Republican takes Oregon’s 2nd-highest office
Published 1:30 am Wednesday, November 9, 2016
By Andrew Selsky
Associated Press
PORTLAND, Ore. — A Republican won the first statewide election in Oregon since 2002, with a victory in the race for the state’s second-highest office.
Democratic Gov. Kate Brown defeated Republican opponent Bud Pierce on Tuesday, but Republican Dennis Richardson beat Democrat Brad Avakian to become the next secretary of state.
In the state treasurer’s race, Democrat Tobias Read narrowly defeated Republican Jeff Gudman.
Richardson will be first in line to succeed the governor and is the auditor of public accounts, the chief elections officer, and the administrator of public records.
In a recent telephone interview with The Associated Press, Richardson said he would not let his conservative values play a role in his duties if he won.
Richardson said being chief auditor of the state would be the most important task.
Richardson said there should have been audits of state projects that misspent taxpayer money, like the Columbia River Crossing to build a new bridge. Almost $200 million was spent before it was abandoned without even a “shovelful of dirt dug,” he said.
It was the first GOP win in a statewide race since then-U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith was re-elected in 2002. The GOP hasn’t won the governor’s office since 1982. The last Republican secretary of state was Norma Paulus, who held the position in the 1980s.
In the most closely watched statewide ballot measure, Oregonians rejected a measure that would have taxed companies’ sales of more than $25 million, with many voters worrying that it would hit their own wallets.
Measure 97 “fell of its own weight when people understood what it would do,” Pat McCormick, a spokesman for the campaign to defeat the tax, said, according to The Oregonian/OregonLive.
Ben Unger, a main backer of Measure 97, conceded defeat Tuesday evening in a message to the media and supporters, saying that “big, out-of-state corporations had to shatter campaign finance records to beat us.”
Tens of millions of dollars were thrown into the battle over Measure 97 by both sides, with the “no” campaign largely funded by mostly out-of-state corporations.
Opponents and even the Legislative Revenue Office say every Oregonian would have been affected.
In other races:
— Ellen Rosenblum held onto her seat as attorney general, defeating Republican challenger Daniel Zene Crowe.
— U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden handily defeated Republican challenger Mark Callahan to retain his seat. Oregon’s sole Republican in Congress, Greg Walden, beat Democratic challenger Jim Crary in his district.
— Democratic U.S. Reps. Peter DeFazio, Earl Blumenauer, Suzanne Bonamici and Kurt Schrader were also keeping their seats in Congress.
Brown’s victory keeps her in the governor’s job for another two years. She will be finishing the last two years of the term of Gov. John Kitzhaber, who quit in February 2015 because of an influence-peddling scandal swirling around him and his fiancee, Cylvia Hayes.
Brown, the nation’s first bisexual governor, took over for Kitzhaber because as secretary of state she was next in line.
There will be another gubernatorial election in 2018.
