Oregon’s primary election for governor is one year away but already there are signs some of the state’s top elected Democrats are exploring running for the job.
With Gov. Kate Brown term limited out of office after 2022, Oregon voters could see the first competitive Democratic primary in more than a decade and potentially the closest such race since 2002.
That prospect appears to be fueling fundraising and campaign activity by some top state officials, in what would normally be a downtime after the November 2020 election. State Treasurer Tobias Read, a Beaverton-area Democrat, already raised $100,000 this year and spent $50,000, according to campaign finance records. Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, a Democrat from Portland, has also been spending on political consultants and fundraising this year, after winning reelection last year to a third term.
Oregon’s new Secretary of State Shemia Fagan, also a Democrat from the Portland area, has continued to send a flurry of campaign emails since she took office in January but she told The Oregonian/Oregonlive that she is not running for governor and said she intends to serve her full four-year term as secretary of state.
Other Democrats that political insiders are speculating could run in 2022 include House Speaker Tina Kotek of Portland, Labor Commissioner Val Hoyle of Eugene, state Sen. Betsy Johnson of Scappoose and Multnomah County Commission Chair Deborah Kafoury. In a text message Thursday, Kafoury did not deny she is interested in running. “For the moment, I’m concentrating on the job I have now,” Kafoury wrote. Everyone on the list has spent years serving in elected government jobs, with one exception: Rukaiyah Adams, a Portlander who is chief investment officer at Meyer Memorial Trust and chair of the Oregon Investment Council, which oversees investments of the state’s public pension fund assets.
Adams said she’s committed to public service in Oregon, and believes that the state needs a leader from outside the entrenched partisan conflict in Salem to provide space for renewed vision and leadership. But to govern effectively and make progress on the big policy issues facing the entire state, she says that person will need to bring more than vision and leadership; they will need established networks, particularly in rural Oregon.
“I’m not running for governor this time, but I am thinking deeply about public service,” she said. “When I do run, it will be because I have the vision and relationships to do the work effectively. For everyone.”
Rukaiyah Adams, chief investment officer of Meyer Memorial Trust, holds a meeting with the investment team on February 27, 2020. Adams told The Oregonian/OregonLive she is interested in running for governor but does not plan to do so in 2022. Brooke Herbert/The OregonianBrooke Herbert/The Oregonian
The state’s last seriously contested Democratic primary was in 2010, between former Gov. John Kitzhaber and former Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, in which Kitzhaber ended up trouncing Bradbury 65% to 30%. Kitzhaber’s resignation in early 2015 established Brown, who rose from secretary of state to governor as a result, as an incumbent and voters elected and reelected her in 2016 and 2018.
John Horvick, an executive at Portland-based DHM Research, said many Oregonians are unfamiliar with statewide elected officials such as the secretary of state, attorney general, treasurer and labor commissioner, even if those people have served in the jobs for years.
“It’s probably insiders, movers and shakers, to be able to develop a sense of credibility and resources, that probably matters more” than name recognition at this point in the election cycle, Horvick said on Thursday.
One key factor in Oregon’s 2022 Democratic gubernatorial primary is whether any of the people interested in running for governor wind up with an opportunity to run for Congress, Horvick and other observers noted. That could depend on how the Legislature redraws the state’s congressional district boundaries to add an anticipated sixth seat and whether any current members of the congressional delegation choose to retire.
Kotek, the House speaker, has been rumored to be interested in both running for governor and for Congress if the opportunity arose. She did not respond to a request for comment.
Another factor at play is whether Brown serves the remainder of her term. As second-in-line to the governor, Fagan would assume the office if Brown left early for any reason and that position as an incumbent — combined with her demonstrated ability to pull in hundreds of thousands of dollars from public employee unions — could make a primary win difficult for any other competitors. Oregon’s powerful unions heavily favored Fagan in the 2020 Democratic race for secretary of state, quickly supplying most of her primary campaign cash and partnering with other key interest groups on get-out-the-vote efforts to help Fagan pull off a narrow primary win in a three-way race.
The last time three Oregon Democrats made credible bids for the job was in 2002, when then former Oregon Supreme Court Justice Ted Kulongoski fended off state Treasurer Jim Hill and Multnomah County Commission Chair Bev Stein.
During fall 2020 debates in the secretary of state’s race, Fagan was asked repeatedly if she planned to run for governor in 2022. In carefully worded answers, she pointed to the secretary of state’s role as second-in-line to the governor as a reason she could not rule out that she would seek election to the job. “You can’t possibly commit because you may have to be called upon,” Fagan said during the City Club of Portland debate. “But I have no intention of running for governor in two years or beyond.”
Fagan also brought up the possibility of the governor resigning in response to a journalist’s question at a KOIN debate. “Barring that, yes, I don’t plan to run for governor in 2022,” Fagan said.
A political consultant who advises Brown, Thomas Wheatley, told The Oregonian/OregonLive that Brown has no plans to step down before her term ends. “Her intention is absolutely to serve the people of Oregon through the rest of her term,” Wheatley said. Brown is busy overseeing the state’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout, economic recovery and policies to address racial injustice, Wheatley said. “She is focused on her job, not focused on something else,” such as seeking a role in the Biden administration.
Shemia Fagan, now Oregon's secretary of state, is pictured in her yard in September 2020 when she was still a state senator. Beth Nakamura/Staff
Fagan’s campaign sent out six emails in March alone. But in response to a question from The Oregonian/OregonLive in this week about whether her fundraising signaled she was considering a run, she wrote in an email, “As I have said multiple times over the past year, I am not running for governor. Every day, I treasure the fact that Oregonians elected me to be their secretary of state for the next four years and that is exactly what I intend to do.”
Rosenblum did not rule out that she would run for governor. “As you know, I was just re-elected and I’m focused on doing the best job I can as AG,” she wrote in an email to The Oregonian/OregonLive, short-handing her title of attorney general. “I love Oregon and I’m working hard every day to make our state better for every Oregonian.”
Three months into her third term, Rosenblum has more than $200,000 sitting in her political action committee after an easy reelection in 2020 when she was unopposed in the Democratic primary and faced a Republican opponent who was not even a lawyer.
The attorney general appears to be using her unspent campaign cash to prepare for another race: She hired the Seattle fundraising firm Blue Wave Political Partners, spent $3,000 with a campaign database company in early April and has continued to pay a Wisconsin political consultant who worked on her reelection last year, campaign finance records show. She hasn’t faced a challenging race since the 2012 Democratic primary.
The treasurer’s campaign manager Jessica LaVigne similarly avoided directly answering if Read plans to run for governor. “The treasurer is focused on recovery efforts to spur rebuilding Oregon’s economy after the fires and the pandemic and thinks they should be the focus as we emerge from COVID,” LaVigne wrote in an email.
Hoyle, who as labor commissioner will be up for reelection in 2022, is the only statewide elected official who would have to give up her elected job in order to run for governor. She’s already raised more than $160,000 this year. “My plan is to run for labor commissioner,” Hoyle said. “That’s my current plan.”
Reporter Ted Sickinger contributed to this story.
-- Hillary Borrud: hborrud@oregonian.com; @hborrud
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