Dan Lavey had just passed Roseburg when he saw his first hint of trouble.
It was 2008, and Lavey was a campaign strategist hoping to steer U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith to reelection.
The Democratic challenger, Jeff Merkley, wasn’t making that easy. But it wasn’t Merkley’s name plastered on the hand-made signs Lavey began to notice in fields on a campaign trip to Southern Oregon.
They touted David Brownlow, a conservative Constitution Party candidate Lavey and his boss hadn’t paid much attention to.
“Holy crap,” Lavey recently recalled thinking. “This could be a problem, which it turned out to be.”
Brownlow proved a crucial factor in Smith’s narrow loss that year – one of a handful of potential “spoiler” outcomes in Oregon over the last three decades.
The question this year is whether a Democratic incumbent risks the same fate.
November’s rematch between Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek and GOP state Sen. Christine Drazan features just one other name on the ballot: Brett Smith, a nominee of the left-leaning Pacific Green Party.
Smith’s potential impact in the race has divided political observers. Some Democrats privately acknowledge being concerned he could siphon away votes Kotek needs if the race is tight. Republicans and other conservative-minded Oregonians would welcome that possibility.
“In a close race, even an unknown minor party candidate, especially when he’s the only one, creates an unpredictable variable that both Kotek and Drazan should take seriously,” said Lavey, who four years ago also helped manage the gubernatorial campaign of Betsy Johnson, a former state senator and moderate Democrat.
Polling released Tuesday suggests Smith could attract 4% of the vote, though few of those respondents said they were definitely planning on filling out the ballot for him.
But Kotek’s campaign and the Democratic Party of Oregon say they’re not sweating Smith, who has yet to report raising any money. They point out Kotek prevailed four years ago despite Johnson’s well-heeled presence in the race.
“In 2022, there was a third party candidate on the ballot who spent over $17 million and was expected to boost Christine Drazan, and Governor Kotek still won by a comfortable margin,” DPO Communications Advisor Thomas Crawford said in an email. “We’re confident voters will reelect Governor Kotek so she can continue making progress for our state.”
Johnson’s impact on the 2002 race – including from whom she pulled her more than 168,000 votes – is a matter of some dispute in political circles. Drazan has said this year that she was forced to spend time competing with Johnson for money and votes in rural areas in a way that she won’t this go-round.
Others downplay Smith’s potential impact as well. Pacific Green candidates in past gubernatorial races have topped out with 2% of the vote, while Jill Stein’s much-discussed presidential candidacy in 2024 garnered less than 1% of Oregon ballots.
“I just don’t see a lot of evidence (historically or at the moment) that the Green Party is likely to be a big draw from voters in Oregon who would otherwise vote for the Democratic ticket,” Chris Shortell, a political science professor at Portland State University, wrote in an email.
A potentially tight race
The most forceful sales pitch voters are likely to hear from Brett Smith may come in the voter’s pamphlet, where he makes a plea for third-party voters and disillusioned Oregonians to rally behind him.
“It’s you that will make or break this race,” the statement says. “It’s you that will challenge the status quo. Whoever you vote for will win. It’s that simple.”
Smith’s platform includes pushing for universal healthcare, a rallying point for political organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America. Smith also wants a permanent moratorium on data centers, a stronger stance than either Drazan or Kotek have taken on an issue that’s become a national lightning rod.
Whether or not the candidate can turn what may be popular political stances into votes will likely depend on whether he has money to spend — or money is spent in his favor — according to political consultants and elected officials interviewed for this story.
“If [Smith] gets to 4 to 5% and this race is as competitive as everyone is saying, that’s significant,” said Rebecca Tweed, a Republican political consultant. “But can he get to that when he’s sitting on zero dollars right now?”
Limited polling in the governor’s race suggests the race could be tight.
Drazan led Kotek by four percentage points in one poll her campaign fielded in late June. In a more recent survey — conducted earlier this month and paid for by a business advocacy organization — Drazan’s lead was two points, within the 4% margin of error.
Smith received 4% of the vote in the recent poll once undecided voters were quizzed on which candidate they would lean toward.
Nationally, Democrats look to have an advantage this year, as Republicans contend with the unpopularity of President Donald Trump. But Kotek’s own low approval ratings have the state’s Democrats grappling with a similar dynamic, with some worrying that the governor’s re-election bid could fail to generate excitement among the party’s base.
“We have to acknowledge the competitiveness of this current contest, which is no longer on the periphery of the map,” the nonpartisan Cook Political Report wrote in a Sept. 10 analysis, in which it changed its rating of the race from “likely Democrat” to “lean Democrat.”
“The bar will be high for Drazan to sustain momentum in this political climate and separate herself from the national party if she wants a chance at an upset.”
‘People want a third, fourth party’
Third-party candidates often push back against accusations they are “spoilers” for major parties rather than viable candidates in their own right.
Brett Smith does not appreciate that characterization. Neither does Greg Kord, who in 2010 ran as the Constitution Party candidate for governor. Kord and another conservative candidate, Libertarian Party nominee Wes Wagner, claimed nearly 3% of the vote that year. Democrat John Kitzhaber wound up defeating Republican Chris Dudley by 1.5%.
“The Democrats and Republicans, they’re basically two heads on the same beast, and they always have been,” Kord, who now lives in Alabama, said in a recent interview with OPB. “People want a third, fourth party. They want to be able to choose somebody that’s different.”
After Dudley’s loss, Kord said he received “nastygrams” from Republicans who blamed him for the outcome. He says he’s seen no proof that’s the case.
Wagner, the Libertarian in that year’s race, recently told OPB he’s come to believe he helped tilt that election.
“We probably did split some of the anybody-but-Kitzhaber vote that couldn’t quite stomach the idea of Dudley,” said Wagner, who now lives in British Columbia. Like Kord, he is not worried by that possibility. “You can take the ethical position that any vote that I earned wasn’t a vote that anyone else deserved.”
Thomas Cox is another erstwhile candidate who believes he swung an election.
In 2002, Cox ran as the Libertarian nominee in a three-way race that also featured Democrat Ted Kulongoski and Republican Kevin Mannix. Cox took 4.6% of the vote – besides Johnson, the strongest showing for a third-party or independent candidate for governor this millennium. Mannix lost by fewer than three points.
Cox told OPB “it’s very likely” his candidacy decided the race, and even recounted working in unison with Kulongoski’s campaign to attack Mannix — a tactic he believes helped elevate his profile.
“I’m pretty sure the Democrats are the reason I got into five out of six debates,” Cox said.
It’s not clear that Smith, the Pacific Green nominee, will participate in any debate this year. But like his third-party predecessors, he offers withering criticisms of the two major parties and their candidates.
“We’re confronted with this choice of one of the worst governors in America or someone who’s affiliated with one of the worst administrations in history,” said Smith, whose platform also includes stances against corruption and war.
Smith is a former pipefitter and welder. In 2010, he invented a system to help his son live with cystic fibrosis, and has been working to bring that device to market. In the meantime, he’s taken an interest in politics.
Two years ago, Smith ran for Oregon’s 5th Congressional District as the nominee for the Independent Party of Oregon, winning 4.7% of the vote. He says he’s running for governor to offer a choice to people who feel disaffected by Oregon’s political status quo.
“My name being on there is going to hurt Tina Kotek,” he told OPB in July. “I have no intention of backing down. There’s nothing the Democrats can tell me that’s going to make me.”
Republicans, unsurprisingly, are unbothered by Smith’s presence in the race this year.
“Christine welcomes anyone who is willing to put their name on the ballot, make their case to Oregonians, and run for public office,” Ashley Quinton, a spokeswoman for Drazan, said in an email.
Meanwhile, Democrats’ nonchalance about Smith’s candidacy is somewhat novel. In each of Oregon’s past two governors’ elections, Democratic nominees cut deals to convince liberal minor party candidates to leave the race.
Kotek’s campaign did not directly answer a question about whether it believed Smith’s candidacy could take votes from the governor, suggesting instead it was only focused on Drazan.
“Fundamentally, this race is about keeping a progressive, proven governor in place as a bulwark against the Trump administration’s assaults on Oregon, or electing Republican Christine Drazan and opening the MAGA floodgates,” Federico Araujo, the campaign’s communications director, said in an email.
Whether or not the party can continue ignoring the Pacific Green Party candidate will likely depend on whether he can raise enough money to get his message before voters — a question mark for some within Smith’s own party.
“I don’t know how active he’s going to be, to be honest,” said Seth Woolley, treasurer for the Pacific Green Party of Oregon. “When he went for the nomination, he talked a big game. Bigger than we normally have.”
This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.
