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A critical distinction lies within the Oregon Supreme Court ruling that ended Nick Kristof’s candidacy for governor.

The justices did not pull Kristof off this year’s Democratic primary election ballot. Secretary of State Shemia Fagan already did that, rejecting his candidacy last month. What the justices did was refuse Kristof’s request that the court force Fagan to reverse course and put him on the May ballot.  

In essence, what the justices ruled – unanimously – was that Fagan knew what she was doing when she and state election officials declared that Kristof didn’t meet the three-year residency requirement to be elected governor.

Kristof’s heart and soul, and sometimes his body, being in Oregon didn’t compensate for the fact that he voted as a New Yorker – albeit by absentee ballot mailed from Yamhill – as recently as November 2020 and that he maintained a New York driver’s license until December 2020.

Kristof was a New York Times journalist until resigning last year to run for governor. He grew up outside Yamhill and told me Thursday that he plans to continue living in Oregon.

He theoretically could run for another office this year – the filing deadline is not until March 8 – but said he wouldn’t. Neither will he appeal the Supreme Court’s decision. Other than that, he hasn’t had time to ponder his future, including whether he might seek the governorship in four years and what do to with all his campaign cash. 

“I don’t know what I’m going to do tomorrow, let alone in ‘26,” he told me.

I’ve known Kristof since the 1970s, when he was a Yamhill-Carlton High School student. He became a statewide FFA officer, Rhodes Scholar and intrepid foreign correspondent and columnist, winning two Pulitzer Prizes. On one of his reporting trips in Africa, he survived a plane crash, contracted malaria and made a multi-day escape from rebels who’d held him at gunpoint. But the abrupt collapse of his gubernatorial bid was something else.

The Supreme Court quoted legal dictionaries, court cases and various parts of the Oregon Constitution in agreeing with Fagan that residency was related to a person’s domicile – “a person can be a resident within only one state at a time.”

The 26-page ruling made for interesting reading and intriguing Oregon history until two-thirds of the way through, when my eyes began to glaze over. It included passing references to a Starbucks court case, an alms house, a seminary of learning, and the 1850s fear of bigamist Californians trying to become Oregon governor. And all along I’d thought “Don’t Californicate Oregon” was just a 20^th century slogan.

This is the first time in Oregon’s 163-year history that the high court has ruled on the gubernatorial residency requirement. If Fagan had instead applied a broader standard of candidate residency, which Kristof’s lawyers along with two previous secretaries of state sought, would the Supreme Court in turn have accepted that position as justifiable?

That Fagan was in position to make this ruling in itself was something of a political surprise. For that, voters can thank Oregon’s public-employee labor unions. Two years ago, they narrowly propelled Fagan, a liberal Democratic legislator from Portland, into the Secretary of State’s Office. Now they are closer to doing the same for former Oregon House Speaker Tina Kotek, a liberal Democrat from Portland, by elevating her to the Governor’s Office.

Kotek responded with grace to Kristof’s political demise, an affirmation that Thursday’s court decision further cemented her status as the Democratic frontrunner.

She is the most liberal of the top Democrats. Republicans have strong conservatives from whom to choose, including the recent entrances of former state Rep. Bob Tiernan, who chaired the state party, and anti-tax activist Bill Sizemore. The farther apart the D and R candidates are on the political spectrum, the wider the election door opens for former Democratic legislator Betsy Johnson as an independent candidate.

More than 30 people are running so far, not counting independents and minor-party candidates.

Many Oregonians would have seen Kristof as a liberal New York carpetbagger financed by out-of-state contributors, even though his campaign had donors in all 36 Oregon counties, he is moderate in many ways and he has deep rural connections.

State Treasurer Tobias Read now holds the closer-to-center ground in the Democratic field. He seized on Kristof’s departure to cast that race as being down to two people, with Kotek representing the status quo while he embraces change.

I’ve been baffled by why Kristof would leap from being a globally influential columnist to running for governor without affirming that he qualified as a resident under the Oregon Constitution, which states: “No person except a citizen of the United States, shall be eligible to the Office of Governor, nor shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained the age of thirty years, and who shall not have been three years next preceding his election, a resident within this State.”

His candidacy struck me as potentially a tremendous personal, professional and political miscalculation. His legal and public relations arguments struck me as having to stretch to make his case for residency.

But Kristof told me on Thursday that early last year he first asked a lawyer to look into the residency issue, long before he took a work leave of absence to consider a gubernatorial run. Last summer they did a deeper dive into the legal meanings of residency and his Oregon qualifications. Given what they came up with, they thought the outcome would go differently.

The script didn’t end that way.

Legislators pay their taxes: In last week’s Capital Chatter, I quoted a paragraph from an Oregon Department of Revenue manual, which said legislators’ salaries are exempt from state income taxes. 

The quotation was accurate. What it said was not.

Lawmakers pay taxes on their salaries. Their per diem and expense allowances are tax-exempt.

Two state representatives brought that to my attention, which I appreciated. I contacted the department, which already had heard from one lawmaker.

“We’re taking time to review the manual, and we’ll make any necessary changes for future publications,” Robin Maxey, a DOR public information officer and former legislative spokesman, said in an email. “At the same time, DOR staff will check in with Legislative Administration to learn how legislator salary and other payments are reported to elected officials. We want to ensure that legislators are aware of which portions may be exempt from taxes.”