Oregon Republicans handed Drazan another shot to beat Kotek. Will this time be different?

Two-time Republican gubernatorial hopeful Christine Drazan pulled no punches as she launched her general election campaign in Portland last week, warning of a “bruising” incoming race against her political rival and incumbent Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek. 

“I’m committed to fixing what’s broken in our state,” the state senator from Canby said at a waterfront dock by a fire and rescue station. “This isn’t about partisan politics. This isn’t about national politics. It’s about your home, your kids, your savings account and your future.”

Drazan’s distance from national political debates serves as a preview of her messaging to come after her win in the GOP primary, during which she amassed more than 40% of the vote from her party’s primary voters. Her closest challenger, state Rep. Ed Diehl, R-Scio, conceded Thursday morning and called for party unity.

While Oregon’s 40-year history of electing Democratic governors and the state’s strong distaste for Republican President Donald Trump suggest Drazan has a difficult road ahead of her, the Oregon GOP sees an opportunity this election in voters’ growing discontent with Kotek’s handling of issues including low educational achievement, homelessness and economic development. Drazan on Thursday called for the full repeal of Oregon’s 2020 drug decriminalization ballot measure and expressed support for a Multnomah County proposal to create buffer zones banning needle distribution around schools.

To defeat Kotek, Drazan will have to win over sizable margins in the Portland metropolitan area and appeal to more moderate voters. Oregon hasn’t elected a Republican governor since the 1980s, and Drazan lost to Kotek in a three-way race four years ago, a key sticking point during the GOP primary when voters had to decide whether to renominate someone who had represented the party unsuccessfully in the past. Kotek, meanwhile, released her first digital ad Thursday seeking to tie Drazan to the Trump administration.

“I have to be disciplined every single day,” Drazan said. “It’s going to be a tough race, it’s going to be a bruising race, and I’m not going to be distracted.”

Longtime Oregon Republican consultant Rebecca Tweed described the race as “absolutely a rematch, and you know everybody loves a good battle.”

“We are seeing the same candidates, the same names, but they’ve had a very different four years coming back to this, and I think that will actually make it pretty competitive to watch,” she said. “It can’t be the same story as before because the electorate’s different, they’re different.”

The last time the pair of political rivals competed, it became the most expensive statewide electoral race in Oregon history. This year’s governor’s race will be the last without campaign contribution limits, thanks to a 2024 Oregon law set to go into effect beginning next year.

This time around, Kotek remains ahead in donations. The governor’s campaign has raised more than $4.5 million, while Drazan’s campaign has raised more than $3.6 million since last year. It’s a continuation of a trend in 2022, when the governor’s campaign raised more than $30 million in donations and Drazan garnered nearly $23 million in donations. 

Does a two-way race help or hurt Drazan?

The 2022 race included former state Sen. Betsy Johnson, a conservative Democrat raised in Central Oregon who represented the North Coast in the Legislature for 20 years. Johnson ran as a nonaffiliated candidate and garnered less than 10% of the vote. Drazan’s supporters have asserted Johnson siphoned a share of conservative voters who otherwise could have boosted Drazan over Kotek. 

But there are competing interpretations of the 2022 outcome. For one, many of Johnson’s voters clustered in districts where she had developed ties to local communities as a politician and leader.

John Horvick, senior vice president with the Portland-based polling firm DHM Research, said that while Johnson’s bid was “modestly” harmful to Drazan, “I don’t think it would have made enough for Drazan to be successful.”

The 43.5% of the vote Drazan won in 2022 was also in line with the past three Republican gubernatorial nominees — Knute Buehler in 2018, Bud Pierce in 2016 and Dennis Richardson in 2014 — while Kotek’s nearly 47% of the vote was lower than former Democratic Govs. Kate Brown and John Kitzhaber, suggesting Johnson attracted more would-be Kotek voters than Drazan backers. 

Trump in White House intensifies nationalization of state races

The U.S. Supreme Court’s summer 2022 decision to end the national right to abortion changed that year’s gubernatorial race, giving Kotek and her allies the opportunity to make abortion a lightning rod issue and galvanize Democratic voters. 

Drazan spent that race seeking to portray Kotek as an out-of-touch Portland progressive whose main solution was to tax her way out of public policy shortfalls. 

Those themes have since intensified. Now, Kotek’s campaign is portraying Drazan as a willful executor of the Trump administration’s agenda when it comes to deploying the National Guard to U.S. cities and attempting to limit voter access. In her first ad for the general election campaign, she slammed Drazan for “defending his illegal troop deployment, siding with him on abortion rights, vote by mail, and his war in Iran jacking up our gas prices.”

“That’s the choice: a governor who says ‘hell no,’ or Christine Drazan, who will let Donald Trump do whatever the hell he wants,” she said.

Drazan maintains that Kotek is out of step with the everyday reality in Oregon on issues such as homelessness, education and the economy. She called Kotek “confused” in response to a reporter asking whether she’d accept Trump’s endorsement after her primary win, adding that Kotek “wants to make this race about Donald Trump.”

“People that saw her voters’ pamphlet statement, she was running against our sitting president. That is shortsighted,” she said. “Oregonians want to have a conversation about facts on the ground. They want somebody that’s going to shoot them straight and can tell them the truth, and that is not Tina Kotek.”

In 2022, Drazan was seeking to defeat Kotek during the Biden administration, but this year’s election will likely prove difficult for a Republican seeking to combat political headwinds from the GOP’s control of Congress and the Trump White House. It also means that elections have taken center stage as an issue given Oregon’s position as a national leader employing vote-by-mail and Trump’s attacks on the system using false accusations of widespread fraud. 

“Tina Kotek is going to try to make this election about Donald Trump and the federal government,” Horvick said. “No matter what Drazan says or doesn’t say, it’s going to be very difficult to avoid, but she can’t avoid it, it’s going to be central to this campaign.” 

Tweed said that Drazan has more room coming out of the primary to be clearer about her disagreements with the Trump administration. She noted that there is still a large sector of the Republican party that is not loyal to Trump and pointed to the blowout defeat of Measure 120, which would have raised gas taxes and transportation-related fees.

“There’s an electorate that’s opposed to some of the policies at the state level, and so who’s going to tie that to federal issues, and who’s not?” she said. “I think Senator Drazan has a better opportunity to talk about the personal impacts of the Trump administration on voters than Gov. Kotek does, in a way that can provide some real solutions.”

Both now have longer political records

Both Drazan and Kotek had been legislators during their first bout, but they now have longer political records. As governor, Kotek has presided over an education system that trails most states, with less than half of Oregon K-12 students proficient in reading and fewer than one-third proficient in math.

Kotek declared a homelessness emergency on her first day in office and has celebrated marginal progress, including a 4% decrease in unsheltered homelessness statewide since 2023, but permanent and affordable homes still remain out of reach for many Oregon families.

And she has ranked among the most unpopular governors in the nation based on approval ratings. Recent polling by The Oregonian/OregonLive found that 59% of voters in the Portland metropolitan area have a negative impression of the governor.

“Her job approval is quite low by far (and) most Oregonians say the state’s on the wrong track,”  Horvick said. “Christine Drazan, I think, can make a pretty credible case that Tina Kotek said things would be better when she’s in office, and Oregonians right now say she’s not doing a good job, and the state’s on the wrong track.”

Drazan also has a longer record as a legislator now. She sponsored a 2025 bill that would have effectively ended mail voting, and she skipped several votes on bills dealing with immigration and responding to federal actions this year. She told reporters on Thursday that Kotek is “lucky to have Donald Trump in the White House right now, because it gives her something to run on.”

“My focus is going to be on talking to the people that are sincerely looking for alternatives, and that they’re not so steeped in national politics that their number one issue is going to be a national issue,” she said.