Drazan tells Oregonians not to worry

Drazan: I can’t hurt you. I’m outvoted. So elect me.

It is the strangest darned thing: The Republican candidate for governor’s strongest case consists of saying she cannot fulfill the aspirations of her party or her own past votes, so it is safe for Democrats to vote for her.

This argument might succeed.

Republican candidate Christine Drazan's branding is summarized in this ad. Republicans are spending a lot of money to run an ad that says she won’t, and can’t, carry out Republican policies.

Click: 30 seconds

Here is the text:

You’ve probably seen a lot of me lately, grainy pictures, creepy music. So here’s the thing: I’m not going to ban abortions, I’m not going to get rid of the Oregon Health Plan, I will never let D.C. run us over. But we are going to make life here more affordable, freeze utility rates, and bring standards back to our schools. I’m running for governor because I love this place. I want to fix what’s broken. I want to feel proud of our home. Let’s get our Oregon back.

Drazan is telling Oregonians not to worry that she could implement Republican policies. The Oregon legislature will still have a Democratic majority, so she won’t be able to enact the abortion bans we read about in Idaho and other red states. The GOP has repeatedly tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, and Republicans passed the Big Beautiful Bill, which would push tens of thousands of Oregonians off the Oregon Health Plan. But she won’t fight the legislature’s effort to keep nearly all Oregonians insured.

Moreover, she has said elsewhere that she cannot overturn Oregon’s sanctuary law on her own. That law is another Republican point of attack on Oregon. She has said publicly the thing a Republican cannot admit and still be appointed to a judgeship or a cabinet post: Biden won the 2020 election. She accepts that vote-by-mail is the law in Oregon.

Democrats fear that any Republican governor will get a version of the call Trump made to Georgia’s secretary of state, insisting that she, through some pretext, “find 11,780 votes,” or whatever number is necessary in Oregon to reverse an election outcome. But rest easy: Oregon governors don’t have the power to change a vote count. That call would need to go to Oregon’s secretary of state, Democrat Tobias Read, who would surely refuse.

Her argument embeds a premise: Oregon has Democrats in too many key places for it to become a MAGA state. That holds even though she and other Republicans have a track record of supporting issue after issue that would, were they in the majority, produce MAGA policies. She isn’t defending her own positions, nor MAGA’s. She is arguing for moderating a state that is too blue. The theme is bringing back balance, not power.

The ad has two powerful things going for it. First, unlike the Republican ads we see locally, both for Drazan’s campaign and for state Senate candidate Brad Hicks, it doesn’t use the ugly-photo, creepy-music technique. It mocks the technique, a welcome relief. Second, simple truth is powerful and persuasive in a political ad because the genre runs to crude exaggeration. It is true that Drazan will not have the power to turn Oregon red, gerrymander Oregon, cancel elections, dismantle the Oregon Health Plan, outlaw drugs like misoprostol, eliminate environmental laws, ban unions, fast-track data centers on farmland, or act on whatever other back-of-the-mind worries Oregonians have about Republican power in the era of Trump.

Democrats have held the governor’s office for nearly four decades. There is restlessness in the political air. Drazan is trying to look like change with a safety net. All she can really do is moderate the Democrats a little. Nothing to worry about.

I don’t welcome her winning, but I think her message will find traction with frustrated voters, likely a majority of them. Voters may decide it is safe to experiment with a vote for a Republican, Trump notwithstanding. As long as the legislature stays blue, she can’t do too much damage.

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