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In early results tonight, state Sen. Christine Drazan (R-Canby) leads in the hotly contested Republican primary for Oregon governor, with 43% of the vote.
“If you really want to fix something as broken as our state is, it’s going to take every single one of us,” Drazan told a crowd of supporters in Aurora. “You probably know lots of people in your lives who say, ‘I have never voted for a Republican in my life. And I’m going to ask you to have conversations with them and say, ‘What about now?’”
Over the past month, the question in the GOP primary was less who might win than the margin by which Drazan, the 2022 nominee, would defeat the other two leading contenders: the 2010 nominee, former Portland Trail Blazer Chris Dudley, and state Rep. Ed Diehl (R-Stayton), who put himself on the political map by helping to gather 250,000 signatures in record time to repeal a controversial gas tax and registration fee increase.
Diehl hoped to ride voters’ discontent to a victory over two candidates who, unlike him, had the benefit of having previously run statewide. Diehl ($860,000) struggled to compete with Drazan ($3 million) and Dudley ($2.6 million) in fundraising terms, but his connection to the grassroots appears to have allowed him to punch above his weight. Diehl is running second with 31.8%.
Dudley, despite having the largest war chest, is running a distant third, with 15.6%,
Two other GOP candidates drew pockets of support: David Medina, a social media influencer who was arrested for breaching the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, got 4.6% of early ballots counted, while Marion County Commissioner Danielle Bethell got about 2%.
Barring drastic change, Drazan now moves on to a November rematch with incumbent Gov. Tina Kotek, a Democrat who won the governorship in 2022 by 47% to Drazan’s 43%, with nonaffiliated candidate Betsy Johnson getting 8.6% of the vote.
Drazan’s camp hopes the result will be different this time, pointing to Kotek’s dismal polling numbers and the $17.5 million Johnson raised, much of it from business interests they hope will support a Republican this year.
Kotek won 84% of the vote in a Democratic primary where none of her challengers filed a Voters’ Pamphlet statement.
