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Oregon has been blue for nearly 40 years. The biggest city is caricatured on TV as synonymous with eccentric hipsters. And the state is so far from a Republican target that Donald Trump didn’t even bother with primary approvals.
But Christine Drazan has already become the face of the GOP in Oregon, narrowly ahead of her rivals to run for governor, and analysts moved the state from the Democratic column to “toss up” during November’s midterm elections.
That took an unusual set of circumstances: a former Democrat who gained independence gained the party candidate’s backing; concerns about vandalism and homelessness in Portland; and a Republican candidate who sidestepped Trump’s election fraud claims and has a reputation as a grenade-throwing obstructionist for her time in the state legislature.
“She is uniquely talented and incredibly ruthless,” Greg Leo, former president of the Oregon Republican Party, described her at the Williamette week.
“She got up quickly, breaking some china.”
Allies say the 50-year-old mother of three has been consistently underestimated, even as she fought her way to become Republican leader in the Oregon House.
Republican nominee Christine Drazan has a narrow lead in the race to become Oregon’s next governor. So who is she and can she color the state red for the first time in nearly 40 years?
Rolling poll averages suggest Drazan is slightly ahead of Democratic Party candidate Tina Kotek, as this poll published this week by Emerson College Polling
She was not born in politics. She grew up poor. Her father worked in sawmills and her mother had multiple sclerosis.
“There was no time when money wasn’t an issue while I was living at home,” she said. “We moved and moved and moved.”
She graduated with a degree in communications from George Fox University – a Christian university in the state – in 1993.
She then became a staffer in the state legislature and became chief of staff to a speaker of the Republican House.
She quit in 2003 to become a lobbyist and didn’t run until 2018, winning an easy seat.
Her meteoric rise to party leadership came amid divisions over whether Republicans should stage strikes to deprive Democrats of the quorum they needed to meet their agenda — and climate change legislation in particular.
Republican nominee Drazan, left, and Democratic nominee Tina Kotek, center, listen to unaffiliated candidate Betsy Johnson during the government debate hosted by Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association at Mount Hood Oregon Resort in July
Drazan (center) is pictured here as the Republican leader of the House alongside Kotek (left), when she was House Speaker. House Majority Leader Barbara Smith Warner is on the right
Much of the party leadership was reluctant, seeing it as the nuclear option: to be used only in the most appalling conditions.
Drazan saw it differently. In 2001, Drazan had watched Democrats destroy a new congressional district map by walking out of the House and denying Republicans the quorum they needed to push through the plan.
“There were all these issues in the caucus, and their leadership was basically thrown out,” said Jim Moore associate professor at the Tom McCall Center for Civic Engagement, at Pacific University.
“And Christine Drazen, who just ran into her first term…was elected by her fellow Republicans.”
In a state where Democrats held virtually every elected office, that made the House Republican caucus leader the face of the Oregon Republican Party, he added.
After battling her way through a 19-way primaries, she’s now battling it out with Democratic nominee Tina Kotek — aided by a spoiler in the form of the independent Betsy Johnson, who spent twenty years as a Democratic state legislator and nearly 20 polls state. per cent.
Drazan has put economic issues — the high cost of living — at the center of an agenda that also paints Kotek as close to the outgoing governor, who is deeply unpopular with pandemic closures and the rise of homelessness.
Like many Democrat-led cities in the United States, Portland is experiencing a homeless crisis
But her meteoric rise and short stint as a legislator means voters don’t have a clear idea of what kind of governor she would become, Moore said.
“There are indications that she might be a center-right Republican,” he said.
She doesn’t hug Trump. She does not embrace any of the ideas of electoral fraud. In fact, she defends our electoral system, all that sort of thing, but on issues that are really important to people in Oregon, like climate change and abortion, she’s very, very conservative.
A slew of polls in recent weeks has suggested Drazan may have a slight edge over voters.
This week’s Emerson poll gives Drazan a one-point lead and suggests that her stances on the economy — and broadening Trump — are critical.
“Of those who say the economy is their number one problem, 52 percent plan to vote for Drazan and 21 percent for Johnson,” said Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling.
“A majority of those who say ‘threats to democracy’ is their main point in voting for Kotek with 59% support.”