Oregon could elect a Republican to statewide office for the first time since 2004. State Sen. Christine Drazan is challenging Democrat Gov. Tina Kotek in a rematch, and at least one poll has put the Republican ahead.
Kotek remains the favorite. But she continues to lose ground as voters take a harder look at homelessness, crime, and schools.
A Republican has not won the governor’s office since 1982. The state has gone more than 40 years without one. That is the record Drazan is trying to break in November.
She already came close. In 2022, Drazan finished within four points of Kotek. Now she is back, and the race is tighter than Democrats want to admit.
Kotek won her first term after years in the Legislature, including a long run as House speaker. Drazan is betting that the same voters who kept Democrats in charge are now judging results, not slogans.
She told Fox News the state needs a different approach.
“Oregon needs change. Oregon needs to be done with one approach to the world. Single-party control has not been good for us in my home state. And we need that balance,”
That is not a national talking point. It is a local one. Drazan says people are taking a closer look at her, and at the condition of the state.
“People are starting to get to know me a little bit more and my leadership, and they’re taking a closer look at whether or not Oregon is uniquely bad right now. It’s not a national issue, it’s here at home,”
She put the tightness of the race in the same place. Oregon, she said, is struggling locally. That, she argued, is why the contest has narrowed.
She also believes long Democratic control has pushed people to consider a Republican governor, even in a hard climate for her party. Rare pickup fights are no longer theoretical in other states, including a fall campaign for a scarce Republican Senate gain in Minnesota.
Kotek’s camp still talks as if the map cannot move. Her communications director, Federico Araujo, pointed to undecided voters and tried to turn the race into a proxy fight over Donald Trump.
The Daily Mail reported that Kotek continues to lose ground, that at least one poll has shown Drazan leading, and that Kotek still remains the favorite.
In May, her numbers were reaching close to 60 percent disapproval over homelessness, crime, and mental health. Another May survey found 53 percent of voters with an unfavorable view of her.
An April poll commissioned by Oregon Live, focused on the Portland metro area, found that just a third of respondents had a positive opinion of the governor.
That is a collapse from a year earlier. The same poll then gave Kotek a 50 percent positive impression and a 35 percent negative impression in the same county.
Numbers like that do not appear in a vacuum. They follow years of one-party management and a list of problems that did not get solved.
Kotek pledged to tackle homelessness, mental health, and education. She championed initiatives on homelessness, rising housing prices, poor school performance, and a growing mental health crisis.
Oregon kept struggling anyway.
The state approved funding and programs aimed at those issues. Homelessness has continued to rise. Student test scores have stayed down and have failed to return to pre-pandemic levels.
Portland, the state’s most populous city, has been dealing with crime and quality-of-life problems since 2020. Violent offenses have fallen from recent record highs. The street scene has not disappeared with them.
Tents still line the sidewalk on SW Clay St. In downtown Portland, a man has been photographed smoking methamphetamine with a friend outside a homeless shelter. That is the daily cost of policies that promised help and delivered tents.
Drazan will likely try to run on those failures. She still faces an uphill fight in a state that has rewarded Democrats for decades, the same kind of partisan map Republicans are trying to crack in South Texas.
Discontent is not limited to Portland. Multiple counties in eastern Oregon previously tried, and failed, to secede and join Idaho because of that state’s Republican politics.
People do not attempt to leave their own state for fun. They do it when they conclude the people in charge will not change course.
Two years after Kotek took office, she faced public scrutiny over her wife, Aimee Kotek Wilson. Wilson claimed to be a mentally ill alcoholic, and the episode raised questions about the governor’s ethics.
Kotek had created a formal Office of the First Spouse for her. Around a month later, the governor announced that Wilson would not hold that office.
Kotek said her wife’s duties would be limited to ceremonial appearances and listening to groups of locals. The planned office was rolled back after the controversy, not before it.
Voters can decide what that sequence says about judgment. They do not have to pretend it never happened.
Araujo did not spend his public comment defending test scores or shelter beds. He tied Drazan to Trump, who has not endorsed her.
“There are still many undecided voters ahead of November. But when the choice is clear in an election, they always show up. And the choice couldn’t be any clearer in this race: Christine Drazan is ready to open the door to Trump’s agenda and Governor Kotek is fighting every day to protect Oregonians from federal overreach and harm,”
That is the incumbent’s closing argument: not that the streets are safer, the classrooms are stronger, or the tents are gone. It is that Drazan would let Trump in the door.
Kotek has already sparred with the Trump administration. Last fall, the administration sought to deploy the National Guard to Portland to protect federal property and personnel after protests at the city’s ICE building. The deployment did not happen.
Democrats have used anti-Trump politics as a substitute for governing before, and the resistance brand has been cracking inside their own coalition. In Oregon, the governor’s team is still reaching for it.
Kotek believes she can achieve “something extraordinary.” The state’s report card is ordinary, and not in a good way.
The Democratic Governors Association is projecting confidence. Spokesperson Johanna Warshaw mocked Drazan’s admission that she could use more financial support and claimed the Republican Governors Association has left her campaign short.
“Governor Kotek has the advantage, and we’re confident she’ll win. Clearly, the RGA agrees as they’re leaving Christine Drazan’s broke campaign out to dry,”
Maybe the money gap is real. Polls are not a bank ledger. Close-to-60-percent disapproval is not a fundraising press release.
Oregon is still a difficult state for Republicans on paper. Kamala Harris won it by 14 points in 2024, a reminder of the Democratic turnout machine that also tried to recycle Trump-era election slogans to rally the base.
Ron Wyden won his Senate reelection by 15 points in 2022. Those margins explain why Kotek is still called the favorite. They do not erase a four-point race last time, a poll showing Drazan in front, or a governor underwater at home.
Araujo is right about one thing. There are still many undecided voters ahead of November. The choice is clearer than his statement admits.
One-party government can last a long time. It cannot forever outrun the streets, the schools, and the scoreboard.
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