FILE - Gov. Tina Kotek poses for a selfie at the Oaks Amusement Park in Portland, Ore., where several unions held a Labor Day picnic on Sept. 7, 2026.
Saskia Hatvany / OPB
Gov. Tina Kotek has spent much of this election year talking about President Donald Trump, and presenting herself as a bulwark defending Oregon from his policies.
On Thursday, the Democrat pivoted to offering a vision for where she wants to guide the state in a second term.
Kotek’s reelection platform, which she’s dubbed Building Oregon’s Future Together, contains its share of references to Trump. But it also offers the most insight to date on Kotek’s top priorities if she wins a four-year term voters have seen.
The plan falls into four main categories, including increasing affordability, boosting the economy, improving Oregon’s underperforming K-12 schools, and defending attributes that make the state unique.
On affordability, Kotek says she’ll pursue universal preschool across the state, continue her years-long effort to increase affordable housing options, and work to defend Oregon against Trump policies that are expected to reduce access to healthcare and food benefits.
Kotek’s plan doesn’t detail how she would pay for or pursue those initiatives. State lawmakers are preparing for a bruising budgetary exercise next year that will likely include paring back what healthcare services low-income residents can access.
On boosting the economy, Kotek has embraced some of the recommendations given to her from a “prosperity council” she announced last year. Those include stepping up efforts to recruit businesses and investment in sectors like renewable energy and biosciences, replacing the state’s economic development agency with a new Department of Commerce, and ensuring Oregon has more land ready for development.
Not all of those suggestions are likely to be palatable to members of the governor’s political base, who have pushed back against many of the prosperity council recommendations.
On schools, Kotek says she wants to ensure Oregon students are absent less often, and to increase the time they are in the classroom during the school year. While instructional hours vary widely among school districts, research puts the state near the bottom nationally when it comes to time students spend in the classroom. Kotek’s goal is to get the state up to the national average by the end of her second term, a potentially costly endeavor.
Kotek also says she wants to bolster requirements for earning a diploma in Oregon schools, and tamp down access to social media on school-issued electronic devices.
Lastly, Kotek pledges to “defend” the state with a hodgepodge of policy proposals – from her newly announced support of a moratorium on new data centers, to fighting attempts to alter mail-in voting, to opposing aggressive enforcement of federal immigration laws.
The campaign platform builds off Kotek’s argument that her policies are moving the state in the right direction, and that voters should allow her to see that vision through.
Kotek’s Republican challenger, state Sen. Christine Drazan, has centered her campaign around depicting Kotek as an ineffective leader who has failed to usher in meaningful progress on key issues like homelessness, schools and public disorder.
Drazan unveiled her own plan late last month. The Republican campaign did not immediately respond to an inquiry Thursday, but in a tweet, Drazan criticized Kotek’s handling of homelessness, education, and the economy, calling it a “failure by definition.”
Voters, and even some Democratic allies, have been underwhelmed by the last four years. Polling by the firm Morning Consult has routinely shown Kotek has among the lowest approval ratings of any governor.
But the governor insists she is making progress. Her newly released vision document includes a list of accomplishments from her first term. Among them:
- Presiding over the state as it achieved historically high graduation rates among high school students.
- Helping to usher in an increase of new housing starts, positioning the state to add units at a faster clip this year than the nation as a whole. While the rate of growth is up in 2026, Oregon is on track to build less housing this year than when Kotek took office.
- Signing the POWER Act, which allows state regulators to set rates specific to large power users like data centers.
- Issuing an executive order banning cell phones in K-12 schools, after a bill to do so failed in the Legislature.
“While we have more work to do on Oregon’s toughest challenges, I look forward to building a future that works for every Oregonian,” Kotek said in a statement. “We have been making important progress, and my second term will build upon our state’s efforts to tackle affordability, economic growth, and educational outcomes, as well as continue to stand up for Oregon against threats from the federal government.”
