Oregon’s contest for governor has produced a campaign dispute over the debates themselves, leaving Gov. Tina Kotek and Republican challenger Christine Drazan separated not by policy on this occasion, but by their competing choices of Portland television studios.
Both candidates have committed to televised debates in Eugene, Bend and Medford. In Portland, however, their schedules are divided. Kotek accepted KOIN’s invitation, while Drazan declined. Drazan accepted competing invitations involving KGW and The Oregonian/OregonLive, along with a separate event connected to KPTV and organizations representing district attorneys and law enforcement officials. Kotek declined those appearances.
Unless one campaign changes course, Oregon’s largest media market could enter the final weeks of the election without a locally televised gubernatorial debate for the first time in decades.
Kotek and Drazan are scheduled to appear at a Portland Business Journal candidate forum, but that engagement does not replace the traditional television debate now imperiled by the campaigns’ disagreement. What began as an abundance of invitations has deteriorated into competing accusations over which candidate is willing to appear, where the encounter should occur and which broadcaster should control the stage.
Hundreds of miles south of that dispute, the political calculation is less theatrical and more consequential.
Residents across Jackson, Josephine, Douglas, Klamath, Lake, Coos and Curry counties live with wildfire evacuations, vanishing homeowners insurance, deteriorating highways, emergency communication failures, hospital staffing shortages, insufficient behavioral health treatment and an economy increasingly strained by housing costs and the contraction of traditional rural industries. Those conditions receive statewide attention during disasters, legislative emergencies and election season, but Southern Oregon rarely commands the sustained political courtship afforded to the Portland metropolitan area.
The numbers explain the campaign strategy with unforgiving clarity.
Oregon had 3,087,953 registered voters in September. Jackson and Josephine counties accounted for 234,540, approximately 7.6% of the statewide electorate. Expanding the boundary to include Douglas, Klamath, Lake, Coos and Curry counties raises Southern Oregon’s registration to 449,510 voters, or approximately 14.6% of the state.
Fewer than one in seven Oregon voters lives within that seven-county region.
Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas counties, by comparison, contain approximately 1.31 million registered voters, representing 42.4% of Oregon’s electorate. Multnomah County alone has 583,397 registered voters, nearly 134,000 more than the seven Southern Oregon counties combined.
Campaigns follow those concentrations. Advertising money gravitates toward the largest television audience. Candidates pursue appearances capable of reaching the greatest number of voters in the shortest amount of time. Fundraising networks, party organizations and statewide political coverage remain concentrated in and around Portland, where three counties hold nearly three times the registration of Southern Oregon’s seven.
Population may dictate campaign efficiency, but it does not diminish the importance of the region’s vote.
Southern Oregon’s broader electorate includes 154,134 registered Republicans, 92,147 Democrats and 168,465 nonaffiliated voters. Republicans outnumber Democrats by nearly 62,000, yet neither major party controls the region through registration alone. Nonaffiliated voters constitute its largest political bloc, accounting for more than 37% of registered voters.
That composition makes Southern Oregon more complicated than its conservative reputation suggests. Republican candidates depend upon commanding margins here to counter Democratic advantages elsewhere. Democratic candidates cannot surrender the region completely without enlarging the deficit they must recover in Portland, Eugene and other population centers. In a close statewide election, Southern Oregon may lack the population to dominate the outcome, but it retains enough electoral strength to decide it.
Drazan’s connections to the region extend beyond a campaign itinerary. She was born in Klamath Falls and attended Eagle Point High School before establishing her political career in Clackamas County. Her campaign has centered on lower taxes, public safety, education, government accountability and Oregon’s business climate. Those priorities resonate across Southern Oregon, although her campaign has provided considerably less regional detail about how those proposals would confront the distinct economic and infrastructure problems of the Rogue Valley, Klamath Basin, Douglas County and South Coast.
Kotek approaches the region with an incumbent’s record rather than a challenger’s promises. Her administration has directed homelessness and housing resources toward the Medford area, mobilized state assistance during Southern Oregon wildfires, worked with behavioral health providers and participated in regional economic discussions.
During a Jackson County visit, Kotek met with business leaders, behavioral health professionals, wildfire recovery organizations and representatives of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Her administration also included the Medford area within Oregon’s extended homelessness emergency and deployed state resources during fires threatening Southern Oregon communities.
Those actions establish a record of involvement, but they have not resolved the region’s persistent shortages in housing, addiction treatment, medical care, transportation funding and wildfire protection. Nor have they eliminated the familiar Southern Oregon grievance that decisions made in Salem often arrive here as mandates, restrictions or expenses long before they arrive as durable solutions.
The Medford debate will therefore carry more significance than its place on the campaign calendar suggests. It will be the encounter where both candidates must answer to a region accustomed to receiving statewide attention only after the smoke thickens, the hospital beds disappear, the highway deteriorates or another rural employer closes.
The substance of that debate will depend upon whether the candidates are pressed beyond rehearsed statewide themes and required to address homeowners losing insurance after repeated fire seasons, failing emergency radio infrastructure, Interstate 5 and rural road maintenance, hospital capacity, behavioral health staffing, addiction treatment, forest management, timber employment and the widening distance between wages and housing costs.
Southern Oregon cannot offer either campaign Portland’s audience, donor network or enormous reservoir of votes. It can offer nearly 450,000 registered voters whose ballots carry exactly the same legal weight as those cast in Multnomah County.
Kotek and Drazan may continue contesting Portland studios, moderators and invitations. Southern Oregon’s demand is more elemental: fewer voters must not become a license for less attention, thinner policy or another four years of discovering the region only when catastrophe or campaign arithmetic makes the trip politically necessary.