Greetings From Oregon's Dystopian Hellscape

The Beaver State, just this side of Hell

I don’t know what your state’s like, but if you listen to the political ads here in Oregon, you might think we live in the worst sort of dystopian hellscape. Honestly, nothing could be further from the truth. Sure, Oregon and Portland, its largest city, have their problems, just like anywhere else. But I’ll still take this dystopian hellscape over anywhere else.

Christine Drazan, the Republican candidate for Governor, is beating the drums of awfulness and telling us how corrupt politicians are. Yet she wants to become one of them. And she’s not been specific about what she plans on doing in a state that leans overwhelmingly Democratic.

Hey, things are terrible here in the Beaver State, but Ms. Drazan is the solution to what ails us- whatever that may be. She hasn’t told us, but she wants us to know that whatever it is seriously sucks donkey balls.

And Christine Drazan, by her own estimation, is the only one who can fix it.

Hmm…where have we heard that before? (“I alone can fix it….”)

And then there’s Betsy Johnson, a lifelong Democrat who knew she couldn’t win the party’s nomination, so she decided to run as an Independent. She’s also heavily invested in telling Oregonians how horrible, awful, and terrible things are and that, as an Independent, she’ll take the best ideas from both parties.

Wow; why didn’t anyone ever think of that before??

Well, probably because politics is a brutally tribal pursuit that doesn’t work that she’s telling us it will. What will likely transpire if Johnson wins is both parties will hand her a big, tasty “F**K YOU!!” sandwich and then walk away, leaving her, and Oregon, twisting in the wind.

Johnson isn’t a consensus builder, nor is she much of a negotiator. As a politician, she’s always been a hand grenade, so her claim that she’ll work amicably with both parties is laughable. It’s far more likely that she’ll spend four years as a piñata.

Finally, there’s the Democratic nominee, Tina Kotek, the designated lesbian in the Governor’s race and former Speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives. I’d argue that Kotek has the most robust knowledge of Oregon’s state government. She’s also responsible for Oregon having one of the strongest abortion rights laws in the country.

I’ll admit to my bias here because I plan on voting for Kotek, primarily because of her commitment to reproductive rights. But I’m also a fan of her approach to the Governor’s race in general. She hasn’t bought into the “Oregon as a dystopian hellscape” narrative, nor is she pushing the “I’ll be tougher on crime” talking point. Instead, what she’s done so far is to tell Oregonians what SHE will do. There have been a couple of negative ads from her campaign, but nothing like what has been produced by the Johnson or Drazan campaigns.

Kotek, for obvious reasons, also strongly supports LGBTQ rights, something I haven’t heard from Johnson (probably a “no”) OR Drazan (DEFINITELY a “no”).

Johnson’s “God knows we need a real solution to the homeless crisis” is a great sound bite, but many politicians have taken a crack at the problem with little if any success. So how does she plan on doing it differently/better than city officials and governors that have already spent years on the problem? It’s one thing to arrogantly state the obvious. We know there’s a problem; we live it every day.

So, Betsy, how do you plan to fix it besides tossing rhetoric at the problem?

“Career politicians are rotten to the core….” That’s Drazan’s opinion of people like herself, which means she’s utterly devoid of either self-awareness or self-esteem. She clearly doesn’t understand how arrogant and self-serving a statement like that sounds. She wants to become one of the very people she disdains. It seems like an exercise in self-loathing, but what do I know?

If career politicians are so nasty, awful, and rotten, did they break the mold when you came along? Do angels circle around your beaming visage as you do the work of the Lord? Does God’s approval shine down upon your as He guides your hand and leads you through your day?

Are you that arrogant and self-righteous?

“Because we’ve had amazing champions like Tina Kotek, Oregon has the strongest protections for reproductive rights….” What I appreciate about Kotek’s ads is the lack of bragging. You don’t hear the candidate doing a lot of chest-thumping. Sure, she talks about what she’s done in some of her ads, but you don’t hear her at all in the one I feature above. An Do, the head of Planned Parenthood Oregon, does the talking.

Because of her position as Speaker of the Oregon House, Kotek has long been a lightning rod, but you’d never know it by listening to her. She’s calm, collected, and rational, and I think she'd be the same as Governor.

With three in the race and none being an overwhelming favorite, the math behind a victory becomes a bit wonky.

Oregon…last elected a GOP governor in 1982.

Democrat Tina Kotek, the former speaker of the state House, remains the favorite to win in November, if for no other reason than Democrats and voters who lean their way considerably outnumber Oregon Republicans.

The mathematics of the three-way contest, however, make it quite possible the next governor could be elected with less than 50% support, opening the door for Johnson or the GOP nominee, Christine Drazan, to slip through.

In theory, 35% of the vote could be enough to win and thus end years of Democratic reign along the Left Coast, from Baja California to Canada’s border.

Drazan, the former Republican leader in the state House, is running hard against single-party rule in Salem, the state capital. “We need real leadership and real change to hold the Democrats to account,” Drazan said when the three candidates debated in July.

“Real leadership and real change.” Wow, there’s something new and original, eh? And why is it that we need to hold the Democrats to account? The reality is that Oregon politics are so thoroughly dull these days because the Democrats have held themselves to account. Not that Democrats haven’t had their problems, but they haven’t attempted to cover them up. They’ve dealt with them and moved on.

Christine Drazan telling Oregonians that Oregon needs “real leadership and real change” rings pretty hollow. She might as cry plaintively, “I need a job!”

[T]he only reason [Draza] stands a chance is the presence of Johnson and the hope she might siphon enough votes away from Kotek.

The heir to a timber fortune, Johnson served 20 years in the Legislature, representing rural Oregon as a center-right Democrat before leaving the party and resigning from the state Senate last December to focus on her unaffiliated run for governor.

She likens herself to Goldilocks, neither too far left nor too far right, but her acerbic persona and harsh attacks on rivals suggest little of the innocent fairy tale character.

Drazan, Johnson says, “wants to be the first anti-choice governor in Oregon’s history,” undermining the state’s strong support for legal abortion. Kotek, vying to become the nation’s first governor who has come out as lesbian, “wants to bring the culture wars to your kid’s classroom. She’d have us all woke and broke.”

Johnson’s first problem is that she has no ideas that have generated any traction. She’s no “Goldilocks;” there’s nothing about her that’s “just right.” And she doesn’t possess a personality that will allow her to work harmoniously with both parties. She didn’t for 20 years in the Oregon Legislature, and there’s no reason to think she be any different as Governor.

She’s a bomb-thrower; it’s hard to imagine she’ll magically change her stripes if she ascends to the Governor’s mansion.

While she’s fond of reciting that Oregonians are “distrustful of the Radical Right” and “terrified of the Progressive Left,” they’re also wary of the Arrogant Center, which is precisely where Betsy Johnson finds herself. Some have described her personality as “acerbic” and others as “toxic,” which may explain why she had no shot at winning the Democratic nomination.

My sense is that she has no shot at winning the Governor’s race, but if things break a certain way, she may destroy her former party’s chances of winning and hand the election to Christine Drazan.

But, she can emphasize her appeal as an iconoclast.

Oregon is no Alabama or Arkansas, to name two deeply conservative bastions, and several of Johnson’s positions clearly cut against the state’s political grain.

The proud owner of a Cold War-era machine gun, she responds to the ravages of gun violence by ticking off NRA talking points about increasing school security and boosting mental health services.

Her preferred method to fight climate change, improving management of Oregon’s forests, recalls President Trump’s much-ridiculed suggestion the country rake its woodlands to prevent wildfires.

She sounds populist notes and promises to be a voice for the “pissed off,” but has benefited handsomely from the support of CEOs and others among the well-off. Phil Knight, the billionaire founder of Nike and Oregon’s richest man, has kicked in $1.75 million, helping Johnson outraise her opponents.

Here in Oregon, “pissed off” is code for those in the central and eastern parts of the state who feel ignored. Because of the unusual demographics of Oregon, the vast majority of the population lives in the Willamette Valley in the northwest corner of the state. Of that population, most live in the Portland metropolitan area.

As the saying goes, “What Portland wants, Portland gets.” It upsets those living in outlying areas of Oregon, and understandably so, but it’s a numbers game. Relatively speaking, no one lives in eastern and central Oregon.

Johnson is out of step with most of those living in the Portland area and is considered a laughing stock. However, her strength will almost certainly be in rural areas, as will Christine Drazan’s.

For her part, after years in power, Kotek has the unenviable task of convincing voters that as bad as things seem, they will get better.

Eventually.

“No matter what the other candidates say here today, there are no quick fixes,” the Democratic former House speaker said in opening the first, and so far only, gubernatorial debate. “There are no miracle cures.”

Tina Kotek knows that things are generally good in Oregon. Despite attempts by Christin Drazan and Betsy Johnson to portray the Beaver State as a god-forsaken Hellhole, it’s nothing of the sort. Yes, Oregon has its problems, but if you look at other states, we’re doing pretty well by comparison. Kotek knows that, and she knows that selling tinkering around the margins is a tough sell.

Also, making “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” sound sexy isn’t easy, but that’s where Oregon is these days. Betsy Johnson would blow things up because she could. Christine Drazan would do what she could to make Oregon an anti-choice state. Unfortunately, neither would do much of anything to move Oregon forward.

From her previous experience in state government, Kotek knows that progress is seldom made with sledgehammer blows. More often, it comes slowly, by tinkering at the edges. That calls for patience, which is hard to sell during an election season.

Tina Kotek is the candidate of slow, steady, and sensible- which is why I’m voting for her in November. Sensible may not be “sexy,” but it works better than empty promises and portraying Oregon as a dystopian hellscape.

Nah, that would be Idaho.