A 77-year-old McLoud woman told The Frontier she let her grandson use her name for a network of secretive political groups involved in several Tulsa-area local races and at least one state Senate race in 2024.
Gail Harjo is the grandmother of John Fritz, co-founder of the Tulsa-based political consulting firm Tomahawk Strategies. Harjo recalled that Fritz placed her as the chairperson and treasurer for at least one political group.
“I just help him with whatever he needs,” Harjo said. “I really don’t know nothing about them. I just go vote, and that’s it. I’m Republican and so that’s what I vote all the time.”
Fritz did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Frontier.
Though several documents associated with some of the ad buys taken out by the various groups contain a signature purporting to be Harjo’s, she said she’s never filled out any of the paperwork for the group, and she and her husband’s poor health would prevent her from being able to take an active role even if she wanted to.
“I’m not capable of running any groups. I just stay here,” Harjo said. “We’re old. I don’t even get out. I go to vote, and we don’t even get out of the car to vote because we’re handicapped. And I sure don’t donate.”
John Fritz. Courtesy Harjo told The Frontier that she supports many of the same candidates that her grandson does, so she did not have a problem when Fritz asked her to use her name. She said she never had any involvement with the groups’ operations, did not know what candidates they had supported or opposed, what races they participated in, or the sources of their funding.
The groups linked to Harjo’s name are just a small handful of scores of similar Super PACs in Oklahoma and across the nation that can spend and raise unlimited funds to support political candidates, while actively hiding the funders, leaving voters with little information about who is helping politicians get elected. While it is not uncommon for PACs to name outside individuals as chair or treasurer, it is unusual to not provide the person’s full name. There are no state rules against putting someone’s name on a PAC who doesn’t have any involvement with it, an attorney for the Oklahoma Ethics Commission said.
The name “G. Harjo” surfaced as the chairperson and treasurer of two political action committees that campaigned in state and local elections last year, though only her first initial and last name, along with a rented Stillwater post office box as a mailing address, were provided on campaign filings for the groups.
One of the groups, the state-registered political action committee Advance Right, helped to unseat former State Senator Greg McCourtney in 2024, listed “G. Harjo” as the group’s chairperson and treasurer. Another, Fed Up Conservative Families PAC, sent out mailers opposing Republican Tulsa City Council candidate Phil Lakin during that election cycle and also listed her as chair and treasurer.
Now, the grandmother has been named as a defendant in a defamation lawsuit filed by a candidate who was the target of negative campaign mailers from one of the groups during the Democratic primary for Tulsa County Commissioner in 2024.
Jim Rea, former chief deputy for Tulsa County Commissioner Karen Keith, filed a lawsuit Thursday in Tulsa County District Court against Oklahomans for a Positive Change, the group’s main dark-money donor Liberty Action Fund as well as Harjo. Oklahomans for A Positive Change’s chairperson, listed in campaign filings as “A. Flowers” is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit, as are several other unnamed individuals.
Harjo was not aware she was being sued when contacted by The Frontier on Friday.
The lawsuit accuses the groups and individuals of libel, fraud and conspiracy, and asks the court to award Rea more than $75,000. Rea alleges that the allegations in the mailer resulted in him losing his job and to be “quietly disqualified” from government employment. Rea’s suit alleges that the group’s ads baselessly accused him of being responsible for abuses by staff that had recently been uncovered at the Tulsa County Juvenile Justice Center, as well as having ties to “MAGA Trump consultants.”
Rea’s attorney Laurie Phillips said there’s a higher standard of evidence to show libel for candidates for public office, but that she thought there was an element of malice in the messages.
“To me, doing all this hiding, not following the ethics rules or statutes, I think that shows your malice right there,” Phillips said. “It was intentional and it was also malicious. If it isn’t untruthful and malicious, why would you be going to all these lengths to hide everything?”
Phillips said she attempted to verify the identities of some of the partial names listed in the groups’ paperwork but had not nailed down who they were when the suit was filed.
A June 2024 in-kind donation of campaign mailers valued at $3,436.67 to Oklahomans for a Positive Change is credited to “G. Harjo,” with a listed address at a rented post office box at a shipping store in Stillwater.
The group spent at least $18,335 in the June 2024 Democratic primary for Tulsa County Commissioner supporting candidates Sarah Gray and Maria Veliz Barnes and opposing Rea.
Both Gray’s and Barnes’s campaigns denied they were involved in the ads or with the groups and disavowed the mailers against Rea. Gray said she suspected the mailers’ purpose was to kneecap Rea, who had a sizable fundraising advantage, during the primary to make it easier for a Republican candidate to win in the general election.
“I absolutely believe this was a nefarious actor who was playing in the Democratic primary,” Gray said.
Rea did not advance beyond the Democratic primary. Gray won a runoff vote but narrowly lost to Republican candidate Lonnie Sims in the Nov. 5 general election.
In August, an investigation into political spending by The Frontier found Oklahomans for a Positive Change was operated by the Tulsa political consulting firm Tomahawk Strategies.
Harjo said she is on a fixed income, and the largest donation she has made to a political candidate is only a few dollars to President Donald Trump. She said she has never made a large donation to a candidate or group.
“It probably wasn’t me, because I don’t ever contribute or do anything like that. We live on our little old Social Security checks,” Harjo said.
“Straw donations” or making political contributions in the name of another person, can lead to civil penalties from the Oklahoma Ethics Commission and can also be a crime in Oklahoma. Depending on the amount of the contribution, a straw donation could be prosecuted as a felony or misdemeanor, with penalties ranging from a fine of between three to four times the amount of the donation and one year in prison or jail.
Neither Fritz nor Tomahawk Strategies are named in Rea’s lawsuit as defendants, and they have not been charged with wrongdoing.
This article first appeared on The Frontier and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
