Oregon Governor Candidates Square Off In First Debate

The candidates vying to be governor staked their positions in their first debate rently. The three main candidates for governor met Friday, July 29. The three are Republican Christine Drazan, Democrat Tina Kotek, and unaffiliated candidate Betsy Johnson. This year’s race is expected to be one of the most competitive and unpredictable in the country.

The event, streamed live, was the first chance for many voters to see the women address some of the most pressing topics facing the state together, including homelessness, substance addiction, climate change, abortion and the deepening differences between urban and rural Oregonians. What emerged was a lively, and mostly substantive, debate that helped clarify the differences and similarities the candidates bring to those matters.

The three main candidates for Oregon governor got an early chance to set themselves apart Friday, touting their own records while arguing they are far better positioned to lead the state past a series of daunting challenges.

Publicly released polling in the race has been limited but has suggested the race is tight months ahead of the Nov. 8 election. Two polls from late June — one from the Johnson campaign and another from Republicans — showed Kotek at or near the front, but varied in whether Drazan or Johnson was most closely challenging the Democrat.

The race has similarly confounded political prognosticators and is being closely watched by national Democrats and Republicans in part because of the rarity of three viable candidates in a general election. When the candidates will meet to debate next is not completely clear. All three women have agreed to attend an Oct. 6 event in Medford, but other potential events were up in the air on Friday.

The candidates in the debate, organized by the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association, hope to ride to victory in November – Kotek as the accomplished progressive, Johnson as the centrist unifier, and Drazan as the change agent for a state that has languished under one-party control.