Last August, I wrote of the upcoming contest for the Republican nomination for governor that legislator Christine Drazan, the party’s 2022 nominee, started in the preeminent position and that “any discussion of major contenders for the 2026 Republican nomination for governor has to start with her.”

In the last couple of months the field has changed, to the point that another legislator who last summer wasn’t even on the radar appears to be claiming front-runner status.

As of the end of candidate filing, 15 Republicans have filed for governor. It’s an echo of the even larger crowd of 19 four years ago. When I wrote, “The race has no obvious frontrunner, only a few names familiar to people who follow Oregon politics, and no statewide election winners and or incumbent officeholders above the county level.”

This year, most have no statewide visibility or organization or financing, and almost certainly will generate few votes. But several of them do, which gives the race more structure at least.

And in one case, an unexpected — to put it one way — survey result.

Rep. Ed Diehl of Scio on March 15 released a poll (which he said was conducted independently, not by his campaign) that showed him with 66.4% of the vote among the 10 Republican candidates for governor. The poll is credited to Predict Oregon, and it was said to have surveyed 1,022 Oregon Republicans from March 3 to 8.

It’s not a traditional poll, by any means. While traditional pollsters call or text to gather a statistically representative sample of the electorate, Predict Oregon instead solicited responses online.

David Medina, a social media influencer from Tualatin who has never won office, was said to have come in a distant second (8.7%), with Drazan (7.7%) and 2010 GOP governor nominee Chris Dudley fourth (7.6%).

Diehl’s campaign statement said “Voters want bold action on the economy, public safety, homelessness, and affordability, and this poll shows I’m the clear choice to deliver it.”

Diehl does have one claim to some statewide fame, as an organizer (as head of the Oregon Freedom Coalition) behind the referendum measure which recently pulled 250,000 petition signatures toward overturning last year’s state law increasing transportation taxes and fees.

Initiative and referendum actions can bring statewide organizational support, but it’s no guarantee of ballot success. While he did lead the referendum effort, many of its supporters also plausibly could support one of the other Republican contenders who also have opposed the transportation finance plan.

Ask Bill Sizemore, a true veteran of the initiative process who lost a governor race in a landslide in 1998, and finished fourth in 2010 and eighth in the 2022 in those Republican gubernatorial primaries.

Apart from that, Diehl is a two-term state representative who until recently had little statewide visibility.

The two former governor Republican nominees currently in the race, Dudley and Drazan, hardly look like pushovers in the primary.

Dudley can point to at least two good data points. First, since the Democrats started their current string of gubernatorial races in 1986, no Republican has come closer to winning (in 2010) than Dudley, when he got within a percent and a half of Democrat John Kitzhaber. Second, he already has significant money, roughly matching the longer-running Drazan, and including a million dollars from Nike co-founder Phil Knight.

Still, Dudley hasn’t been very visible in Oregon since his last run for governor 16 years ago, his fame-making days with the Trail Blazers are far in the rear view mirror, and questions about how grounded in Oregon he is are likely to develop. In 2010 he declared his residence was in Camas, Wash., apparently to cut payment of Oregon taxes. After his close loss for governor in 2010, he moved to California (in 2012) and stayed there until 2020. He reports he now lives in Sisters.

Too, there’s always the possibility someone else in the pack could break out, as to some degree Drazan did in 2024. Marion County Commissioner Danielle Bethell is strongly rooted in the Keizer-Salem area, with a base to build from as strong as some other contenders.

Despite all that, the race at this point still looks most like Drazan’s to lose. She came close to winning against the same (nearly certainly) Democratic nominee just four years ago. She has remained politically active, is in office now (usually a plus) and her partisan network no doubt is alive and well. At most recent reports, she still had the largest treasury of any candidate. She also started her campaign relatively early, before most of the others, and that’s usually a significant advantage.

The Democratic side of the governor primary is almost as crowded as the Republican, but it’s a different story; only incumbent governor Kotek has a statewide profile, organization or financing to credibly run a governor’s race. The only real question seems to be exactly how large a percentage of the vote she gets.

In what looks like a Democratic year in a Democratic-leaning state, the Republican nominee will have a serious challenge come November. But the last couple of months have made clear that the Republican nomination will not be casually gotten either.

This column first appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

Another legislative session is over and new laws are about to go into effect that will change things, some things, in Oregon. Right?

What people around government know and everyone else should, is that passing a law is one thing and getting it to work as intended is a whole different matter.

Consider legislation from nine years ago and working only in part: the red flag law.

A decade ago, many Second Amendment advocates argued that the problem with persistent shooting deaths was not so much the broad availability of guns as the ability of specific dangerous people to get hold of them. A response to that emerged around the country in the form of red flag laws, which provide for removal of weapons (mostly but not exclusively firearms) from people who seemed at high risk of harming themselves or others.

Oregon’s track record on shootings tends to follow national rates, by population. It does have a below-average number of shootings of one person by another, but also has an especially high rate of suicide by firearm.

So far, 22 states including Oregon have enacted red flag-type laws. (Those without are mainly Republican-led states, and one, Oklahoma, has a law generally barring them.) Some of these laws refer to Extreme Risk Protection Orders (that’s the proper name in Oregon), and others refer to Risk Warrants, Gun Violence Restraining Orders or Extreme Risk Firearm Protection orders. The operating idea is similar.

The process for using it starts with someone either in law enforcement or in the family or household of the person thought to be a hazard applying to a court for an order. If the order is approved, notice is served on the person. Any readily available firearms must be turned over either to law enforcement or a third party, who could be a friend or relative.

A judge considering an order has to consider risk factors specified in state law, including reports of threats of suicide or violence (or past history of those things), lawbreaking involving violence or drug abuse or other indicators.

In August 2023, the Secretary of State’s Office reviewed the results so far of the 2017 Oregon red flag law, which took effect in 2018. The resulting report sounded ambiguous: The red flag concept had potential which was so far unfulfilled, the report suggested.

“In the first 4 and a half years that Oregon’s ERPO [Extreme Risk Protection Orders] law was in effect a total of 564 petitions were filed, with the vast majority requested by local law enforcement,” the report said. “Respondents only requested a hearing to challenge an order in about a third of these cases, with the orders being upheld about half of the time. ERPO use has varied widely among counties, with seven counties not having any since the law was implemented.”

As national use has varied — states such as Indiana and Florida use it more than Oregon — so do Oregon’s 36 counties vary not only widely but unexpectedly. You might guess heavier use of it in Multnomah County than elsewhere, but the numbers of red flag orders issued was higher in raw totals (and much higher per capita) in Washington and Deschutes counties and much higher per capita.

The highest number of orders in any county in Oregon per capita was — brace yourself — in Lake County (with 99 orders per 100,000 people). The second-highest per capita rate was in another haven for the Second Amendment, Josephine County.

Why the disparity? When Portland City Councilor Steve Novick recently reviewed the state red flag report, he was puzzled by the low Portland rate.

In a March 3 email, Novick said “After doing some reconnoitering, I concluded that a major likely reason for that is that the Portland Police Bureau never prioritized training officers on the existence and use of the law, which was passed in Oregon in 2017. The PPB Behavioral Health Unit is trained in the law, and actually files the paperwork to initiate what are called “Extreme Risk Protective Orders,” or ERPOs — but they are largely dependent on patrol officers to identify and inform them of situations where ERPOs might be appropriate.”

Novick convened a group to review this, and invited a police officer from Bend who talked about how the red flag law was used more there. Since, Novick said he received a note from Sergeant Josh Silverman of the Behavioral Health Unit, who said, “BHU officers and I are starting next month to teach a one-hour, in-person ERPO class at in-service to every sworn member of the bureau. It will take until December to get everyone trained up, as we’re running about one session a week for groups of 20–40 officers.”

That may have some practical effect. The lower use of red flag capabilities probably isn’t due either to an inability or unwillingness to use it, but to a failure to build it into a standing part of police procedure. Once it’s there, it may be used more often.

And a considerable number of lives may be saved, through a law put into effect as it was, so many years ago, originally intended.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.