Christine Drazan heads to downtown Portland to promise voters better days ahead

At a Tuesday press conference in downtown Portland, Republican candidate for Oregon governor Christine Drazan said she refuses to believe the state’s best days are behind it.

Oregon, she said, revolutionized running in Eugene and built a company [Nike] known throughout the world. She nodded to Tektronix, which helped put the Silicon Forest on the map.

“And when Oregonians believed that something was worth protecting, we led there too, every single time,” Drazan said. “We protected our beaches, our forests and our farmland through landmark legislation.”

The state can do that again, Drazan argued. We still have the natural resources, the innovative businesses and the manufacturing industries.

Drazan’s pitch? We’re missing the right leadership. It’s been more than four decades since Oregonians elected a Republican governor.

On Tuesday, Drazan revealed what she’s dubbed the “Drazan Plan,” an overview of what she would do if she were to be elected governor. The plan has been on the website since last week, but Drazan held a press conference on Tuesday to elaborate on her ideas.

“I won’t stand here and promise you that (all Oregon’s problems) will go away immediately, but I will stand here and promise you this: We will stop accepting failure,” Drazan said. “Failure is no longer an option.”

Regardless of political party, many agree on some of the big issues plaguing the state: an intractable housing and homelessness crisis, rising grocery and gasoline costs and a problematic public school system, to name a few.

Drazan’s promises include identifying every rule, fee and mandate she believes is driving up the costs of housing, energy, food, transportation, childcare, healthcare and business. She promised to veto new tax increases and fees. She said she would bolster education for the trades, technology and advanced manufacturing.

When it comes to housing, similar to Kotek, she promised to streamline permitting and make land more available for building. To address the homelessness crisis, she said she would do a better job tracking how the money is spent and demand measurable results.

“We have to stop measuring success by how much the government spends, and we need to start measuring it by how many people are actually moving off of our streets that are in recovery, in treatment and moving towards long-term stability,” Drazan said in the press conference.

Another top issue that is likely to emerge as the election heats up is where the candidates stand on the increasingly divisive issues of data centers in the state. Drazan’s plan does not directly address data centers.

Kotek has said, “Oregon needs to stop being a cheap date and making it too easy” for data centers to expand with lightning speed. In a response to a question from a reporter, Drazan said she is supportive of programs that offer tax breaks to companies, but they need to help support the community and a wide range of industries.

Drazan and Kotek not only faced each other in the 2022 gubernatorial race, but they were also political opponents in the state Legislature. More recently, the two have sparred over when and where to actually debate on the campaign trail.

There’s been limited polling in the race, with the lone publicly-released poll from the Drazan campaign showing Drazan posing a challenge for Kotek.

Kotek’s campaign team has spent most of its effort tying Drazan to President Donald Trump and federal policies that are known to be unpopular with Oregonians.

In response to the Drazan plan, Kotek’s campaign said it was “simply her latest effort to distract Oregonians from her history of being Donald Trump’s stand-in.”

“Oregonians know that Drazan’s record of pushing to roll back abortion rights, eliminate vote by mail, and gut health care is too extreme for our state — and that’s why they will reject her once again this November,” Federico Araujo, communications director for Kotek, wrote in an email.

On Tuesday, the same day Drazan held her press conference, Kotek’s campaign released an advertisement saying if Drazan were elected governor, she would work to ban abortions in the state.

In 2017, Oregon lawmakers passed what’s known as the Reproductive Health Equity Act, protecting people’s ability to access an abortion in state law. In 2022, OPB asked Drazan about her stance on abortion. She said she would “follow existing law” if elected governor.

Drazan didn’t mention the president’s name on Tuesday during her press conference. But she was asked what she would do if she felt a federal policy had a negative impact on the state.

“I will always, always, always stand up for Oregonians,” she said. “I will always put Oregonians first.”