Oklahoma Republican Governor Kevin Stitt announced on Tuesday that longtime energy executive Alan Armstrong will replace Markwayne Mullin in the Senate following Mullin’s confirmation as Homeland Security Secretary.
Armstrong is a political outsider who has spent his career at Williams Companies, a major oil and gas company based in Tulsa. After introducing Armstrong at a press conference, Stitt said that Oklahoma’s new senator “is strongly aligned with President Trump on energy policy,” adding that “few people have done more to champion [the] America First agenda to keep Oklahoma at the center of domestic production.”
The Tulsa oil and gas executive will only serve in the Senate for the remainder of Mullin’s term, which ends in January 2027. Oklahoma law requires Senate appointees to sign an affidavit vowing not to run for a full term, and Trump has endorsed Congressman Kevin Hern to run for the seat in November.
Armstrong said he is entering the Senate at a “critical” time in American history, especially regarding energy and infrastructure.
“You travel around the world these days and you realize we are falling behind on being the leaders in infrastructure,” Armstrong said, adding, “The truth is, it’s gotten very, very hard to build large-scale infrastructure, and it is so critical to our country’s competitiveness in the long-term.”
Armstrong began working at Williams Companies nearly 40 years ago as an engineer and worked his way to the top, becoming the energy company’s president and CEO in 2011. He retired from the CEO role in 2025 and became the executive chairman of the board of directors at Williams Companies.
Armstrong’s decades of expertise leading one of America’s largest oil and gas companies and focus on U.S. energy independence fits neatly with President Trump’s goals to rejuvenate the country’s energy sector. The oil and gas executive said the issue he wants to address the most in the Senate is permitting reform.
“What’s caught my attention is it’s hard for any kind of infrastructure to get built, and that really is holding our country back,” he said. “And I really want to make sure that we really have meaningful permitting reform.”
Along with focusing on energy, Armstrong told reporters that “there are a lot of important policy issues” in the Republican Party agenda and vowed that he “will be there to support that.” Armstrong recently met with Trump and said the president showed support for his appointment to the Senate. Armstrong has also worked on energy issues with Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, which he said “was pretty important” in gaining Trump’s support.
Oklahoma has been one of the most pro-Trump states in the country and was the only state where Trump won every county in the 2024 election. Trump, however, recently expressed frustration with Stitt, the chair of the National Governors Association, over a dispute about whether Democratic governors would be invited to the National Governors Association gathering at the White House in February.
Stitt suggested that Trump would be excluding Democratic governors from the meeting, but Trump shot back, calling Stitt a “RINO” and a “wise guy” who “incorrectly stated my position” on which governors were invited to the White House. The Oklahoma governor reportedly met with Trump earlier this month and cleared the air over the dispute.
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