All 3 governor candidates answer questions from the UO media event

Presenter: KEPW-Whole Community News is providing equal access to all ballot candidates. From the corporate media-sponsored event that was staged at the University of Oregon Oct. 1, here are the first six questions posed to the candidates for Oregon governor. What is the most pressing problem Oregon faces, and how would you fix it? Christine Drazan:

Christine Drazan (Candidate for governor of Oregon): There’s no question that the No. 1 issue facing families across our state is affordability. Families are being crushed under some of the highest taxes in the nation. Some of the heaviest regulatory burden across the nation that actually translates into increased costs for families.

I am committed to ensuring that we reduce the burden on Oregon families. I have a plan that will look at all of the functions of government through the lens of an Oregon family, and I will establish the opportunity for everything that we do—procedures, licensing fees, permits—how does this affect Oregon families?

What is the true cost of government on Oregon families? I will also rescind Tina Kotek’s climate protection program on day one, which will drive up the cost of utilities and power across our state. We cannot afford to continue to advance a political agenda that harms families and makes us uniquely expensive.

Presenter: Brett Smith:

Brett Smith (Candidate for governor of Oregon): I’m going to have to agree with Sen. Drazan on this, and it’s definitely affordability is the No. 1 issue hitting Oregonians.

Why wouldn’t it be? And we absolutely need to open up the books and we need to audit everything. And we need to look at licensing fees and regulations and seeing what kind of cuts we can make in those avenues. 

And to further even extend that point, what kind of cuts we could make to like the inundation of nonprofits that we’re paying to implement a lot of these policies. 

But I’d also like to put out there that I do have an affordability plan and it will—this plan—makes large employers pay for the costs they push onto taxpayers. 

Large, profitable employers routinely pay wages low enough that their own workers must turn to SNAP and the Oregon Health Plan just to get by, shifting labor costs onto the Oregon taxpayer, and that’s something that I want to address.

Presenter: Tina Kotek:

Tina Kotek (Candidate for governor of Oregon): I think it’s ironic that Sen. Drazan wants to talk about affordability, when she voted against a low-income tax break in the session this year. 

I think it’s ironic that she says affordability is an issue when she voted against the POWER Act, which is right now, reducing household utility rates by making data centers pay their fair share.

If we’re going to take on affordability, we have to be serious about it. And one of those things is housing, making sure we can build more housing so people can afford to live here.

Except Christine Drazan has voted multiple times against many bills that would help us build more housing, pay for housing, and actually reduce the cost of housing across the state.

If we’re going to be serious about affordability, then we have to put real solutions on the table and be willing to vote for them. And that is not the record that Christine Drazan has.

Christine Drazan (Candidate for governor of Oregon): This is exactly what I was talking about. It is shocking to me that so early in this conversation, Tina Kotek would refuse to acknowledge that she has been the primary driver of cost increases for Oregon families across our state.

Everything that’s happened that’s driven costs here has been through her, either as speaker of the House or governor. She has personally voted for over $30 billion of tax increases.

I’m proud to have stood with Oregon families and stopped her $15 billion tax increase at the end of the last long session, which Oregonians eventually rejected at the ballot box, but we are talking about someone that is not being honest with Oregonians right now.

The price of goods and services in our state can be laid at her feet.

Presenter: Oregon’s reading scores are among the worst in the nation, even though we’re spending over $12 billion a year, which works out to just over $22,000 per student. Why aren’t we seeing better test results? Tina Kotek.

Tina Kotek (Candidate for governor of Oregon): Well, I’m not satisfied either, when we are about middle of the pack in funding and our outcomes aren’t there.

That is why I have fought since day one to do things like investing in early literacy. We are seeing improvements in our districts who have taken full advantage of the initiative that I have passed to help our educators teach the science of reading in our classrooms like Salem, Kaiser and Tigard-tualatin, we are seeing improvements.

We need to focus on the basics. And that’s what I’ve been doing as your governor. I’ve passed an accountability bill that says we should have statewide performance standards. So those dollars are spent in a way that our students actually approve or improve. Christine Drazan voted against that bill.

I think we need to reduce our chronic absenteeism in the state. We have to track it better. We have to help our districts, help get our students back in the classroom. Christine Drazan, She voted against the bill to actually track and have real time reporting on absenteeism in our state. What we need to do is focus on high quality instruction and more instructional time.

I did an executive order that said, let’s stop cutting instructional time in our state because we need to get more classroom time. And I ban cell phones in our schools. It’s one thing that is keeping our students engaged and more involved, and our teachers are able to teach in the classroom because of that.

If we’re going to be serious about education, we have to focus on the basics and be committed to holding our districts accountable.

We have more work to do, and we want to stay the course on the things that are working. 

Presenter: Christine Drazan:

Christine Drazan (Candidate for governor of Oregon): Well, I can answer the question why? It’s because of Governor Tina Kotek. She voted to remove graduation standards. She kept our schools shut down for longer than anywhere else in the nation.

As she has advanced politics inside the classroom, she hasn’t kept teachers safe inside the classroom. The issues that we face in our schools right now can be laid at the feet of the sitting governor. There’s no other way around it. She happens to be the superintendent of public instruction. And I would say, given the test results that just came out, nothing is working.

I’m a mom of three. I have spent my fair share in the classroom, and I’m grateful for fantastic teachers that help my kids get through tough times academically, but today those teachers are also being left behind. We have got to focus on our kids. We’ve got to focus on academic outcomes. More money is not solving this problem.

It is going to take a focus on third-grade reading. We’re going to have to restore graduation requirements, and we need to get serious about absolutely focusing entirely on academics rather than political agendas.

Presenter: Brett Smith:

Brett Smith (Candidate for governor of Oregon): The fact that we increase the amount we spend by $1.5 billion a year just to get abysmal results—I’m just going to harken that back to money being a tool, right? We now live in a society where money is the end-all, be-all.

I mean, it’s the way you get into this debate, right? It’s the criteria on which you’re judged by. That’s what success is, is money, right?

‘How much money has Christine Drazan raised, how much money has Tina Kotek raised,’ right, not: How are they using the money? How are they wielding this tool, this immensely powerful tool?

And I believe the solution is just to get people in there who understand the value of a dollar, who have been able to take small sums of money and do great things with them—that is the solution to this problem.

If you want to fix education or housing or whatever it is, the things that we’re just spending this exorbitant amount of money on with people who don’t appreciate it or understand what it is to do without.

Presenter: How can we increase the supply of housing? Christine Drazan:

Christine Drazan (Candidate for governor of Oregon): Well, I absolutely believe that we must tackle questions around availability of land to build on. We can protect high value farmland, forest land and maintain Oregon’s commitment to our environment while not constricting the availability of housing.

We have got to advance permits and ensure that permitting is expedited. We have got to. We have got to lower the cost of system development charges. I talked to builders all the time that tell me that the price of building the home sometimes is equivalent to the price of getting through the government bureaucracy to begin to build the home. But more than anything else, I want to circle back to this question of homelessness.

Homelessness is not strictly a housing challenge. The issues that we face across our state, the homeless, challenges that we face across our state, must be tied to a response, which is recovery first and recovery oriented. If we want to get serious about improving our homeless challenges across Oregon.

Presenter: Tina Kotek:

Tina Kotek (Candidate for governor of Oregon): We are producing more homes in our state because of the work that we have been doing here to streamline permitting, reducing red tape, investing in infrastructure, helping our communities plan better to have the housing that they need.

And I just want to say again, you have to look at voting records. Christine Drazan has voted multiple times against bills that can pay for housing, that can streamline permitting.

So for her to say that she wants to, you know, do something about housing, her plan is basically what we’ve been doing for the last four years, and we’re seeing progress six months, the first six months of last year to the first six months of this year, Oregon is up eleven and a half percent in its housing starts.

That is progress. When when I started, we were way below that. And other parts of the country are flat or down. We are making progress here and we need more housing across our state so people can live and work where they want to and afford the homes and get them into home ownership, because that’s important for our state. 

Christine Drazan (Candidate for governor of Oregon): This was Tina Kotek’s no. 1 agenda item when she ran for governor four years ago. It has been an abysmal failure.

We have almost 10-year record lows in housing production. We see multifamily in downtown Portland that took a nosedive after she enforced inclusionary zoning and rent control in the city.

We have got to recognize that the speaker and the governor have contributed to this through Tina Kotek. This has been a government takeover of housing that has not actually worked with the private sector to develop more housing. It has just added more bureaucracy.

Presenter: Brett Smith:

Brett Smith (Candidate for governor of Oregon): Yeah. What do you do to increase Oregon’s housing supply?

So Sen. Drazan and Gov. Kotek are both approaching this the right way. Well, we need to allocate land, right, that doesn’t ruin farmland or forests or anything like that, and we’ve got to increase housing, right?

But there’s also an option of using the housing that we already have available, right? There’s more empty houses than there are homeless people.

And I am a big fan of the Housing First initiative. My take on that would be to upgrade somebody who already owns a home so it doesn’t build contention or animosity. It’s not just giving free homes , you know, but it’s upgrading a citizen’s home, somebody who works for a living.

I’ll just use myself as an example. If somebody come knocking on my door and was like, ‘Hey, we’d like to give you this house. It’s got more than what you have. It’s a slight upgrade. In return, you give us your house.’

And they take my house. And, you know, a homeless person is allowed to move in there. There’s already a neighborhood there that’s going to, you know, support them and get them away from, you know, potentially bad influence, etc. I would start with that.

Presenter: Name three specific actions that will make everyday life more affordable for Oregonians. Brett Smith:

Brett Smith (Candidate for governor of Oregon): Yeah. So this one’s actually pretty simple. Oregonians are paying more for housing, utility, food and taxes. And I believe the question is what three specific actions will you take. I’ll let these two blame each other as to why everything’s terrible. But the three specific actions that I would take as soon as possible if I was governor:

Action number one is to get rid of Commissioner No. 1 off the Public Utilities Commission.

My second action would be get rid of Commissioner No. 2 off of the Public Utilities Commission.

And my third action would be to get rid of Commissioner No. 3 off of the Public Utilities Commission.

We need to put people on there who are less interested in protecting the fiduciary responsibility of monopoly-sanctioned businesses over our citizenry.

Presenter: Tina Kotek:

Tina Kotek (Candidate for governor of Oregon): Well, I’ve already started by passing and signing the Power Act, which reduces household utility rates because it makes data centers pay their fair share. And Christine Drazan, she voted against that.

It’s about making sure we protect Oregonians from the draconian cuts that are coming from President Trump around the Oregon Health Plan and food assistance programs, making sure we push back and making sure that our federal tax dollars are coming back to Oregon to support families who need a little bit of extra help and need that health care coverage.

As governor, I will continue to push back, and I don’t believe Gov. Drazan would do that because she is in lockstep with President Trump.

And so when it comes to affordability, it’s everything. It’s taking, for example, medical debt off your credit score. It’s about going after hidden fees. It’s about standing up to grocery stores who want to surveil your activity and change their prices accordingly.

We have to do all those things and make sure that corporations do not take advantage of Oregonians who are struggling to make ends meet.

Presenter: Christine Drazan:

Christine Drazan (Candidate for governor of Oregon): The best thing that can be done for Oregonians to address affordability is to ensure that Tina Kotek does not get a second term, as she solves every single challenge that she sees every single problem in the state of Oregon with a new tax.

The pressure that you’re feeling in your home, the cost of utilities that is all tied to Tina Kotek climate agenda, which is in particular attacking the price of heating gas prices. It’s increasing all of those exponentially and uniquely to the state of Oregon. I am committed to ensuring that, as your governor, I will always put family budgets first.

My family struggled when I was growing up. I know how hard that can be to make ends meet, and it is incredibly tough when your government absolutely makes it harder for you. So that means lowering taxes. It means abandoning the climate agenda that costs additional money inside the state of Oregon.

And it means putting families first and vetoing new tax increases and ensuring that families are the ones who are at the center of every single conversation.

Tina Kotek (Candidate for governor of Oregon): So let’s talk about to my opening comment earlier affordability. When Christine Drazan talks about taxes, she voted against a bill that passed that lowered taxes for Oregonians.

She voted against that. And if she were honest about why she did that, it’s because she was okay with continuing to give large tax breaks to companies who don’t need it.

And so when we’re talking about affordability, it’s about who, at the end of the day, is going to vote in a way that stands up for real Oregonians. And her record just does not support that.

Presenter: Oregon farmers say they are paying higher labor costs than other states. In Colorado, overtime doesn’t start at 40 hours, but at 56 hours. Should Oregon raise the overtime threshold? Christine Drazan.

Christine Drazan (Candidate for governor of Oregon): It’s very reasonable to work with our farmers for what they’re telling us is going to take to keep them in business.

They have repeatedly come to the legislature and said they need relief from these overtime rules to be able to continue to maintain farming in our state: ag, ranching, all of these industries are not just a part of our heritage. They’re a part of our economy. And I will do everything in my power to protect them and ensure that we don’t just, , respect them , with our rhetoric, but that we actually work with them to ensure that they can stay in business and that they can continue to put food on the tables of Oregon families.

We have right now, not just ag overtime, which clearly needs to be addressed, but there was intended to be a takeover of our family farms through labor boards in the state of Oregon that farmers and ag interests across our state opposed. In the course of this last session, which Tina Kotek advanced and taxes after taxes, the commercial activities tax, which is Oregon’s hidden sales tax, hits our farms especially hard.

Presenter: Tina Kotek:

Tina Kotek (Candidate for governor of Oregon): I hope sometime in the course of the evening we’ll have some facts coming from Christine Drazan.

But let’s talk about overtime. The legislature passed changing overtime calculations for our farmworkers. I think it is fair and moral to make sure when people work hard in our fields, picking our food, being out in the fields when it’s hot and dangerous, get paid overtime.

Now I will stand up for our ag community as well when there’s a problem fighting for them. For example, for our farmers in the Gorge when they were impacted by pestilence, going to the USDA, going to the federal government, asking for emergency relief.

I think we have to support all parts of our state, and I am a governor for the entire state.

But that does not mean overlooking basic human needs like overtime for the people who put food on our table.

Christine Drazan: It is laughable to me that Gov. Kotek would act like she’s supporting farmers when she ignores their direct request to what she can do as governor of our state, as she was more than willing to do a photo op and act like she was engaging to the benefit of our farmers and my legislative district.

But what they asked for was regulatory relief. They asked for regulatory relief and the nitpicking for what they’re doing to provide housing for their workforce. They asked for regulatory relief for ag overtime. They asked for relief from the very real pressures that the governor of our state has put on their family farms for them to be able to, to exist.

And all she did was offer lip service and point to the federal government for relief.

Presenter: Brett Smith:

Brett Smith (Candidate for governor of Oregon): Yeah. So as a worker, overtime hours start at 40, man, that’s just how that works.

But also living and being raised in farming communities, I understand the margins that these people walk and they’re very tight, which is why I want to start subsidizing our local ranches and farms and agriculture community in general, instead of subsidizing, say, like, Amazon or Intel.

All this money that we’re giving them for their ‘jobs,’ if we started subsidizing the producers in our state and keeping those resources in our state and started making it conducive for them to do business in this state and giving them the resources to do business in this state and compete with outside competition, they would more easily thrive. 

And that’s the environment that I want to create. I want our food grown here to be consumed here, as far as that goes.

Presenter: Oregonians—and primarily Eastern Oregonians—just experienced our worst wildfire season ever. What will you do for wildfire mitigation? Tina Kotek:

Tina Kotek (Candidate for governor of Oregon): Well, as governor, I’ve been fighting hard to make sure we have the most immediate response during our wildfire season. It was a terrible wildfire season. I want to thank all of our first responders and firefighters who fought valiantly all season long to protect homes and protect property and protect livestock.

I have fought for permanent funding for wildfire defense in our state, which, by the way, a bill that Christine Drazan didn’t even bother to show up to work to vote for because it was going to provide dedicated funding to help us fight wildfires. 

But we have to do more than that. Climate is changing our world. We have to be more resilient. We have to support our communities to be more responsive, to help them be prepared so that our communities can be prepared when they are living close to wildfire prone areas. 

And we will continue to invest in that and work with our federal partners to help us mitigate fuel on the landscape so our forests are better protected from wildfire going forward.

We are in drought, we are in climate change, and I believe that we have to deal with it and be resilient—unlike my opponent, who does not believe in climate change.

Presenter: Christine Drazan:

Christine Drazan (Candidate for governor of Oregon): The comments from the governor tonight are approaching absurd. I absolutely believe that man-made climate change has an impact on us, and it is absurd for her to to assert otherwise.

It doesn’t mean that I want to raise taxes to address it. Her only solution to any challenge is to raise taxes, and that is her only solution related to climate as well. We haven’t even started talking about the climate protection plan that she’s put in place that would actually raise costs at the fuel pump by $1.10. The six-cent gas tax was nowhere near enough. 

If we want to talk wildfire, it’s important to recognize that budgets express priorities, and the priorities for our governor have not been to fully fund the needs for us to do mitigation and to be able to treat the landscape so that we don’t have the kind of megafires that we’ve seen in recent years.

It’s incredibly important that people realize that we have got a governor that only advances rhetoric when it’s election year, but when it comes right down to it, all she wants is more power and to raise more taxes.

Presenter: Brett Smith:

Brett Smith (Candidate for governor of Oregon): Good Lord, I’m getting the impression that these two might not like each other. 

Community preparedness: I’d like to get the resources to the communities who are going to be most impacted in these areas, like rural areas and these rural communities, to be able to assess the land themselves, get them some training, see what actually needs to be done to mitigate any potential threat or fire— whether that be some forestry action, clearing out some of the deadwood, or whatever it takes.

But also giving them resources to evacuate homes and, you know, the local communities quickly and safely without having to depend on our fire services to come and do that for them, right? 

I want communities to be able to take action to help themselves in these situations until help can arrive and make them a little more independent.

Presenter: KEPW is offering equal time to all candidates on the ballot. You can learn more about the candidates at our website, KEPW.News.