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This story was produced by the Oregon Journalism Project, a nonprofit newsroom covering the state.
AURORA — Christine Drazan finished her quest to become the Republican nominee for governor amid towering stacks of wine barrels in rural Clackamas County on election night.
Turns out she barely had to break a sweat after launching her campaign last October at a barge manufacturing operation in Northwest Portland.
In front of a crowd full of wide grins, Willamette Valley wines, and Coors Light, Drazan described her next objective: “Fire Tina Kotek,” she said. “She cannot have a second term. We cannot afford it.”
State Rep. E. Werner Reschke (R-Grants Pass) drove up from Klamath County to Drazan’s party at the Lanphere Cellars winery in Aurora. He said Drazan’s decisive victory reflects the success she enjoyed in legislative battles against Kotek, the incumbent Democrat.
“She beat Kotek on the gas tax last year and beat her on cap and trade before that,” Reschke said. “Voters recognize authentic leadership.”
Drazan triumphed easily over what her campaign chair, state Rep. Shelly Boshart Davis (R-Albany) described as an “incredibly diverse, strong field” that included state Rep. Ed Diehl (R-Stayton), an organizer of a gas tax referral that raised 250,000 signatures almost overnight (and led to a crushing defeat of that tax Tuesday night), and Chris Dudley, the former Portland Trail Blazer who nearly defeated Democrat John Kitzhaber in the 2010 race for governor.
Poll results released in April showed Drazan with a commanding lead, and there was little drama on election night. At his party, Dudley briefly addressed a sparse crowd at the Cheerful Tortoise, a sports bar near the Portland State University campus. Behind Dudley, television screens not tuned to political coverage broadcast an extraordinary comeback by the New York Knicks, for whom Dudley played for three years.
Dudley had been gone from Oregon politics for as long as he played in the NBA—16 years. In a brief interview with OJP after initial vote tallies showed Drazan with a double-digit lead (44%) over Diehl (31%) and Dudley a distant third (16%), the former Blazers center spoke of the positives he would take away from the race.
“There’s a hunger out there for somebody to bring people together in this state and for better things for Oregon,” he said, “but it’s not the result we wanted.”
Rick Allen, a Madras resident who says he voted for Dudley in 2010 and traveled from Jefferson County to be with fellow Dudley supporters Tuesday night, said the candidate’s’s decision not to enter the race until January—three months after Drazan—hurt him.
“A late start makes a difference,” Allen said. “Endorsements have already been made and money committed.”
Dudley said family considerations delayed his campaign. “It just wasn’t the right time earlier,” he said.
Diehl stayed in his hometown, Stayton, on election night, closing off a street in front of Snow Peak Brewing and rolling up pizza and taco trucks. Running a strong second despite raising about $860,000—less than a third of what Dudley ($2.6 million) and Drazan ($3 million) raised, poses questions about what’s next for Diehl. (He said he would release a statement later on Wednesday.)
An engineer who built and sold two companies and gave up his seat in the Oregon House after two terms to run for governor, Diehl is currently working on a ballot referral of Senate Bill 1507, which passed in February and disconnects Oregon from some federal tax cuts.
Drazan, who lost to Kotek in the 2022 governor’s race by 47% to 43.5%, said in an interview with OJP shortly after her victory speech that she knows Democrats will try to tie President Donald Trump around her neck.
Indeed, Democratic Party of Oregon chair Nathan Stoltz released a statement immediately after the Associated Press declared Drazan the winner about 9 pm.
“Christine Drazan’s nomination as the GOP candidate for governor makes the choice in November clear: Trump is on the ballot in Oregon,” Stoltz said.
Drazan acknowledges Trump is unpopular in Oregon, but she believes Oregonians recognize that many of the state’s problems, such as homelessness, poor achievement scores in schools, and a broken mental health system, predate the president’s reelection in 2024.
Her contention is that voters know that Democrats, including Kotek, have controlled the Legislature for 20 years and the governor’s office for 40—and many things have gotten worse. (Despite dismal poll numbers, Kotek faced no serious opposition in the primary this year.)
“Donald Trump is all she has,” Drazan said. “Four years ago, the governor didn’t have a record to run on—well, now she does and it’s not good.
“Oregonians aren’t stupid, and she’s acting like they are—like, ‘don’t believe your own eyes.’”
The last time a Republican won an Oregon governor’s race was 1982, so Drazan has a steep hill to climb, given the well-oiled Democratic machine that reliably runs better organized and more effective campaigns than Republicans—and benefits from a hefty voter registration advantage.
But the voter registration figures compiled by Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read show that Democrats’ longtime advantage has narrowed since the November 2022 election when Kotek defeated Drazan. It was 9.5 percentage points then and it’s 8 points now. That’s still a significant gap, but Drazan’s team is optimistic that Oregon can elect a Republican governor, as other blue states, including Maryland, Massachusetts and Vermont, have done.
The other factor likely to be different this time is the absence of a significant third-party candidate. In 2022, former state Sen. Betsy Johnson (D-Scappoose) ran as an unaffiliated candidate. Although she got only 8.6% of votes in the end, her poll numbers were considerably higher than that for much of the campaign, fading only when supporters realized she couldn’t win. But Johnson raised $17.5 million, much of it from business interests, in a race in which Kotek spent about $10 million more than Drazan did.
“We can’t win in a state with a big Democratic advantage if we get outspent by $10 million,” Drazan said. “I can’t allow that to happen.”
