If Democrat Tina Kotek loses, here is why:
Democrats dropped the ball on keeping Portland a gracious, livable city.
There is a three-person race for governor. Republican Christine Drazan. Non-Affiliated Betsy Johnson. Democrat Tina Kotek. Recent polls show Johnson stuck at under 20%, and Drazen slightly ahead. Johnson is probably taking more Democratic votes than Republican ones. Johnson is pro-choice and she agrees that Biden won the election.
But Betsy Johnson isn't the main reason Kotek may well lose. She isn't the spoiler as much as she is the symptom of voter frustration with the status quo. The Republican brand problem in Oregon is that in this uncompromising RINO-hunting Trump era, Republicans look better suited for Idaho or Alabama than they do Oregon.
But Democrats screwed up, too. Their political error showed up in the summer and fall of 2020. George Floyd's slow death solidified an idea that ruminates in progressive circles, that White Americans are deeply, fundamentally racist. It is a simple reductionist theory that anti-Black prejudice shapes American history and always has. Therefore, good Americans should be anti-racist. White Americans were urged to "do the work" to admit their privilege. George Floyd was confirmation that there is indeed something rotten in America.
Portland citizens joined demonstrations showing support for Black lives mattering. Those could have been useful civic engagement. But mixed into those demonstrations were young nihilistic vandals, hooligans, and looters. The whole society is corrupt! Burn it all down! This message has a home on both the populist right and populist left. Trump, Fox, Q-Anon, and the Proud Boys all say a version of that message. The anarchist left says that corporations, landlords, the military-industrial complex, and "the establishment" are crushing America. Anarchist vandals infiltrated the George Floyd protests. They threw rocks, broke windows, set fires at businesses and public buildings night after night for months. The violence left a mess of closed businesses alongside encampments of unhoused people on the sidewalks and doorways of Portland.
Democratic leaders in Oregon and Portland lost control of the police and the justice system. Democratic leaders seemed unable to distinguish between orderly protesters and the "burn it down" vandals. The police were passive-aggressive and refused to arrest troublemakers. Let's see how people like having no police. The District Attorney won't prosecute people, so why bother arresting them? The idea of American racial guilt muddled the response of Democratic leaders. Maybe vandalism and arson are equivalent to refusing to sit at the back of the bus.
The public lost patience with the people in charge, Democrats. Tina Kotek was a legislative leader, not a police commissioner, but she is a prominent Democrat from Portland. She gets the political blame.
Kotek may win in what has become a two-person race. Democrats usually carry Portland with huge margins. Drazan carries the scent of Trump's populist autocracy. He won't shut up, he voices the Republican message, and Republicans dare not condemn him. Kotek's ads say a vote for Drazan is a vote for the extreme MAGA Trump platform. It may work.
But if Kotek loses, it will be because she is wrapped up in the public mind with Democrats letting vandals roam free. Portland isn't the graceful, livable city it once was. Kotek won't get the margins out of Portland that previous Democratic candidates enjoyed. If she loses, that is why.
I will likely vote for Tina Kotek but not with any enthusiasm. Portland was once my favorite city on the west coast. I've not gone there since the riots, but my friend goes up to visit his grandchildren and finds it horribly depressing. Housing needs to replace tent cities. I don't know what the solution is to people who are choosing to live on the streets but it needs to be addressed somehow.
Let's say what it was....the slow murder of George Floyd.
Good analysis. Sure hope Tina wins.