WW’s Fall 2026 Endorsements: Statewide

Governor

Tina Kotek

Democrat

Don’t act surprised. We are once again endorsing Gov. Tina Kotek over state Sen. Christine Drazan, just as we did four years ago. What we didn’t expect is for Kotek to make this decision so difficult.

We had high hopes for Kotek, 60, who performed ably and cannily during a decadelong run as Oregon House speaker. A steely technician known for ruthlessness in the Legislature, Kotek produced signature policy wins that included an increase in the minimum wage and the elimination of zoning for single-family homes, removing a major roadblock to increased housing construction. Whipping the votes from a caucus requires a tough ringmaster, and there was reason to think Kotek could hold state agencies accountable where her predecessors failed. Shortly after her election, WW portrayed Kotek on newsstands as a Captain Marvel-type superhero—the drawing was tongue in cheek, but the optimism was real.

As the comic books say: splat. A governor whose party holds a supermajority in both chambers of the Legislature, Kotek cannot point to a place where Oregon is better off than it was when she took office the better part of four years ago. Instead, the best case she can make is that all potential avenues of progress were blocked by the return of President Donald Trump, and that before the White House undermined her, she correctly identified the benchmarks for success.

But Kotek cannot credibly blame Trump for the ways in which Oregon increasingly underperforms: student literacy, mental health care, economic growth, and housing that residents can afford. Indeed, it often seems the unchecked power of Democrats in Oregon has overwhelmed Kotek. She cannot seem to rein in the most extreme impulses of her own party, from paying public employees who strike to expanding pension benefits the state can’t afford, and she is not willing to veto them.

Taxpayers have supported a variety of programs with a heavy cost and seen them perform worse here than in other states, many of which spend less. It’s hard to see that as anything other than a lack of accountability, and for that the chief executive is ultimately responsible.

We will grant that Kotek has identified the right priorities and shown from time to time a willingness to question progressive orthodoxy. She was right to criticize the taxing mechanism of Multnomah County’s Preschool for All program, which has a worthy aim but incentivizes high earners to flee a county that’s supposed to be Oregon’s economic driver. But what did poking that teddy bear accomplish, really? She riled up Portland’s left wing, her own base, which now regards her warily at best. Then she rarely spoke of the matter again.

We remain skeptical she will take any practical steps recommended by the “Prosperity Council” she convened, among them lowering the much-maligned estate and corporate activities taxes that contribute to the flight of our tax base. It feels more like an election-year olive branch to another peeved constituency. Too often, Kotek has failed to move beyond a recognition that change is necessary to actually driving that change.

Repeatedly in our interview with Kotek, we asked why Oregon was falling short of the goals she set for the state—like producing 36,000 new housing units a year or improving student test scores—and she passed the buck. Kotek touts a real increase in treatment beds for the mentally ill, but blames the still far too slow pace of the ongoing buildout on issues at the local level and vague frustrations with the Oregon Health Authority—where her handpicked director Sejal Hathi resigned amid criticism this past summer. In Kotek’s telling, all she can do is set a high standard and ask others to follow. But the actual job of a leader is to persuade others do the things they didn’t know they could, and Kotek hasn’t—and instead has acted aloofly about just how poorly her agencies have performed.

She is steeped in policy but tends to micromanage and get lost in the weeds, and has also struggled to find a proper balance between her personal and professional lives, giving her wife sway in her office at the expense of state and staff. Her decision to allow first lady Aimee Kotek Wilson a role in her office was not, on its own, a failure. Oregonians should not expect a first spouse to be a figurehead and nothing more—any spouse is the governor’s closest adviser and brings their own expertise to the dinner table.

But the degree to which Kotek Wilson interjected herself into policy discussions, at times making staff so uncomfortable that several respected advisers simply walked away from Mahonia Hall, was telling. In the wake of the Cylvia Hayes debacle that cost John Kitzhaber his governorship, and the ethics scandal that took down Secretary of State Shemia Fagan, Kotek and Wilson should have put a firewall between the first lady and official state business. Instead, the barrier was barely a garden hedge, easily stepped over.

Drazan has eagerly seized on these failures, just as she once went toe to toe with Kotek as the House minority leader. (We would have loved to watch them spar in person, but Drazan declined multiple opportunities to meet with our editorial board. That disappointment didn’t factor in our decision.)

Like Kotek, Drazan is a tough infighter willing to squash people who get in her way—just look, for example, at how she wrested the Senate seat she now holds out of the grip of Rep. Jeff Helfrich. We could imagine a world in which she would serve as a useful check on a Democratic Legislature and demand better performance from the state agencies whose bosses indirectly owe their jobs to the unions.

So why not endorse Drazan?

The answer is simple. Drazan cannot, and will not, distance herself from the hard-right turn that national Republicans have taken in the past decade. Given opportunity after opportunity, Drazan, 54, continues to offer platitudes, instead of assurances she will not relitigate questions Oregonians have been asked and have answered.

We demand a governor who will protect abortion, who will protect access to health care, and who will find ways to mitigate climate change. And we are genuinely alarmed by legislation that Drazan introduced to make polling places the default way Oregonians vote. This state’s mail-in voting system works, it enfranchises the populace without increasing fraud, and it spares us from standing in long, cold lines like a bunch of Ohioans. Drazan’s claim that she just wanted to give us more choices doesn’t pass the laugh test.

While we call foul on Kotek using Trump as a scapegoat for Oregon’s failures, we also recognize that the governor—perhaps more than any other leader in this state—is tasked with standing up to the president when he brings the full power of the federal government to our door. Indeed, Kotek’s finest hour in office came in the fall of 2025, when the president ordered the Oregon National Guard and other reservists to make an example of the frog costume-clad Portlanders protesting his immigrant deportation campaign. Kotek used both soft and hard power—phone calls with Trump and a coordinated appeal to the courts—to prevent a show of military force on the streets of Portland. We shudder to think what Drazan would have done. But we have a pretty good idea, thanks to the statements she issued lauding Trump for sending in the troops.

With the governor’s race expected to be close, a third-party candidate could easily play spoiler next month. Representing the Pacific Green Party of Oregon, medical device inventor Brett Smith says he’s running without the aid of campaign contributions to protest the influence of money in politics. Smith, 44, has big ideas—like shifting to ranked choice voting in state and federal elections, and adding a surcharge to “deadbeat employers” like Amazon and Walmart—but with a total lack of relevant experience and few connections, he seems unlikely to be effective as governor were a miracle to occur.

But ultimately the race boils down to a challenger who identifies how bad things have become, against an incumbent who warns they could always get worse. What we don’t hear from either candidate is a vision for something greater that this state could aspire to. That is the real task of a governor, and the saddest indictment of this contest.

We’ll take Kotek.

Kotek’s silliest childhood fear: She was scared of dogs, but no longer. “I met a small dog 20 years ago, and it changed my life.”