PORTLAND, OR — Three of Oregon’s top Republican gubernatorial candidates on Saturday offered some of the clearest insight yet into how they’d take the reins of the state’s highest office at their first forum together ahead of the May primary.

The ex-Portland Trail Blazer Chris Dudley, State Rep. Ed Diehl, R-Scio, and Marion County Commissioner Danielle Bethell convened in the ballroom of North Portland’s Holiday Inn at the Columbia Riverfront for the 16th Annual Leadership and Activist Conference, hosted by the Tigard-based Western Liberty Network.  Alongside the Republican candidates was Libertarian candidate Matt Rowe, a former mayor of Coquille and previous state chair of Oregon’s Libertarian Party.

The forum — hosted by Portland-based interior designer and podcaster Angela Todd — capped off a day-long session during which conference speakers decried left-wing politics, memorialized the slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk and debated how best to organize political campaigns and younger Americans in right-leaning politics.

Despite Oregon not having elected a Republican governor since 1982, candidates on Saturday projected confidence that the tides could be turning in light of the successful Republican-backed ballot referendum campaign to undo the tax and fee hikes Oregon Democrats passed to pay for growing transportation costs.

Petitioners reported collecting 250,000 signatures from voters in the state, putting the increases to the state’s gas tax, transit payroll tax and vehicle title and registration fees on hold until voters have a say. Democratic lawmakers will seek to put the measure on the same ballot as the May 19 primary following guidance from the Oregon Secretary of State.

“What happened with the gas tax, getting everybody out there, the energy that I’ve seen and felt throughout this state is amazing,” said Dudley, a former Republican gubernatorial candidate from 2010 who came within 23,000 votes of winning. “It’s energized me, and it makes me believe that we can get this done.”

The candidates’ remarks also came less than two weeks after Dudley and Diehl formally announced they would be running for the gubernatorial race, broadening a Republican field in which Drazan was previously the most high-profile figure.

Each of them, however, face an uphill battle during an election year in which Republicans control the White House and Congress and the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement tactics have sparked widespread backlash, including from some federal Republican lawmakers. A national Democratic fundraising arm previously called Oregon’s slate of Republican candidates a “messy, crowded clown car of a primary.”

“(Gov.) Tom McCall would tell President Trump to go straight to hell,” said Rowe, who cited a poll by the Democratic Governor’s Association which found that 61% of Oregonians want a governor who will stand up to Trump’s policies. “You’re going to have a real difficult time selling them.”

Candidates talk policy

None of the Republican candidates, however, chose to directly criticize President Donald Trump.

Diehl, who has made headlines for his role leading the transportation referendum, laid out several of his key priorities should he win the election. He said he would conduct a comprehensive audit of every Oregon agency and shift the focus of the Department of Transportation away from efforts supporting equity. By the end of the night, he garnered more than twice the votes Dudley and Bethell each received in a straw poll.

He promised to lower taxes and repeal executive orders that increase energy costs while suggesting he would work to undo the 2021 sanctuary law passed by Oregon lawmakers, which built on the state’s decades-long sanctuary policies to more explicitly bar local law enforcement from collaborating with federal immigration authorities without a court order.

The 2021 law allows individuals to bring civil suits in the case of any violations, prevents local jails from detaining people for federal immigration enforcement and blocks administrative subpoenas that ICE has previously issued to gather immigration information from Oregon law enforcement without a court order. Voters in the state rejected an effort to undo Oregon’s sanctuary protections in 2018.

“If I was governor in the first place, ICE wouldn’t have to come here. They would not be here,” Diehl said. “We would be cooperating, we would get the bad guys out of here. The temperature would go down.”

Dudley, standing at 6-foot-7 and the tallest in the room, sought to home in on his personal experiences with Type 1 diabetes, working to pay off college student loan debt and serving as a business executive, rather than offering many additional policy specifics. He touted his experience outside of politics as a strength.

The Sisters-based wealth management businessman did not address the criticism he has faced for moving to Southern California two years after he lost the 2010 election. He has kept a home in Oregon and continued voting in the state, though his current employer is based in Orange County, California, according to campaign finance records.

On Saturday, he said he would push to lower the state’s tax burden on working Oregonians, calling for a campaign message that could win over Democrats and Republicans in the state.

“As I walked earlier this week in Old Town in Portland, you see people strung out on fentanyl,” Dudley said. “When these people see people lying on the streets, or when I’m talking, traveling the state, talking with moms who have fourth graders, they don’t want to hear about the 10-year education plan. They want to change it. They want to change it now.”

Bethell, meanwhile, stressed her experience serving as a board member for the Salem-Keizer School District and as a current commissioner in Marion County, the state’s fifth-largest county based on population. She also said she would “gut” the Oregon Health Authority and return power to local county governments to tackle public and mental health issues.

After announcing her run in April, Bethell gained statewide attention over her role questioning Oregon officials over what her county alleged was a lack of clarity in the state’s sanctuary policies.

A lawsuit Marion County filed against the state of Oregon and the federal government alleges that conflicting federal and state guidance has left the county unable to determine whether it can release immigration information to federal authorities. Attorney General Dan Rayfield in October asked a federal judge to dismiss the lawsuit, though the case is ongoing.

“My job is to bring people together as a county commissioner,” Bethell said. “The greatest power I have today is to convene and to listen and then take what I heard and create solutions all the way to the federal government, if that’s what needs to be done.”

One notable absence on Saturday was state Sen. Christine Drazan, R-Canby, who is running again for the position after losing to Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek by less than 67,000 votes in 2022. Todd, the forum host, read a statement from Drazan’s campaign in which she said she was in Roseburg as part of her campaign efforts to travel the entire state.

“She has promised that as governor, she will focus on cutting taxes, lowering costs, fixing our schools, ending homelessness and taking on crime and holding government agencies accountable,” Todd said.

Another candidate in the race, the Jan. 6 rioter and conservative influencer David Medina, who received a pardon from Trump, was unable to attend due to timing issues, Todd said. She shared a portion of his statement in which he decried government overreach, corruption in agencies and what he perceives as bias in local media.

Oregon Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Julia Shumway for questions: info@oregoncapitalchronicle.com.