Dirk VanderHart

It was all so confusing for me as I was trying to sort of unpack this story as well.

Like, wait, didn't we already do this a couple months ago? Uh, and I leaned on some great reporting by Mike Rogoway at The Oregonian, as well as Dirk VanderHart and Antonio Sara at OPB for this.

Uh, what you're talking about is back in September, the governor came out and declared that she would support a statewide moratorium on data centers, but that it's basically on the legislature to figure that out.

She said at that time, quote, "This is what I can do right now under Oregon law," and that involved asking the state to pause approval of certain transactions related to data centers.

And then we go down to Oregon, where the state's Democratic governor, Tina Kotek, is in a surprisingly close race against Republican state senator Christine Drazan to keep her seat atop the state capitol in Salem.

We'll talk to Oregon Public Broadcasting reporter Dirk VanderHart about why the state is taking on some shades of purple in a year that is supposed to be all blue.

But before all that, here are today's top stories.

Uh, we have a gun problem in America, too many guns and too many hands.

I mean, the latest polls have shown them up and down and in a dead heat, and this is an election cycle that is supposed to be really friendly to Democrats, so that's surprising.

Yeah, absolutely.

So we're going to dive in with the host of OPB Politics now, Dirk VanderHart.

He's also a politics reporter at Oregon Public Broadcasting.

And this year it's a coin flip.

Oregon Public Broadcasting, which is about as far from a right-wing outfit as you can get in this state, commissioned a poll at the end of September, and Dirk Vander Hart wrote up what it found.

And I got to say, I don't have a whole lot of respect for public broadcasting, but Dirk Vander Hart did a killer job with this reporting.

He has covered this election very well, and I always give credit where credit's due.

So, Dirk, great job.

OPB put out a poll on the Oregon governor's race last week.

It was written by Dirk Vander Hart.

It ran September 30th, and the headline was OPB poll shows Oregon governor's race virtually deadlocked.

Christine Drazen, 47, Tina Kotek, 46, which in a state that hasn't elected a Republican governor in 40 years is basically a meteor strike.

It ran September thirtieth.

It was written by Dirk VanderHart, and I've got it up on the screen because we're gonna go down it the same way you'd go down a resume.

The headline everyone shared is that the race is basically a tie, Drazan forty-seven, Kotek forty-six, after the pollster leaned on the undecideds.

So picture a hundred voters in Oregon in a room, forty-seven on one wall, forty-six on the other, and four guys in the back still shrugging.

That's with roughly a week to go before Oregon ballots are sent out.

OPB politics reporters Lauren Dak and Dirk VanderHart join us now to talk about this race.

Great to have both of you in the studio.

Hey, Dave.

She would make major changes to the rather unpopular corporate activity tax, the CAT tax.

Her platform just contains a lot of ideas that conservatives have been fighting for for decades in this state.

If you're just tuning in, I'm talking right now, uh, about the Oregon governor's race with OPB politics reporters Dirk VanderHart and Lauren Dake.

By the way, if you are not yet registered, you have until this coming Tuesday, October 13th, to do so.

So when it comes to electing a governor, Oregon, for the past 40 years, has voted solidly Democrat.

Could this year be different? Today on the show, our colleague at OPB, politics reporter Dirk VanderHart, joins us to break down a poll the station recently commissioned which shows a dead even race between Democrat Tina Kotek and Republican Christine Drazan.

Could Drazan pull off a shocker and upset Kotek, which would send reverberations across the nation? The OPB poll seems to suggest that deep dissatisfaction in the state for the status quo could fuel the fire of an epic upset.

We'll talk about all that next on Oregon on the Record, and we'll also check in on KLCC's fall membership drive as we hit the last day.

And right now, Oregon's incumbent Democratic governor is statistically tied with her Republican challenger.

We invited our colleague at OPB to break it all down.

Dirk VanderHart, OPB's politics reporter.

Dirk, it's always great to talk to you.