REGION
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2022
THE OBSERVER — A7
‘Life-changing
experience’
Baker City mayor’s confidence grows as campaign wears on
By JAYSON JACOBY
Baker City Herald
BAKER CITY — Kerry
McQuisten has met many
thousands of Oregonians
during her campaign to be
the state’s next governor,
a blur of faces and hand-
shakes and forums and
events in each of the 36
counties in the 10th-biggest
state.
But one face remains
especially vivid in her
memory.
And she suspects that it
always will be.
McQuisten, a sev-
enth-generation Baker
County resident who is
seeking the Republican
nomination in the May
22 primary, was in Tygh
Valley, near The Dalles, for
the Wasco County Fair in
late August.
An older gentleman
approached.
He was wearing a cap
identifying him as a mil-
itary veteran. The man
pulled out his wallet,
reached in and extracted the
only bill tucked in the folds.
It was a $5.
He handed the bill to
McQuisten, insisting that
she take it.
“Something has to
change in Oregon,” the man
told her.
“I will never forget it,”
McQuisten said.
That moment in the
wheat country of Wasco
County, one of so many
in seven months of cam-
paigning, continues to
inspire McQuisten.
It’s not the amount of the
donation, of course.
But that brief conversa-
tion, and the man’s insis-
tence that she accept his
modest contribution, con-
vinced her then, and
reminds her still, that some
of her fellow Oregonians
believe she can help to fi x
some of the problems that
she — and they — believe
are plaguing the state.
“My campaign is
steadily gaining traction,”
said McQuisten, who is
Baker City’s mayor, elected
to that position by her
fellow Baker City Council
members in January 2021.
“I’m reaching out across the
whole state.”
A unique opportunity
for a Republican
After so many miles
and so many meetings,
McQuisten, 49, said she
is even more confi dent
now than she was when
she started that 2022 pres-
ents an opportunity that
Republicans haven’t had in
Oregon for more than four
decades.
No member of her party
has been elected governor
since November 1982,
when Victor Atiyeh won
the second of his four-year
terms.
But McQuisten believes
that voters are more dis-
satisfi ed with their state’s
condition under the lead-
ership of Democratic gov-
ernor Kate Brown than at
any time since Atiyeh’s
tenure.
Brown’s executive orders
during the pandemic, with
their eff ects on businesses
and schools in particular,
have seriously weakened
the Democrats’ once-in-
domitable electoral founda-
tion, McQuisten believes.
“The more Kate Brown
mandates, the worst it
gets for the Democrats,”
McQuisten said.
And although Brown
can’t run for reelection due
to term limits, McQuisten
contends that the Demo-
cratic nominee, whoever
that is, will be linked to
Brown’s legacy, to the ben-
efi t of the Republican on the
November general election
ballot.
McQuisten said she has
talked with, and received
emails from, many Dem-
ocrats and nonaffi liated
voters who are troubled
by what’s happening in
Oregon. She was surprised
to receive a $25 donation
from an Ontario Democrat
who voted for, and formerly
supported, Brown.
“That’s when you
know something is really
shifting,” she said.
McQuisten said a few
issues have come up at vir-
tually all of her campaign
events, concerns that seem
universal in the state.
Public safety is one of
these.
McQuisten said she’s
talked with many people,
including in Demo-
crat-dominated Portland,
who are incensed by vio-
lence, including the wide-
spread rioting in Port-
land during the summer of
2020, and a record number
of murders — 90 — in the
state’s largest city in 2021.
“People don’t feel safe,”
she said.
Oregonians are angry
not only about the level
of violence, McQuisten
believes, but also by
what some consider a
milquetoast response by
prosecutors.
And although crim-
inal prosecution typically
is handled at the county
level, by district attorneys,
McQuisten contends that
Brown has failed to show
leadership in the midst of
the violence.
McQuisten points out
Kerry McQuisten/Contributed Photo
Kerry McQuisten stands outside Mahonia Hall, the Oregon governor’s mansion in Salem. McQuisten, a
Baker County native, is seeking the Republican nomination for governor in the May 22, 2022, primary.
that state law allows the
state, through its Depart-
ment of Justice, to pros-
ecute cases that district
attorneys decline to take on.
The problem of home-
less residents camping on
public property is no longer
confi ned to larger cities,
McQuisten said, citing
another issue she believes
Brown has not addressed
forcefully enough.
“I talked to people
about homeless camps
in the forests around La
Pine,” McQuisten said,
talking about the town in
Deschutes County about
30 miles south of Bend.
“People don’t feel safe
going for a walk in the
woods.”
Pondering the primary
and general elections
McQuisten, of course,
won’t have a chance to try
to break the Democratic
Party’s 40-year run of vic-
tories in the general election
unless she wins the Repub-
lican nomination in the May
22 primary.
She’s optimistic about
her position.
In a recent straw poll
from Oregon Catalyst —
one McQuisten herself on
her Facebook page notes has
a “huge” margin of error
— she polled second with
27.9%. The frontrunner was
Stan Pulliam, the mayor
of Sandy, east of Portland,
with 41.3%.
Pulliam has a signifi cant
advantage in fundraising,
as well.
According to campaign
fi nance reports as of Jan.
12, Pulliam’s campaign had
a cash balance of $264,258,
compared with McQuisten’s
$60,493.
Two Republicans topped
Pulliam’s balance —
Christine Drazan, House
Minority Leader who is
resigning from the Oregon
Legislature Jan. 31, with
$702,138, and Bridget
Barton, a political consul-
tant from West Linn, with
$345,208.
But McQuisten said she’s
confi dent that her grassroots
campaign, relying on trav-
eling across the state and
meeting as many people,
and voters, as possible, can
overcome both her fi nancial
disadvantage and her lack
of name recognition, at least
compared with Drazan, a
longtime legislative leader.
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McQuisten said she
expected that running for
governor would be a unique
endeavor, and it has been.
“It’s a life-changing
experience,” she said.
“There’s also a spiri-
tual aspect of this for me.
I wonder, will God allow
me to come in and be the
person to change things, or
will we have more of the
same in Oregon.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Sometimes I feel like I’m
driving at night on a dark
road with the headlights on.
I go on as far as I can see,
and then go on from there.”
McQuisten said she
knew that running a con-
sistent statewide cam-
paign would be demanding,
“mentally, emotionally and
spiritually.”
But she said she wasn’t
quite prepared for the
purely physical challenge of
spending so many hours on
the road, away from home.
“Physically it does take
its toll,” she said. “It’s
taxing.”
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