Facing tight race, Gov. Tina Kotek taps friendly influencers to spread message

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek was born in the Year of the Fire Horse.

That tidbit, based on the Chinese zodiac, would likely not come up in many traditional interviews, but Kotek’s recent sit-down with the popular fashion-oriented Instagram account Chelsea Getting Dressed was hardly traditional. In a nearly hour-long meeting, the governor held a flower-shaped microphone as she talked about her workout routine (rowing machine while blasting Earth, Wind & Fire), how she eats the same thing on most days and her motivation to “get shit done.”

If you’re not one of Chelsea Getting Dressed’s more than 220,000 followers, don’t worry. Kotek’s talking to plenty of other influencers these days.

In August, she discussed threats posed by President Donald Trump with Andy Neal (or @AndyFilmsandHikes), a content producer from Medford who tackles mental health, politics and the great outdoors.

In a park in Salem, the governor offered a sunny synopsis of the state’s underperforming K-12 schools with Brittney Mast, better known as @momsforOregon.

And Kotek’s campaign says it has interacted with a Portland OB-GYN who has posted repeatedly urging voters that while Kotek is “not perfect,” a vote for Republican state Sen. Christine Drazan is akin to a vote for Trump.

“Ultimately, what most of the influencers are looking for is a conversation – an opportunity to discuss the issues that matter most to them, and hear how Governor Kotek is approaching them,” Federico Araujo, Kotek’s communications director, said in an email.

The embrace of influencers is novel for a high-profile Oregon race, but Kotek isn’t alone. Nationally, both Republicans and Democrats have made friendly sit-downs with sympathetic content producers a central part of their voter outreach.

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani frequently relies on influencers to tout his message. Billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer paid content creators to juice his bid for California governor last year. And when then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem came to Portland in 2025, she brought a small army of social media producers in tow.

Here in Oregon, Drazan, Kotek’s challenger, hasn’t pivoted to influencers as thoroughly as her rival. But the Republican does have sympathetic influencers who sometimes attend her events.

“We embrace new media to reach new audiences and aren’t afraid to put Christine in front of any interviewer to answer tough questions and earn Oregonians’ trust,” said Ashley Quinton, Drazan’s spokesperson. “Knowing she has a failed record to distract voters from, Tina Kotek makes very few media appearances, and when she does, it’s almost always with friendly interviewers who lob softball questions.”

Whatever their motives, campaigns like Kotek’s are tapping into an undeniable shift in political messaging.

“As time has gone by, influencers have just become more and more used as a means for political communication and propaganda,” said Sam Woolley, an associate professor of communications at the University of Pittsburgh who has written extensively about influencers’ increasing political heft.

Influencers can be cheaper than traditional advertising, but “what’s most important is that they seem more authentic,” Woolley said.

The promise of friendly social media posts has at times given the influencers access to Kotek’s campaign that isn’t on offer for some traditional media outlets.

While OPB and some other news organizations did not receive word when Kotek held an event kicking off her campaign’s canvassing efforts, the Chelsea Getting Dressed account was on hand.

And when Drazan and Kotek debated in Medford earlier this week, Neal, the creator behind @AndyFilmsandHikes, was one of fewer than 50 people in the invited audience. (His conclusion: “Kotek killed it.”)

Meanwhile, at least one typical feature of Oregon’s election landscape has been abandoned this year.

Kotek declined to participate in a debate organized by KGW and The Oregonian/OregonLive, an event that was long a staple part of the election season. Drazan declined to attend a proposed debate hosted by KOIN. As a result, gubernatorial candidates will not square off on Portland airwaves this year for the first time in decades.

Kotek’s campaign says the new strategy reflects a change in how the people it wants to reach are learning about politics. Both the campaign and influencers OPB spoke with say no money is changing hands in exchange for the favorable content.

“The way voters are finding and consuming information has been changing each election cycle,” Araujo said in an email to OPB. As young people gravitate to social media videos, he said, “engaging with the influencers who create this content provides us an opportunity to reach them while also giving the influencers the opportunity to ask questions directly of the governor.”

Some political operations are explicit about embracing social media personalities over traditional journalists to get their message out. As the New York Times explored Mamdani’s use of influencers earlier this year, his office told the publication: “Our job is not to preserve decades-old communications norms or protect the gatekeepers who once controlled access to public information.”

In Oregon, influencers are just one part of the strategy. Both gubernatorial campaigns are still using tried-and-true methods, like flooding Oregonians with televised and digital ads and sitting down for journalist-driven interviews.

Kotek’s foray into influencers began in July, when Neal penned an open letter on his Substack, urging her to embrace politically liberal Oregon social media personalities.

“Please let us help,” Neal wrote in the post, adding: “I’m talking about Oregonians who have spent years building trust with communities online. People who know how to communicate, educate, entertain, and tell stories in the places where people are actually spending their time.”

Neal says Kotek’s campaign reached out not long after he posted the letter. He introduced the campaign to Mast, the Portland-based parenting influencer, who in turn contacted other content creators.

Neal said he was clear with Kotek’s campaign that he was a supporter, but he also said he hoped to ask difficult questions about the state’s failing mental health system.

“Obviously they know my politics and I’ve made very clear before the interview that I want Christine Drazan to lose this race dramatically,” he said. “I want Tina Kotek to win.”

Mast said she doesn’t see herself as a journalist or even journalist-adjacent. But she said her nearly 26,000 Instagram followers do give her a platform, and that she wants to use it for causes she believes in and she feels politicians should be investing in getting their message out across social media platforms.

“I would never pretend to be anything other than an Oregon voter who has political leanings,” Mast said. “I’m sharing them with an audience who has found me and I want to engage with our leaders in an authentic way.”

The tactic could be potent in a year when polling shows Oregon voters are happy with neither Kotek nor the direction of the state in general. Woolley, the University of Pittsburgh professor, said Kotek’s embrace of content producers could help create urgency among left-leaning Oregonians.

“Working with friendly influencers is a really good way to do that,” he said. “Another thing it might do is get folks that would be within her base, but aren’t particularly tuned in, to pay attention.”

Woolley noted that liberal politicians and parties have struggled to match the energy of the more well-established world of conservative social media influencers. Some of the people Kotek is working with this year say they are trying to help compensate for that mismatch.

“I feel like my account is actually a step towards trying to balance the scales because the right has built a massive ecosystem of new media and it’s extremely well-funded and it just has fingers in all these different areas that are ‘non-political,’” Mast said.

But mingling with politics can bring unwanted attention. Some of the influencers OPB spoke with described being taken aback by reaction to their posts, and Neal recently posted about an “army” of conservative influencers in his comments.

The negative attention hasn’t dissuaded him from touting Kotek.

“Apparently I’m the first influencer she’s ever talked to,” Neal told OPB, “which is actually pretty cool.”