 2024, including 83% of votes in Inola. Some residents, like Thomas Harrington, feel the smelter has unfairly pitted their town against the state and federal governments.
THOMAS HARRINGTON: It shouldn't really be a question. It should be a question of, hey, the town said, we're not sure. We want to pause.
WHEELER: Harrington isn't necessarily against the smelter itself. After all, it promises thousands of jobs. But he wants to know how the facility would handle emissions that could harm the hay and livestock in the area.
HARRINGTON: You have an easy battle to win. I'm like, man, we are Oklahomans. We want this kind of stuff. You just have to - you have to frame it in a way that doesn't treat us like they kind of have been.
WHEELER: Dismissing residents concerns, he says. The company behind the smelter and the U.S. Department of Energy say the facility is critical for national security. Polls show Drummond and Mazzei are mostly even ahead of Tuesday's runoff elections. It's unclear whether the smelter will become a deciding factor, but it is the biggest issue they differ on.
For NPR News, I'm Graycen Wheeler in Inola, Oklahoma. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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