OPB4%
Could a third-party candidate shake up the Oregon governor’s race? 18%
By Dirk VanderHart24%
7/23/2026, 6:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 25 faulty reasoning types, including Representativeness Heuristic, Pessimism Bias, and Self-Serving Bias, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 6.9% saturation with 96 hits. Analysis detected 955 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,388 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 33.2% and a BS Rank of 18% (18,041 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 82.40% of the article peer group.
Early signs point to a competitive battle for the Oregon governor’s mansion this year.
The race could be tighter still if Brett Smith has any say.
With a little more than three months until the Nov. 3 election, Smith is the only third-party candidate slated to appear on the ballot alongside Democratic Gov.
Tina Kotek and Republican state Sen.
Christine Drazan.
Running under the banner of the Pacific Green Party of Oregon — a pro-environment, anti-war party more closely aligned<b> </b>with progressives than conservatives — conventional wisdom suggests Smith could pluck voters from the incumbent governor.
“My name being on there is going to hurt Tina Kotek,” Smith, a 44-year-old Molalla resident, said in an interview last week.
“I have no intention of backing down.
There’s nothing the Democrats can tell me that’s going to make me.”
The governor’s race ballot isn’t set in stone.
While some of Oregon’s <a href="https://sos.oregon.gov/elections/pages/voteinor.aspx" target="_blank" rel="">eight minor parties</a> have already opted not to nominate their own candidate for governor, others are still weighing their options.
Depending on that outcome, the field could include candidates from conservative parties more likely to lure votes away from Drazan.
But if the status quo holds it would mark the first time in nearly a quarter century that only one third-party candidate has appeared alongside Democrat and Republican candidates in a governor’s race.
The last time, in 2002, proved interesting.
A conservative Libertarian candidate named Tom Cox claimed nearly 5% of the vote in a race where Democrat Ted Kulongoski prevailed over Republican Kevin Mannix by less than 3%.
“I’d say it was a probable deciding factor,” Mannix, currently serving in the Oregon House of Representatives, said this week.
“You can never be certain about these things.”
It’s been more than 40 years since Oregon elected a Republican governor, and most election prognosticators don’t expect that will change this year.
President Donald Trump is unpopular, and mid-term elections are rarely kind to the party that holds the White House.
Kotek’s campaign works to link Drazan to Trump at every chance.
But no one is expecting the race to be a walk for Kotek, who has <a href="https://www.opb.org/article/2025/10/22/oregon-gov-tina-kotek-major-issues-progress-reelection-bid/" target="_blank" rel="">struggled to show she’s making progress</a> on the state’s toughest problems.
Drazan’s campaign recently <a href="https://www.opb.org/pdf/Oregon%20Statewide%20Survey%20Topline_1783692333016.pdf" target="_blank" rel="">released polling</a> that suggested the Republican could be leading Kotek, 48% to 44% — an edge one fundraising memo optimistically suggested amounted to “a winnable threshold with third party candidates in the field.”
Kotek’s campaign didn’t respond to an inquiry about the possibility Smith’s candidacy could eat into her votes, but the governor and other Democrats have shown in the past they don’t take third-party candidates lightly.
In 2022, Kotek helped push Pacific Green candidate Nathalie Paravicini <a href="https://www.opb.org/article/2022/09/07/kotek-backs-campaign-finance-reform-as-potential-oregon-governor-foe-drops-out/" target="_blank" rel="">out of the race</a> by pledging to act on Paravicini’s top priority: campaign finance reform.
Four years before that, Gov.
Kate Brown made a similar vow to Independent Party of Oregon candidate Patrick Starnes, who ultimately <a href="https://www.opb.org/news/article/patrick-starnes-drop-out-oregon-governor-endorse-kate-brown/" target="_blank" rel="">urged his supporters to vote Democrat</a>.
The maneuvers reflect a reality for third-party candidates, who seldom — singularly or collectively — attract much more than 6% of the vote in Oregon gubernatorial contests.
“There are a few strategies one might take knowing they’re not going to be elected,” said Seth Woolley, treasurer for the Pacific Green Party of Oregon.
“One is: get concessions and then withdraw… The other is: try to spoil it and exert power so you can get election reform later.”
While not a threat to win, third parties can be a significant factor in gubernatorial contests.
Eight years after Mannix lost his bid for the job, Republican Chris Dudley came just 1.5% shy of besting Democrat John Kitzhaber in 2010.
The race featured two third-party candidates — both conservative — who split nearly 3% of the vote.
“Third-party candidates have had little impact on governor’s races,” John Horvick, a pollster with DHM Research, said this week.
“But when they did, they have likely hurt Republicans more than Democrats.”
Horvick has tracked gubernatorial outcomes dating back to 1966.
According to his analysis, minor-party candidates’ piece of the vote was larger than the winner’s margin of victory five times in that span.
Leaving a race after winning concessions from a Democrat or Republican is no guarantee a minor-party candidate will be happy with the outcome.
Woolley says many Pacific Green members he talks to didn’t think it was worth it for Paravicini to drop out in 2022.
And Paravicini herself says she’s disillusioned by how Democrats have pursued campaign finance reform in the wake of her bowing out.
The party helped pass a landmark campaign finance bill in 2024, then passed a follow-up bill this year that Paravicini and other reformers believe gutted the law before it takes effect in 2027.
“The way that campaign finance reform panned out in Oregon is really sad and a very big disappointment,” Paravicini told OPB.
Smith is a different brand of Pacific Green candidate than many the party has put forward.
A former welder, mill worker and maintenance man, he first flirted with politics in 2024, running for Oregon’s 5th Congressional District as the Independent Party nominee.
He snagged <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Oregon%27s_5th_Congressional_District_election,_2024" target="_blank" rel="">nearly 5% of the vote</a>, well more than other third-party entrants in the race.
But Smith found the Independent Party uninspiring.
He drifted toward the Libertarian Party, where he says he was recruited to help run a gubernatorial campaign this year.
When that fell through, Smith found the Pacific Greens.
He beat out three other candidates to win the party’s nomination for governor, and he’s got nothing good to say about the establishment candidates in the race.
“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,” he said.
At first glance, there’s not a lot in common between Libertarians, whom Smith first planned to link with, and the Pacific Greens whom he now represents.
The former party typically favors small government and emphasizes the importance of the free market.
The latter prioritizes protecting the natural world from the ravages of capitalism.
But Smith argues that both parties oppose war and corruption, as he does.
And he’s convinced the state’s smaller minor parties can achieve more if they find common ground.
“Being with the Independent Party and having a ‘successful’ campaign, I was super disappointed in the results,” Smith said.
“If this is the best someone can do as a third party what are we doing?
The only chance anybody’s got is through a coalition.”
With roughly a month until minor parties have to solidify their nominees, the prospect for such a coalition is unclear.
The Libertarian Party, Constitution Party and Progressive Party are among those who could still send a new name to the ballot before the Aug. 25 deadline, though the parties offered no certainty they would do so when asked by OPB.
The Oregon Progressive Party needs to run a candidate in at least one statewide race this year in order to maintain its access to the ballot under state law.
It can choose either the contest for the governor’s office or the U.S.
Senate seat held by incumbent Democrat Jeff Merkley.
Meanwhile, the Independent Party has opted not to nominate a candidate, or “cross nominate” a candidate from another party.
The Oregon Working Families Party won’t make a decision until August, but the party’s nomination is currently only being sought by Kotek, State Director Annie Naranjo-Rivera said last week.
Two other minor parties, the No Labels Party and We The People, appear more concerned with national politics than nominating state officeholders.
Neither responded to inquiries about their plans.
The state’s Libertarian Party will hold a nominating convention Saturday to consider its options.
Party Chair Sonja Feintech said last week that she was uncertain who, if anyone, would step forward to run for governor.
“Our priority is ensuring voters have choices,” Feintech told OPB.
One person who plans to be on hand at the convention?
Smith, who’s hoping to land an unconventional cross-nomination from both the Pacific Greens and Libertarians this year.
“If I can get a more conservative group to back me,” he said, “then I’ll be pulling votes from Drazan as well.”
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