Within ten minutes of Christine Drazan winning the GOP primary on Tuesday night, the Oregon Democratic Party sent out an email casting her as an extremist who takes her orders directly from the White House.

“Christine Drazan’s nomination as the GOP candidate for governor makes the choice in November clear: Trump is on the ballot in Oregon,” the press release stated.

And Drazan has already honed her response: “Tina Kotek wants nothing more than for this race to be about Donald Trump,” she said in a debate earlier this month. “It’s actually who she thinks she’s running against.”

Welcome to Tina Kotek versus Christine Drazan, the sequel.

Kotek and Drazan have different priorities when it comes to solving the housing crisis and funding public schools.

But it’s possible the race in November — between two capable politicians who can both dive deep into policies with ease — gets boiled down to something far simpler.

Take it from Knute Buehler, who, in his 2018 GOP gubernatorial bid against former Democratic Gov. Kate Brown, watched as his polling numbers dipped based on what was playing out on the national political landscape.

“This election is going to come down to Kotek running against Trump,” Buehler said, ”And Drazan is going to run from Trump.”

Long-time adversaries

The two political opponents have a long history of clashes.

Kotek was Speaker of the House while Drazan was House Republican Leader.

Drazan led a legislative walkout to deny Kotek a quorum, successfully killing a major cap-and-trade greenhouse gas bill that was a Democratic priority.

The two once struck a deal over redistricting, where Kotek promised to give Republicans equal say in the process of drawing political maps if Republicans ended a legislative impasse.

Kotek later reneged on the deal, creating a deep mistrust.

And more recently, they faced each other in 2022 when they were both vying for the governor’s seat.

Long road to Mahonia Hall

The last Republican to serve as governor in Oregon first took office when Mt. St. Helens still had her snow-capped cone.

That is to say, it’s been a long time since a member of the GOP has been governor of Oregon.

Part of the reason Republicans have struggled is that they haven’t identified a candidate who is moderate enough to appeal to the state’s left-leaning voters without alienating the more right-wing base that votes in Oregon’s closed primaries.

In the recently concluded GOP primary, Rep. Ed Diehl, whose platform was based on his successful push to kill Democrats’ transportation funding proposal known as the “gas tax”, was probably the most closely aligned with the more conservative grassroots faction of the party.

Chris Dudley, the former Portland Trail Blazer who narrowly lost to former Gov. John Kitzhaber in 2010, struck a more moderate stance.

Drazan landed somewhere in the middle. She is socially conservative; she received the endorsement of Oregon Right to Life. But her messaging is polished, not brazen, and focused more on the local policies affecting the state, like housing and education.

“Voters are looking for something they know, and Sen. Drazan is a well-known entity,” said Rebecca Tweed, a political strategist. “She’s been in leadership. She’s been consistent in her positions.”

But taking a middle-of-the-road approach in a general election in Oregon can be difficult.

“In the general, Drazan may need to come out more vocally opposed to Trump, but she needs to hold on to the support she has in the Republican base and then flip enough voters on the margin,” said Chris Shortell, a political science professor at the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University. “I think it’s a tough lift.”

Different dynamics

The 2022 battle between Drazan and Kotek was the most expensive race in the state’s history.

The dynamics will be different this election cycle without the third-party candidate, Betsy Johnson, who played a big role in the previous election.

Johnson, a Democrat who served in the state Senate for years before launching her campaign for governor as an unaffiliated candidate, received a lot of financial support from the state’s business groups and leaders.

Drazan supporters felt Johnson siphoned money that would have otherwise boosted the Drazan campaign.

One of Johnson’s early supporters was Nike co-founder Phil Knight. The billionaire later gave money to Drazan in the 2022 race.

At the time, he told The New York Times in a rare interview that he was “an anti-Tina person.”

In the 2026 primary, he spent his money on Dudley, the former basketball player.

Recent polling has shown Kotek is not very popular among voters. A Morning Consult poll in 2025 showed 48% approval of her performance and 42% disapproval, with only five U.S. governors being ranked as more unpopular.

Kotek has lost even some of her long-standing supporters when the state’s largest teacher union decided not to endorse her.

But being unpopular is not always a dealbreaker.

When Buehler ran and lost against Democrat Kate Brown, she was not very popular, but she still won.

“Drazan has to make the argument to people that their love of Oregon has to prevail over their hate for Trump,” Buehler said.

The old saying that all politics is local, he said, has flipped.

All politics is national,” he said. “So it’s very hard to keep the focus on Oregon with that current dynamic.”

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/05/20/trump-actions-could-loom-large-in-race-to-be-next-oregon-governor/