BUCK: Time for an update from the West Coast — the Pacific Northwest, specifically — one of the most important races right now in the country, the governor’s race in Oregon, and we want to thank all of our affiliates up there. In Albany, KLOO-AM; in Bend, KBNW; Roseburg, KQEN; and, of course, KEX in Portland. Amazin’ Drazan, Christine Drazan back with us now. Christine, you’re looking pretty good in the polls, but we know it’s pedal to the metal. What’s going on right now? What are they throwing at you and how do you close this deal?
DRAZAN: Oh, you guys, thanks again for having me back. I’m so excited to be back with you today. Here’s the thing. The Democrats have all of a sudden decided that they are going to campaign in this race and they’re going to try to actually win. There for a while, I thought that they were just determined to lose because they were trying to manipulate voters and say all the things. But now they’ve doubled-down on that and they’re spending even more money than they were before to mislead and lie to voters. But it does look like they weren’t taking this race for granted anymore, which means this: I need anybody that wants change in the state of Oregon to vote.
The pedal to the metal and this final week of this race is really all about in Oregon, getting people to take the ballot that’s sitting on the kitchen counter, fill it out and turn it in because we don’t have in-person voting. We have all vote by mail in my state. People have had their ballots for a couple of weeks. So, I need Oregonians to get real serious, real fast about turning their ballots in and helping us pull this across the finish line, because the Democrats are just waking up. I mean, my opponent, Tina Kotek, is spending more money on YouTube and digital platforms than almost any other candidate in the nation because she knows she’s losing today. But that’s only if Oregonians show up and turn in their ballots.
CLAY: Christine, when we started having you on, people said Buck and I were crazy for telling them that you were going to win in Oregon.
DRAZAN: (laughing)
CLAY: And so, first of all, you are going to win in Oregon. And Buck and I are personally going to come up and celebrate with you in Oregon at some point because it’s such a monumental event.
DRAZAN: Oh! That’s a deal.
CLAY: Yeah. For you to talk like when you came on and talked about the fact that for the first time since 1980s, a Republican can win, it feels like such a seismic moment. So we need everybody out there to support you. I’m curious, as we come down the stretch and I’ve started to read all these articles in Politico and New York Times and everywhere else where they’re like, “Oh, this Christine Drazan has a real chance of winning in Oregon,” as they’ve all started to panic a little bit. What’s the craziest thing that you have seen said about you that’s totally not true, but is a sign of the desperation? Sort of the example that I use is you move from you have no chance to suddenly your opponents are just throwing haymakers at you left and right, and often times there’s no reality to them at all. It’s like a boxing match. They’re losing and they’re panicked.
DRAZAN: (laughing) Yeah, they are associating me with people and entities I’ve never met; I’ve never heard of.
BUCK: Of course.
DRAZAN: They are. They’re just literally making stuff up. It’s like they rolled out of bed in the morning, and they went, “Well, I mean, I don’t know. What do you want to say?” They’re just making it up. And the thing about it is, it’s all a way to distract from their failed records. We know that she can’t actually talk about what it feels like to live here. Homelessness. Affordability. You know, our schools are just plummeting. You name it. Like all the issues — all the kitchen table issues that affect people day to day in my beautiful home state — are just in the toilet right now because of Tina Kotek leadership and Kate Brown’s leadership together. And we find ourselves in this position where they can’t talk about that. So they’re just making stuff up about me. And I’m just trying to talk directly to Oregon voters and say, “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” If the answer is no, vote for change. Join me. Let’s get this done.
CLAY: We’re talking to Christine Drazan, the next governor of the great state of Oregon, as long as all of you get your votes in. Christine, when you look around, Buck and I been talking about this. Tudor Dixon’s a mom of four in Michigan. She’s having a lot of success trying to take down Gretchen Whitmer. Heidi Ganahl is running in Colorado, and she got called “a mad mom,” and it seems like that has really, you know, sort of energized her campaign. Certainly, Tiffany Smiley up there in the Pacific Northwest with you in Washington is having a lot of success running against Patty Murray.
Why do you think…? And in the Wall Street Journal today, there’s a great article about how suburban women are overwhelmingly breaking for Republicans right now. Many of those suburban women, obviously, are moms. Why do you think that there’s that national tide of women, moms in particular, who are finally saying, “We’ve had enough,” because I think that’s a big impetus that you’re getting in Oregon as well.
DRAZAN: Yeah, no, it absolutely is. And it really is just about our families and our kids. In Oregon in particular, our schools were shut down longer than even California. Kids in Oregon were not getting an education for almost two years. Their school check-ins would be a couple of hours a day in aggregate. So they would spend 15 minutes online with one teacher and then log out. They’d never have to show their screens. Nobody ever has to see their faces. And they have once a week check on check-ins for their social and emotional health. It was a joke and families knew it.
Kids certainly knew it. And moms are standing up saying, “Never again, never again.” Like, it’s not safe in our streets. Crime is skyrocketing in our state and homelessness is everywhere. It’s not safe for kids to go to the park. It’s not safe for them to walk to school. Like, once you’re at the point where you don’t feel comfortable letting your kid play out in the front yard because there might be a homeless person that’s going to try to root through your trash, like, something’s broken. And they are looking around saying, we need change, and we believe the only way to get this done is to vote Republican in the state of Oregon. And they’re right.
DRAZAN: (laughing)
CLAY: (laughing)
BUCK: The snowflakes will be melted all over the liberal media if Oregon goes red at the governor’s race. So for that alone, you should be very fired up about this everyone listening. But I did want to ask you, Christine, if you become — and we believe you will be, but we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. But if you become the next governor of Oregon, you’re talking about these challenges, these issues. Covid showed people that the governor really matters —
DRAZAN: Yeah.
BUCK: — that the state powers that a governor has can make a huge difference, for better or for worse. Unfortunately, in places like New York and was for worse and in Oregon. What would you do, though? What are some of the things that you know you could do if you have the governor’s powers to make Oregonians lives just a little bit better, a little bit safer?
DRAZAN: Yeah. I am committed to addressing the homeless crisis. It’s the number-one issue in our state, and I look forward to hosting you guys when you come out next. But the reality for us living here in Oregon is that the homeless crisis is out of control. And so I will declare a homelessness state of emergency on day one. That’s going to allow me as governor to take the reins of our response to homelessness and align resources and ensure that local governments aren’t overwhelmed by these populations that have come into their communities.
Okay, we need more housing, a hundred percent — and also, that’s not the crisis. It’s a humanitarian crisis, and families know it because when they walk past our homeless populations, they know that the folks that are out there on their streets are facing addiction. They’re facing challenges that aren’t just simply they don’t have a place to live at night. So, homelessness is number one. But, you know, I’m going to support police. I’m going to fully fund our state troopers. That means we’re going to have a presence of law enforcement that we haven’t seen in years, and we desperately need.
And I’m going to restore graduation standards, graduation requirements in our state. Tina Kotek and Kate Brown abandoned our kids. They threw our kids under the bus during covid. But even before that time, our outcomes for our classes, in our classrooms — our kids ability to hit proficiency in reading, in math, in science — was always below the national average. Who among the worst in the nation for how poor? Our ability to actually graduate kids. So what did they do? They lowered the standards so that more kids could pass that bar. That’s not serving our kiddos.
So, I’m going to restore those graduation requirements and I’m going to ensure that what we’re focused on in the classroom is not politics, but it really is reading, writing, and math. Let’s get back to the basics and let’s help our students succeed. So education, homelessness, public safety — and the last part of this has got to be affordability. Oregon is one of the least affordable places to live in the nation, in large part due to Kate Brown and Tina Kotek doubling the size of state government in the ten years that they’ve been in charge together.
That has meant higher taxes were among that were among one of the highest states in the nation for gas prices. It shouldn’t be that way, and so I am going to suspend what we have here called our Clean Fuels Program. It was built to suspend it if gas prices went through the roof, which they have done here. And I’m going to work, you know, to roll back rules and regulations are driving up costs and certainly will veto any tax measure the price of my desk. We have got to get serious about making this an affordable place for Oregonians to live and raise their families.
CLAY: She is the next governor of the great state of Oregon, as Buck has been calling you, Amazin’ Drazan.
DRAZAN: (laughing)
CLAY: Maybe we can have a T-shirt when we come out and visit you —
DRAZAN: (laughing)
CLAY: — and get those ballots in. One more time, Christine, the website if people want to support you?
DRAZAN: ChristineForOregon.com. I welcome the help. I welcome the support. You can find out more about my road map for Oregon’s future there as well — and huge shout out to Buck. Thank you!
CLAY: (laughing)
BUCK: Thank you.
DRAZAN: (laughing)
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