Nicholas Kristof just resigned from his job as a NY Times columnist so he could run in the Oregon Democratic primary for governor (read article). He will be running against a crowded field of Democrats seeking their party's nomination to be the candidate in the 2022 election, including Oregon House Speaker Tina Kotek and state Treasurer Tobias neither of whom are household names in the state.
Oregon is a blue state with a hard-core conservative population outside of the population centers. On Halloween I took a tour of Yamill County (see my photo essay ), the lovely wine country where Kristof was raised on a diary and apple farm. Exploring the little town of Gaston (pop. 700) was reminded of how right-wing the area was when I saw a little house with a giant Trump flag on a pole in the front yard where a bunch of future fascist kids were playing.
In the Virginia Democratic primary for governor former Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy, state Sen. Jennifer McClellan, Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax and Del. Lee Carter ran against the former governor Terry McAuliffe. "When a lot of people think about these elections, they assume that the person who has been elected will be elected again, and they talk about inevitability," Carroll Foy said, referring to McAuliffe's 2013 victory. "Inevitability only exists if we allow it." (Reference)
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My current governor here in Oregon is
Democrat Kate Brown. She is barred from running again. Even though she won handily with over 80% of the vote in her previous two primaries the vote in the general election was much closer, for example in the most recent election where we can only guess who would have won had there been no non-Republican candidates on the ballot.
There are no popular high profile Democrats who are well known among those who don’t follow politics fairly closely in Oregon that I know of who have expressed an interest in running for governor. Tina Kotek who is running is our longest serving speaker of the House (see “Any gubernatorial wannabe must get by Kotek, who has long proven difficult to outmaneuver”) but I’d never heard of her until now. The same is true for our state Treasurer Tobias.
Our two well known liberal U.S. senators, Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden are doing excellent jobs in their current positions and I wouldn't want to see either of them run for governor.
But Kristof is also famously rooted in a family cherry farm in rural Yamhill, Oregon, and has written often about the tragedies of joblessness, homelessness, and substance abuse that have stricken many of his childhood friends and people in other rural and small-town communities hit hard by globalization and left for dead by the Zeitgeist. Just last year, he and WuDunn published a book (later made into a documentary) on the subject, based in part on his examination of conditions in Yamhill. And it’s a theme he picks up on without a beat in the video he released announcing his first run for office:
It’s an interesting story all right — one that links his international experience with his journey from and then back to Oregon. But can it really work in a statewide election? Is “Kristof for Governor” going to be an effort that New Yorkers care about more than the Oregonians who will adjudge it at the polls (or in the mail, in this 100 percent mail-ballot state)? Is he a serious candidate?
In a word, maybe. Yes, he is vulnerable to the charge that he has packed up a carpet bag and descended on his native state from the commanding heights of a journalism profession that is not respected much more than politics these days. The fact that he voted in New York in 2020 will be mentioned often by his rivals and detractors. But on the other hand, Oregon is a state in the grip of something of a leadership vacuum and is struggling with precisely the sort of problems Kristof seems prepared to address. Term-limited Democratic Governor Kate Brown is very unpopular. There is no obvious heir apparent among Democrats, and Oregon’s outgunned and divided Republicans don’t seem positioned to win the governorship for the first time since 1986.
The last sentence above (my bold) while optimistic still gives me pause. I think much will depend of how well Kristof is able to shed, or shred, his image among many Oregon voters as being a carpetbagger intellectual (he went to Harvard and the University of Oxford in the UK) and a purveyor of fake news, He is apparently eligible to vote in Oregon because he owns property here despite the fact he voted in New York in 2020, though his opponent will make every effort to depict him as an out of touch New Yorker.(Reference)
Kristof will have to replace this perception with one of a hometown farm boy who made good and who is returning to his roots (figuratively and literally). He must effectively counter the way his opponent is assuredly going to depict him as a member of the out of touch intellectual elite.
I am not enamored of basing my own vote on polling but when it comes to this race I am leaning towards voting for whoever polls show is most likely to win the general election. I hope Kristof pulls it off because I think he would make a superb governor.
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