Morning Digest: Why the GOP could flip a governor's race despite the building blue wave

After 40 years in charge, polling suggests Oregon Democrats might finally lose their grip

Billboard for Christine Drazan, Republican nominee for Oregon governor. (Credit: Christine Drazan)

Leading Off

OR-Gov

A new poll finds that Oregon Republicans, despite an ugly national political climate, could end four decades of Democratic control of the governor’s office.

That survey, conducted by the Oregon-based pollster DHM Research for Oregon Public Broadcasting, shows Republican challenger Christine Drazan leading Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek 47-46 in a race that has seen little polling. Brett Smith, a member of the state’s Green Party affiliate, takes 3%, a small but potentially decisive share in a rematch that could once again go down to the wire.

Kotek defeated Drazan in a close race in 2022, but DHM finds that voters are anything but happy with the governor’s tenure. The survey shows Kotek with an underwater 38-60 favorable rating, little better than Donald Trump’s 37-63 score. By contrast, respondents are evenly split 45-45 when it comes to their view of Drazan, a member of the state Senate.

Four years ago, the two sought to replace termed-out Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat who was leaving office with poor approval ratings not dissimilar to her successor’s. In particular, the GOP argued that Kotek, who stepped down as speaker of the state House during the campaign, had done a poor job on public safety and homelessness—issues that continue to weigh on Oregon politics.

Drazan, who had served as the House’s minority leader, further pitched herself as an agent of change in a state that hadn’t elected a Republican governor since the late Vic Atiyeh won his second and final term in 1982. (Indeed, the only other state that Democrats have run longer is neighboring Washington, where their ongoing winning streak began in 1984.)

Polls showed a tight race between Kotek and Drazan, while former state Sen. Betsy Johnson, a conservative Democrat who was running as an independent, threatened to cost both candidates crucial votes. Republicans, however, had reason to be optimistic that a backlash against Brown and a widely anticipated GOP wave would finally end 36 years of Democratic control.

Kotek, though, defeated Drazan 47-44 on what turned out to be a disappointing night for Republicans from coast to coast, with Johnson finishing a distant third with just 9%. Kotek, however, has had a challenging first term.

Last fall, the governor convinced the Democratic-led legislature to pass a major transportation funding plan, which included tax increases to provide what the Kotek administration said were vital revenues for the state Department of Transportation. Her victory, however, was short-lived.

A Republican-backed campaign to repeal major parts of the law succeeded in collecting enough signatures to block those provisions until a referendum could be held, and it quickly became clear they’d win. To avoid having the issue on the general election ballot, Democrats scheduled a vote to coincide with the May primary. The repeal succeeded in an 83-17 blowout.

Drazan, who returned to the House following the 2024 election and was appointed to a vacant Senate seat last year, ardently supported the repeal drive, but that’s not her only gripe with Kotek.

The Republican launched an ad in August complaining about the state’s high tax rates and its failure to address homelessness and education. Drazan told her audience, “Our problems are not partisan problems. They’re leadership problems.”

Kotek has also acknowledged that voters aren’t happy with the status quo, but she’s argued Trump is the one making things worse.

Her campaign told Governing Magazine in February, “Oregon faces real challenges, from the rising cost of living to homelessness, and they won’t be solved by Trump’s illegal deployment of the Oregon National Guard, ICE terrorizing communities, or his cuts to healthcare and food assistance.”

Like Democratic governors elsewhere, Kotek is seeking to portray her opponent as an appendage of Trump, who decisively lost state in all three of his campaigns. Last week, she debuted a spot featuring footage of Trump telling members of the audience at his recent midterm convention to raise their right hands to pledge their loyalty to him, with the narrator interjecting, “In Oregon, Trump’s right hand is Christine Drazan.”

Kotek has a huge financial advantage to promote that messaging during the final five weeks of the campaign. The Oregonian reported Wednesday that the governor has $9.2 million in the bank as of the end of September, compared to just $1.2 million for Drazan.

A key reason Drazan is so far behind is that her two largest donors from 2022, the Republican Governors Association and Nike co-founder Phil Knight, have yet to invest in her second bid. But because the state does not limit campaign contributions, the situation could transform in an instant.

The Downballot Podcast

Republicans are looking sooo rusty

Here’s the downside to comfortably winning year after year: Your campaign skills get rusty in a hurry. As David Nir and guest-host Joe Sudbay discuss on this week’s episode of The Downballot podcast, that problem is now in full bloom for Republicans across the country who are suddenly facing competitive elections in states where Democrats have often been an afterthought.

The roster of creaky candidates includes the likes of Roger Marshall, Pete Ricketts, and Ken Paxton, all of whom are finding out the hard way that campaigning ain’t easy. But you can even add Susan Collins to the list. After a lifetime of softball media coverage, she’s suddenly scrambling to deal with a major corruption scandal, and she isn’t handling it well.

David and Joe also put a bow on the Missouri redistricting saga, which finally came to a close days ago when the Supreme Court smacked down Republicans—and wayward judges—once and for all. But speaking of unprepared, the GOP’s long-running effort to block pro-democracy ballot measures has left them with little time, and even less money, to campaign against them.

House

LA-06

Allies of state Sen. Rick Edmonds are airing ads highlighting a 2007 rape allegation against fellow Republican Blake Miguez ahead of their contest next month for Louisiana’s open and newly gerrymandered 6th District.

“We don’t know why conservative leaders said no to Blake Miguez,” begins the narrator for a group called Louisiana First Victory Fund. “Maybe Miguez didn’t tell them about the police report accusing him of rape.”

The Atlantic reported in March that a former girlfriend of Miguez, who is also a member of the state Senate, filed a police report accusing him of “locking her in bedrooms, taking away her keys, and holding her down.” She also told authorities that he attempted to follow her after she fled following the alleged rape.

The police report said that the woman did not press charges against Miguez, whose campaign called the allegation “categorically false.”

The ad levels further attacks on Miguez, including a charge that “the people bankrolling Blake want to end our flood insurance.” According to NOLA.com, that’s a reference to Miguez’s allies at the Club for Growth, which has called for replacing the federally run National Flood Insurance Program with private insurance.

The narrator also accuses Miguez of having “shot a dog and laughed,” a story reported last year by the Daily Mail, a conservative British tabloid.

The Club for Growth, meanwhile, recently launched ads attacking Edmonds over taxes. The FEC had tracked close to $500,000 in independent expenditures from the Club through Wednesday, compared to just over $100,000 for Louisiana First Victory Fund.

Mayors & County Leaders

Los Angeles, CA Mayor

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has launched her first negative ads against City Councilmember Nithya Raman, an offensive that comes as Bass’ own allies find her behind in their own polling.

Despite the unfavorable results, they were nonetheless shared with Politico by the Central City Association, a business group that recently commissioned a survey from FM3. That poll finds Raman leading Bass, a fellow Democrat, by a 39-35 margin in the officially nonpartisan general election.

Last week, a UC Berkeley survey for the Los Angeles Times showed Raman, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, beating Bass by an even wider 39-28 spread.

In a memo, FM3 says it found Bass pulling into a narrow lead after respondents heard “negative information about both candidates,” but unusually, it didn’t specify what those informed ballot numbers were. Bass is taking that message to heart, though, and is running ads accusing Raman of missing crucial votes on the City Council.

Bass’ challenging reelection campaign comes after she’s spent nearly two years facing intense criticism for her response to the wildfires that devastated the city in January of 2025 and the subsequent rebuilding effort.

The mayor took first place among the 14 candidates who competed in the June primary, but her 34% of the vote underscored how tough the general election would be. In the hopes of securing a more favorable matchup, Bass’ supporters sought to boost Republican Spencer Pratt in that race, but instead, Raman edged him out 29-26 for the crucial second-place spot.

Poll Pile

All polls must comply with The Downballot’s requirements.

• ME-Sen: co/efficient:

  • Susan Collins (R-inc): 48, Troy Jackson (D): 46.

  • Co/efficient, a Republican firm, says this poll was “[n]ot sponsored by any candidate committee, party committee or other independent expenditure.”

• MI-Sen: Beacon Research/Shaw & Company Research for Fox News:

  • Abdul El-Sayed (D): 50, Mike Rogers (R): 49.

• NC-Sen: YouGov for Catawba College:

  • Roy Cooper (D): 48, Michael Whatley (R): 37.

  • June: 48-34 Cooper.

• SD-Sen: Zenith Research for Brian Bengs:

  • Mike Rounds (R-inc): 44, Bengs (I): 38.

• ME-Gov: co/efficient:

  • Hannah Pingree (D): 47, Bobby Charles (R): 38, Richard Bennett (I): 6.

• MI-Gov: Beacon/Shaw:

  • Jocelyn Benson (D): 54, John James (R): 45.

• WI-Gov: Marquette University Law School:

  • David Crowley (D): 49, Tom Tiffany (R): 46.

  • Aug.: 49-44 Crowley.

• TX-09: Public Policy Polling for Leticia Gutierrez:

  • Alex Mealer (R): 45, Gutierrez (D): 39.

• TX-10: Change Research for Caitlin Rourk:

  • Chris Gober (R): 48, Rourk (D): 41.

• NC Supreme Court: YouGov for Catawba:

  • Anita Earls (D-inc): 44, Sarah Stevens (R): 36.

  • June: 40-35 Earls.

• CA Ballot - Proposition 39 (voter ID): Mason-Dixon for NBCU/Telemundo:

  • Yes: 49, No: 42.

• CA Ballot - Proposition 40 (wealth tax): Mason-Dixon:

  • Yes: 48, No: 38.