At Russ’ behest, the Board of Investors of the Oklahoma Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust voted 3-1 on Wednesday on shareholder proposals regarding abortion pills, Chinese investments, diversity programs and avoiding so-called gender ideology activism.
After an hour-long presentation and discussion, the board selected 10 publicly traded companies it intended to target with shareholder proposals in 2026. Among the companies are Boeing, Starbucks, Chipotle, computer chip giant NVIDIA, Visa and Mastercard.
Russ said the more immediate goal was to engage the companies in the changes recommended under the shareholder resolutions. If companies make changes without it going to a shareholder vote, then the effort would be a success, he said.
“As we counterbalance what’s going on to protect these investment portfolios, it’s really good for everybody, from a financial standpoint, from a fiduciary standpoint,” Russ said. “We’re trying to get them back to neutral, and if you only have pressure from one direction, it’s pretty impossible to get it to neutral.”
The latest effort comes after shareholders for several companies gave the board’s proposals less than 1% of the vote at annual meetings earlier this year. Russ teamed up with Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal group, and proxy advisory firm Bowyer Research Inc. to make that initial foray into shareholder activism.
The shareholder activism is the latest example of formerly staid elected state treasurer’s offices launching into culture-war issues and efforts against environmental, social and governance goals. A network of conservative think tanks and groups have provided research, letters to companies and talking points for the efforts. Among them are the State Financial Officers Foundation and Heritage Action for America.
Jerry Bowyer, with Bowyer Research, again recommended the issues and companies for the board of investors’ new round of shareholder proposals. He said the proxy advisory system used by pension funds and investment funds such as TSET takes advantage of passive boards and gives too much power to what he called activist investors agitating for changes in corporate policies.
The 10 companies targeted also included communications equipment maker Qualcomm Inc., cosmetics company Estee Lauder, Amazon and drug distributor McKesson. The proposals ask the companies to compile reports on possible risks on DEI and ESG policies, as well as new hot-button issues. For example, the ones targeting Visa and Mastercard ask how they are cracking down on processing payments for AI-generated child pornography. The one for Estee Lauder asks why the company excludes religious organizations from its employee gift-matching program.
Bowyer said the resolution targeting McKesson over its distribution of the abortion drug mifepristone put the company under greater scrutiny from regulators after the U.S. Supreme Court Dobbs decision turning abortion back to the states. He suggested that the drug, which was first approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2000, was unsafe. Bowyer said retailers served by McKesson, such as Costco, Kroger and Walmart, were putting themselves at reputational risk.
“There’s also a fiduciary obligation in the sense that if you sell an abortion drug to a woman, it’s roughly $200 in revenues, and the child is never born,” Bowyer said. “If you’re a retailer, for instance, like Costco, you’re losing something like $10,000 in revenues from that child being a customer. In other words, you can sell mifepristone once for $200, or you can sell diapers and Pedialyte and Vick’s and tricycles for the next 10 years, which is worth more than just paying for mifepristone once.”
Oklahoma A Trailblazer on Anti-DEI Efforts
Bowyer called Oklahoma a trailblazer for the TSET Board of Investors’ efforts in sponsoring shareholder resolutions. He said they are helping to tip the balance away from company executives and back to shareholders. Bowyer likened it to adult supervision of wayward executives.
“Proposals of this type get very low vote counts,” Bowyer said. “They’re not designed to win vote counts. For the most part, the blue states are very highly engaged on these issues, and so they vote against these proposals because they like ESG and DEI. Present company excepted, the red states are not paying attention.”
Much of Bowyer’s presentation focused on potential legal and reputational risks for the companies if they don’t adhere to changes under the shareholder resolutions. He said the corporate policies he highlighted don’t align with Oklahoma’s economy or values.
“The goal is not to force your way on to the ballot,” Bowyer said. “The goal is to have a constructive conversation where they do what’s right for shareholders, which in your case, is to go back to neutral on politics and stay focused only on shareholder value.”
John Waldo, the lone board member to vote no, said he preferred to engage the companies directly before sponsoring shareholder resolutions. He was particularly concerned with targeting Boeing, a longtime Oklahoma employer. He also worried about how to define Oklahoma values.
“I’m not disagreeing that there’s exposure, and I’m glad you brought it up,” said Waldo, an appointee of State Auditor and Inspector Cindy Byrd. “But I think it’s a better practice to at least advise the team or get other inputs before we tell Boeing the reports that we want them to do. What happens is it becomes a press release, as we’ve seen in the past.”
Board member Aaron Ackerman, an appointee of Gov. Kevin Stitt, said he didn’t think the proposal would upset Boeing or the other companies. Instead, he said they may welcome it as a counter to proposals from other shareholders. Ackerman joined Russ and board member Debbie Mueggenborg in voting yes on the 2026 slate of proposals.
“If they’re only getting pressure from activist groups, this gives them a leg to stand on to do things that they from a business standpoint would want to do anyway,” Ackerman said. “I don’t see it as offensive where it’s going to make Boeing mad at TSET or want to pull out of Oklahoma.”
Anti-ESG Resolutions Surge
TSET’s board of investors targeted five companies this year, including Amazon, Google, Lululemon and Netflix, claiming they prioritized politics over profits. In response, the companies said the shareholder proposals were unnecessary, intrusive and ignored corporate governance systems already in place.
A review of the 2025 proxy season found anti-ESG proposals surging, but with minimal shareholder support.
“Around 100 anti-ESG proposals were submitted at S&P 1500 companies this year, up slightly from 2024,” said the July report from consultants EY. “Average support for these proposals continues to hover at just 2%, which is less than the 5% support threshold required for resubmission after the first‑year vote.”
Alliance Defending Freedom paid for the travel, hotel and conference expenses for Russ and his chief of staff, Deputy Treasurer Jordan Harvey, at its summit in Orlando, Florida, in July, according to the latest Oklahoma Ethics Commission disclosure reports. Alliance Defending Freedom represented the TSET Board of Investors free of charge when companies tried to reject shareholder proposals earlier this year.
Russ is chairman of TSET’s five-person board of investors, which sets the investment policies and certifies earnings from the $2 billion trust fund for projects and grants. It is a separate entity from TSET’s board of directors. At Wednesday’s meeting, the board certified earnings of $140.59 million in fiscal year 2025, which ended June 30. That compared to 2024 earnings of $86.84 million.
Oklahoma Watch, at oklahomawatch.org, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers public-policy issues facing the state.
