Yesterday, I reported:
One little-noticed race where Republicans might have an unusually solid shot — and where the GOP nominee is, by all accounts, serious, focused, and competent — is my home state of Oregon. (This is on my mind because I arrived back here last night, and am currently writing from my family’s home in Hood River.) Christine Drazan, the Republican nominee for Oregon’s 2022 governor’s race, continues to poll neck-and-neck with her Democratic opponent, Tina Kotek. If Drazan wins, she’d be the Beaver State’s first Republican governor since 1987.
This morning, right on cue, the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics moved the Oregon governor’s race from “Leans Democratic” to “Toss-up.” The Center explains its reasoning:
[Oregon] is hosting an unusual 3-way race among a trio of women who are all recent members of the state legislature: former state House Speaker Tina Kotek (D), former state House Minority Leader Christine Drazan (R), and former state Sen. Betsy Johnson, an unaffiliated, former Democrat who is more conservative than most of the members of her former party and who has been backed by Nike co-founder Phil Knight. The race sets up an unusual situation where the winner may not need to crack even 40%. Additionally, the 3 candidates all served concurrently in the state legislature, which should provide the campaigns ample opportunities to draw contrasts among the candidates. Outgoing Gov. Kate Brown (D) is deeply unpopular, and there may be some desire for change in the Beaver State. Johnson, the independent, would still be the most surprising winner, and Kotek and Drazan both will be working to try to prevent their voters from flocking to her banner. There’s just enough uncertainty here that we’re looking at the race as a Toss-up now.
This isn’t an outlier: The Cook Political Report also moved the Oregon governor’s race from “Likely Democrat” to “Lean Democrat” at the end of last month. Drazan might have an actual shot at this thing. And it can’t come soon enough — as I wrote when I profiled the Republican back in May, “Decades of one-party rule haven’t treated the Beaver State well: The state boasts the fourth-worst homelessness problem in the country, and the eighth-worst education system. (With the fourth-worst graduation rate and teacher-to-student ratio.) According to a 2021 CNBC analysis, it’s the sixth-worst for business friendliness, and the third-worst for cost of living. As one former Democratic state representative put it in an unusually candid interview with Willamette Week in March: ‘S***’s not working.’”
Drazan is up against an array of powerful entrenched interests — unions, activist groups, etc. — that have enjoyed a decades-long monopoly over political decision-making in Salem. But if she can harness the dissatisfaction of enough voters throughout the state, she may be able to meet the challenge.