BEND – Republican voters on Thursday could tune in for a taste of some of their choices in the primary for governor next month. 

Four of the 19 Republicans on the May 17 ballot squared off in a debate sponsored by The Bulletin and the Central Oregon Daily, held at Bend’s Open Space Event Studios.

If elected in November, they would be the first Republican to hold the job since Vic Atiyeh left office in 1987.

The four participants were chosen by debate organizers based on their campaign fundraising success and polling performance.

With Gov. Kate Brown unable to run again because of term limits, the open seat has attracted at least 35 candidates.

The race also includes 15 candidates in the Democratic primary, and former Sen. Betsy Johnson, D-Scappoose, who is seeking to gather signatures to run as a non-affiliated candidate in November.

The four GOP candidates at the Bend debate took rapid-fire questions on hot-button issues, making their case to voters about how they could win in the November general election and shift the state’s priorities if elected.

Former House Minority Leader Christine Drazan of Canby drew on her role in the legislature to show voters she had the experience to change the state’s direction away from the agenda of the majority Democrats.

Drazan pointed to a 2020 walkout of Republican legislators to stall legislation on carbon cap legislation proposed by Democrats. She pointed to the strategic move as evidence of her ability to stand up for conservatives who she said feel unheard in state government.

“We have for too long seen single-party control hurt Oregonians,” Drazan said. “We have an opportunity in this election to elect real change in our state. We have an opportunity to rebalance our political life and to get government out of Oregonian’s lives.”

Bud Pierce, an oncologist from Salem, pointed to winning the 2016 Republican nomination for governor as a sign that primary voters were already behind him. 

Pierce lost the election to Gov. Kate Brown. He said he believes voters are ready to give the party a shot at the governorship. He positioned himself as a political outsider who’s work with cancer patients prepares him for the job.

“It’s very important for a governor to have been trained to stay on track, to make sure that Oregon becomes lower cost so you have a better life, that Oregon is safe with much better safety and that we get the suffering homeless off our streets,” Pierce said.

Stan Pulliam is an insurance executive serving as mayor of Sandy, a town in Clackamas County near Portland. He sought to draw a sharp distinction between himself and the other candidates on the stage, railing against what he believes is rampant crime in Portland and across the state. He opposed COVID-19 restrictions imposed by Gov. Kate Brown, and criticized social topics he said are in school curriculum.

“As Republicans, we also know what a winner looks like and what winning looks like,” Pulliam said. “It looks a lot like fighters. It looks a lot like fighting. We’ve proven that we’ve been here since the beginning. Let’s take the fight all the way to the governor’s office.”

Bob Tiernan of Lake Oswego is a former state representative and Oregon Republican Party chair. He touted his experience leading large corporations, like Grocery Outlet, to show he can solve complex problems.

Tiernan said he’d use the state’s initiative process to send key issues directly to voters if the Democratic-controlled legislature blocked his agenda.

“The problems we’re facing in Oregon are serious,” Tiernan said. “That takes leadership. That takes people who know how to get things done. That’s what I’ve done my entire life in the Navy. That’s what I did my entire life in business, and that’s what I did in the legislature: Solve problems.”

To a question about the state’s housing crisis, each of the candidates said state regulations hamstring developers’ ability to build affordable housing in the state and called for reducing restrictions to spur construction.

“Contractors don’t want to build them, because they can’t do it profitably,” Tiernan said. “It takes too long — there are just too many rules and regulations and additional costs, and they lose money.”

Pierce said the state should seek to cut those costs.

“Clearly what we have to do to build affordably — not build unaffordably and subsidize — but to build affordably is lower the price of land by modifying the land use law that’s 50 years old and stymieing us,” Pierce said.

Brown has pointed to Oregon having some of the lowest rates of infection, hospitalization and death in the nation during the pandemic.

The six waves of the virus have killed 7,478 people as of Thursday, according to the Oregon Health Authority. The death toll in the United States is projected to pass one million people in September, according to a forecast issued this week by the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

Using powers under a state of emergency declaration, Brown closed businesses and schools, limited event size and required masking in public places.

All four of the Republican candidates said Brown was undeserving of praise for public health orders she imposed throughout the pandemic, saying they did more damage than good. 

Drazan called Brown’s actions an executive overreach and said the governor used the pandemic as an excuse to impose her preferences on public health and housing policies.

“Rather than respecting Oregonians and leading with facts, she led with fear,” Drazan said. “Her management of COVID was political. It was preferential. It was bureaucratic, and it was sloppy.”

Pulliam used the question as an opportunity to say that unlike the other candidates on the stage, he had been a vocal opponent of COVID-19 mandates very early in the pandemic.

“I think a lot of (voters) are probably hearing for the first time where a lot of these folks were,” Pulliam said. “You guys know where Mayor Stan was. I was totally in the fight.”

The candidates were asked about claims by former President Donald Trump that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him by Biden and Democratic Party allies.

Drazan, Piece and Tiernan acknowledged that the election of President Joe Biden was legitimate.

Pulliam has been one of the most vocal proponents of debunked conspiracy theories around the presidential election. He repeated his stance that Biden’s election was “completely fraudulent.” His answer allusions to improper handling of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania, and his questioning of the handling of a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, the president’s son.

Polls show that a majority of Republicans believe the 2020 election was tainted. Under Oregon’s primary system, only party members can vote on May 17.

“Biden, Biden, Biden — all of them said Biden won,” Pulliam said, pointing to each of his competitors on the stage as he did so.

An attempt by former GOP state chair Dallas Heard to open the primary to the more than one million non-affiliated voters in the state was rebuffed by party leaders earlier this year.

The full, hour-long debate will air at 7 p.m. Tuesday on Central Oregon Daily and will be posted on The Bulletin’s website. Oregon’s primary election is on May 17, and voters have until April 26 to register to vote or change their party affiliation.

Zack Demars is a reporter for The Bend Bulletin. The Oregon Capital Bureau contributed to this report.

See the video of the forum here:

https://jwp.io/s/JB4wlKdp