Primary Wrap Up
06.01.2026
The dust has settled on Oregon’s primary, and the general election is looming.
In November, Oregon voters will get to pick our next governor. Last election, we got to choose among 3 liberal women. This election, the race will be between two liberal women.
To make matters worse, Washington County Democrats elected two open communists to house seats previously held by liberals. A solid move to the left.
On the plus side, Ed Diehl’s efforts to block the Democrats’ gas and vehicle tax extortion were an overwhelming success. So, hat tip to the many, many people who made that happen. There were a lot of unnamed heroes in that fight.
Obviously, we are disappointed that Ed Diehl did not get the Republican nomination for governor. However, we were happy to see OFF-supported Dwayne Yunker win in HD 3.
Yunker has been the most courageous and outspoken member of the House. So of course, his fearlessness and willingness to stand up meant one thing: He would get a Republican primary opponent. But the people of the district knew better than the cabal of phonies pushing his opponent, and Yunker won.
In Senate District 6, Cedric Hayden was forbidden from seeking reelection as a result of his participating in the walkout that cost the most conservative Senators their seats.
You will recall that the walkout was engineered by Senate Republican Leader Tim Knopp. Knopp had no chance of winning another election in his district, so walking out cost him nothing, unlike the other Republicans who walked out. After they accumulated their ten unexcused absences and lost the right to run for reelection, Knopp returned to the Senate and provided the quorum the Democrats needed to pass everything the other Senators walked out to stop. As you know, Knopp has been repaid for helping the Democrats with a very lucrative job running Kotek’s hilariously named Prosperity Council. The council’s job appears to be coming up with economic ideas Kotek will ignore.
The Republican nominee for Hayden’s seat is Jack Tibbetts. Tibbetts was one of the very few candidates our PAC endorsed and supported. We are looking forward to Tibbetts being a solid voice for gun rights in the next session. Tibbetts won over House Rep Jamie Cate, whose tenure has been, to put it mildly, suboptimal.
Finally, in House District 11, OFFPAC endorsed and supported Ken Jackola, who won over Angelita Sanchez for the Republican nomination. We are extremely pleased by this outcome since the very last thing the Republican Caucus needed was a win by Sanchez.
Both Tibbetts and Jackola got a big boost from their friends at the Oregon Conservative Alliance who who have been doing great work finding and supporting good candidates.
We have a long way to go, and the general election promises to be ugly. Neither candidate for governor has much in the way of accomplishments to run on, so expect Kotek to claim that Drazan “loves Donald Trump and will ban abortion” and expect Drazan to say “Vote for me, Kotek sucks.”
One thing we learned this past session when HB 4145 was neutered is that if the Republicans are willing, they have the ability to stand in the way of attacks on our rights. In a world full of deal-making, that deal, whatever it was, was made because you demanded it. Let’s keep that up.