Oregon counties began releasing preliminary election results at 8 p.m. Tuesday, and the first lane county election results did not shake up the Republican race for governor: state Sen. Christine Drazan led the field with 44.5% of the vote.
State Rep. Ed Diehl was in second place with nearly 31%, while former basketball player Chris Dudley had about 16% in a primary that drew 14 candidates. The winner will face Gov. Tina Kotek in November, and if Drazan secures the nomination, the rematch is already set: she lost to Kotek by about four percentage points in 2022.
The early numbers mattered because Oregon’s Republican primary was never just about one night’s count. The Democratic side was much smaller, with nine candidates, and Kotek had already won her party’s nomination with 85% of the vote. That left Republicans trying to settle on the strongest challenger in a state that has not elected a Republican governor since Vic Atiyeh in the 1980s.
For Drazan, the lead put her back in the role of front-runner in a race she had already come close to winning. For Dudley, the latest results revived an old political disappointment. He lost to former Gov. John Kitzhaber in 2010, and Tuesday’s tally suggested he was not poised for a comeback this time.
Voters arriving at the party still talked about the everyday pressures shaping their decisions. Linda Neace said her family was already feeling the strain of changing work prospects. “I've got two grandsons that work for different companies. And they are outsourcing. And one of them will be losing his job at the end of the summer,” she said. “And so now he has to reevaluate, does he stay in Oregon or does he leave?”
That kind of anxiety is what will hang over the rest of the count. Drazan’s lead is real, but the nomination still has to be finished, and the general election picture is already taking shape around a familiar matchup: Drazan against Kotek, with Oregon Republicans again trying to break a losing streak that has stretched back to the 1980s.
