Candidate filing for Oregon state offices won’t begin until Sept. 11, but low-level rumbles have circulated for months about a prospectively competitive race for governor and that Democratic incumbent Tina Kotek is politically vulnerable.
The idea is exaggerated. While conditions may change, the reality now is that she’s strongly positioned for reelection next year to a second term.
Some context is needed here. Public officials all over, from presidents down to the local level, have seen trust and popularity fall hard in recent years, but rates of reelection to offices high and low have not much dropped.
In Oregon, this is an old story. It’s true that Kotek’s popularity has been low even by national standards. An August 2024 Morning Consult poll rated her (along with Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee) as one of the two least popular governors in the nation, a finding in line with other surveys.
A poll conducted in mid-March from DHM Research of the (Democratic-leaning) Portland metro area showed Kotek with a 42% favorable and 40% unfavorable rating, not a drastic change from earlier polls, and traditionally not a good place for a candidate for major office.
Some of this may come from headlines over staff turnover or frustration in completing some key priorities. You also could say there was nothing unusual about this. In 2022, a FiveThirtyEight analysis ranked then-Gov. Kate Brown second from the bottom. Beaver State governors have experienced low levels of popularity for decades.
The arrival of the Trump administration does, however, seem to have improved Oregonians’ take on Kotek: For many voters in this blue state, after watching high-speed chaotic news out of D.C., impressions of Oregon and Portland are looking better.
Skeptics also could point out that Kotek’s win in 2022 was slender, with a margin of only 3.4% and well short of an outright majority.
Such has been the grist for talk of a difficult Kotek re-election effort (which, of course, doesn’t formally exist yet and won’t for months at least, assuming she does run again).
She’s still the odds-on favorite.
Why?
You could look at the track record of Oregon governors running for reelection, few of whom have lost. The last was Democrat Robert Straub in 1978, and before that Democrat Robert Holmes in 1958. (Both faced politically strong Republican challengers, Vic Atiyeh and Mark Hatfield, respectively.) Incumbent statewide office holders in Oregon rarely lose reelection.
But more than that, consider the prospects for the two elections between now and a second Kotek term.
The Democratic primary is set for May 2026, and Kotek seems well-positioned for it. In 2022, she defeated Tobias Read, now secretary of state and then state treasurer, who has won three other recent statewide elections by strong margins.
Kotek won in considerable part with the help of core organizational elements of the Oregon Democratic Party, including labor, environmental and other groups. There’s been no indication she’s lost any significant support from those groups since, and no reason to think her fundraising won’t be at least adequate.
Nor is there any clear evidence — though we’re still early in the cycle — of a credible challenger. Read, settling in for a first term as secretary of state, would be unlikely to run, and the new Oregon attorney general and treasurer would be improbable contenders as well. None would be well positioned for it in 2026, even if they were strongly motivated to take on Kotek, which they may not be.
So who in the Democratic Party would be positioned to take on an incumbent governor who has solid support from the party structure? No one, really. At the moment she seems likely to draw no more than minor in-party opposition.
The general election picture looks even clearer.
Republicans in 2022 made a serious effort to nominate a relatively broadly acceptable candidate, Christine Drazan (a former legislator now back in the legislature). They fell short, albeit not by a lot. Who is the Republican who could win a Republican primary and run much more powerfully than Drazan did? No names come to mind.
In 2026, Oregon voters are likely to be more ramped up than they were then — against Republican President Donald Trump. Oregon Democrats may be notably motivated to cast their ballots, and in a straight party matchup, in this decade, the Democrat is likely to win.
How does someone other than Kotek manage to win both primary (in either party) and general election for governor? Not easily, that’s for sure.
Again, conditions can change. But the path ahead for Oregon’s top office seems clear for now.
This column was originally published in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.
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