Can Tina Kotek be elected Oregon Governor?

I get the willies when I think about the 2022 Governor race in Oregon.

Tina Kotek could be another Hillary Clinton: 

     Unstoppable as the nominee. 

     Unelectable in the general election.

Oregon Democrats have three well-positioned candidates for governor. Nick Kristof is the out-of-the-box celebrity journalist getting his feet wet as a politician. Tobias Read was elected statewide to the office of Treasurer. The frontrunner is Tina Kotek.

Tina Kotek has been a state representative since 2007 and Speaker of the Oregon House since 2013. That job made her a major player in Oregon politics--a visible deal-maker, with friends and allies nurtured for over a decade. She has endorsements from fellow officeholders, from large unions, and from advocacy groups like the League of Conservation voters. Yesterday I got another of the near-daily fundraising letters from her, this one announcing her endorsement by Emily's List. Insofar as anyone earns a nomination within a political party by showing up and doing the work, Tina Kotek deserves it. 

I get the willies about the race because I expect her to win the primary, and then lose in the general election. 

Her loss will shock some people. Oregon has not elected a Republican governor since 1982. Democrats have super-majorities in the legislature. And Tina Kotek is so qualified, so knowledgeable, and she is someone already doing the work. That is her problem. By "her" I mean Tina Kotek, but also the problem of the current governor Kate Brown and every other Democrat associated with the status quo in Oregon. 

I like Kate Brown and think she has done a difficult job well. But she has worn out her welcome. I liken it to the situation of school superintendents and city managers who have three or four good years and then need to move on to somewhere new. Kate Brown did the hard job of trying to suppress COVID in Oregon, and it worked, We have one of the lowest death rates, notwithstanding that much of rural Oregon has resisted her at every turn. A lot of them are angry at her. Urban Oregonians mostly complied with vaccinations. They have followed mask and social distancing guidelines and watched schools and businesses struggle for two years. They are tired of COVID, and Brown is the face of COVID protocols.

Plus, there is the Portland problem. Metropolitan Portland is a honey-pot of Democratic votes. White liberal Portlanders gave seven-to-one margins to Kate Brown in 2018 and the same to Biden in 2020. Portland's liberalism has exacerbated the problem of unhoused people in tents and sleeping bags on the sidewalks and parks of Portland. No Portland politician wants to appear cruel. Every potential solution makes someone miserable. It is an intractable problem, so it persists. There is a message sent of Democrats as ineffectual. 

Portland street

Same with the problem of repeated civil disturbances. Anarchists dressed in black accompany peaceful protesters to get physical and political cover. Protests against police misconduct degenerate into the anarchists within the crowds breaking windows, setting fires, and attacking police officers.The vandalism is a statement of nihilistic opposition to the social order, but it is also a tactic. They hope to elicit a police response that can be condemned as too violent. Democratic officeholders walk on eggshells, appearing unable to distinguish between the protesters and the vandals. Police feel unsupported. The street violence continued, night after night, another message of Democratic ineffectiveness. It happened again after the Rittenhouse verdict in November. Democrats in Portland come across as over-indulgent parents unwilling to stop their spoiled teenagers from doing criminal mischief. The anarchists are not on the Democratic team, but they are co-located within it, and sometimes voice goals that seem related to the issues of the team. Democrats get the blame.

Another riot in November

Is Tina Kotek responsible for the Portland messes, or for COVID shut-downs, and for the impatience of the COVID-compliant to be done with this? No. But she is conspicuous as part of the status quo. She will be understood to be the newer, younger version of governor Brown, just when people want change.

My perspective is from downstate, where the pickup trucks in Trump areas boast images of boys pissing on Kate Brown. Here impatience with the "Portland/Salem liberal groupthink" is pervasive. But won't giant Democratic margins reappear in Portland, this time to elect Tina Kotek?

I expect not. 

There is too easy a case to be made that Democrats had their turn and we need to try something new. Republicans will make that argument. An independent candidate, Betsy Johnson, will make it as well. Their hands are clean. I think that argument will stick. Democrats let bad situations get out of control, and the evidence for it persists. Portland used to be beautiful. Now it isn't. Portland lost something.

Can Tina Kotek fix this? Can she look like a change agent? She hasn't, and I suspect she doesn't feel she can without burning bridges she doesn't want to burn. She is the status quo candidate, just like Hillary Clinton was.