Former Portland Trail Blazer Chris Dudley wants another shot at being Oregon governor.

It’s not looking like a slam dunk.

Dudley is trailing the other top two contenders, state Sen. Christine Drazan and state Rep. Ed Diehl, in recent polling. And Drazan just nabbed an endorsement from the state’s largest newspaper.

Dudley said he’s not worried. Drazan, he said, has been running for four years, since she last lost against Gov. Tina Kotek in 2022.

“We’ve been running for three months,” he told OPB. “And this race is open and people are ready for change. I’ve yet to hear anybody say they’re excited about a rematch of the last election.”

Dudley’s pitch: He’s the outsider.

“Salem’s problems are not going to be fixed by someone from Salem,” he has said repeatedly on the campaign trail.

But Dudley is not a political newcomer. For Oregon political junkies, his biggest claim to fame is he got closer than any other Republican in decades to beating a Democrat. The last time Oregon had a Republican governor was in the 1980s, but Dudley came within 22,000 votes of beating Democrat John Kitzhaber in 2010.

After losing, Dudley largely disappeared from the Oregon political scene. He moved to California to support his wife, saying she had stood by him as he ran for governor and it was then his turn to champion her career. The couple now lives in Sisters.

Dudley went to Yale, which his father also attended. His mother was a teacher and his father was a minister who later became a professor. Dudley studied economics in college and later spent 16 seasons playing in the NBA.

After his basketball career ended, Dudley became a certified financial planner and worked as a registered investment adviser and wealth manager for Filigree Wealth Advisors. Dudley, 61, who has type 1 diabetes, also has a foundation that runs a basketball camp for kids with the disease.

If elected governor, Dudley said, he would declare a state of emergency in education on his first day.

“When you look at education, when we’re ranked 50th for fourth grade testing, when you look at the economy, where we’re ranked 47th, you look at the fact that we’re leading the nation in mental illness and drug addiction,” he said.

Dudley recently made an announcement about reproductive healthcare that seemed to acknowledge his trailing primary numbers. He has been pretty clear recently he was pro-choice, but he also sent out a text earlier this month to GOP voters saying he was personally pro-life.

“I’m personally pro-life,” he told OPB. “And I think that should be up to families to make that decision and I want to promote a culture of life … So that has not changed at all.”

Later, in a press release, Dudley faulted the media for the confusion.

“This is the same view I had in 2010. The only thing that’s changed is my tolerance for the media and radical politicians who are weaponizing the issue around life and antiquated labels and terms for their own political gain,” he said in a press release. “The political establishment and media want to use this issue to pit neighbor against neighbor, but Oregon voters are smarter than that and will not stand for their radical division.”

OPB asked four leading GOP candidates for governor the same five questions. Here are Dudley’s answers, which have been edited for brevity and clarity.

OPB: What’s the biggest policy difference between you and your opponents?

Dudley: In a primary we likely agree on 85-90% of the issues. And we definitely agree that we need new leadership here in our state. The difference in this race is on qualifications. I’m a businessman. Over the last few years, I’ve watched our economy fall apart and businesses leave our state. I know how to bring a rebound to Oregon. Salem‘s problems are not going to be fixed by someone from Salem. My opponents have been part of the political establishment for years — and they’ve gotten nothing done. I believe I’ve offered real reforms on education and a path to get our economy back on track and my opponents haven’t, but the real difference is I’m the only outsider in the race. That gives me the freedom to do what is right.

OPB: As the Trump administration ramps up immigration enforcement in Oregon, the effort has swept up undocumented people with no violent criminal history. Do you support enforcement against people without legal status who have been productive community members?

Dudley: I’ve said from day one that I think that the role of the governor in this case is to lower the temperature on these issues and to bring down and say, I think we can all agree that we don’t want anybody who’s committed violent crimes or sex trafficker or rape, whatever it may be, and is here illegally should be deported. On the other hand, I think we can all agree that whether it’s from false information or whether it’s real, that kids should not be scared to go to school. And I think we have to strike that balance there. And I think as much as possible, it makes sense for law enforcement to work together when they can, but while also respecting the rights, we want, whether it’s state officers, whether it’s federal officers, we want them respecting state laws, federal laws in our Constitution.

OPB: Oregon has one of the lowest-performing education systems and requires among the least amount of time in the classroom in the nation. Are Oregon’s struggles a money issue, a staffing issue or an accountability issue?

Dudley: I would say accountability issues. I think obviously that money is always a part of it, but yet we’ve increased spending on education by over 80% in the last 10 years, and here we are at the bottom. Our results, we’re 15th in spending as a state, and we’re 50th in testing for fourth grade testing. And so I think it’s a system that’s broken. I think Oregon has great kids and Oregon has great teachers, but our leadership has failed us and we’ve gotten to a place where the system is broken and we need to fix it. And I’ve said, as governor, I would declare a state of emergency on day one, focusing on education. And I believe it is a state of emergency when you’re ranked 50th in the country and children are not being taught how to read or not getting to a place where we’re literate at a proper amount.

We can do so much better, and it’s the system that has to be addressed. And that’s something that as governor, you are the superintendent of schools. And as governor, our current governor has managed to get us to be at the bottom of the United States, 50th in the country in education. In any other profession, you would be fired. If you were a coach in sports, you’re fired. If you’re in business and you’re failing in that capacity, you’re fired. And I think we have to replace the governor and have to go in different chains and have to address this with the urgency it deserves. We’re failing our kids. And I focus on fourth grade because that’s such a key point in someone’s life. If you’re in fourth grade and you’re not literate, you’re four times as likely not to graduate from high school.

OPB: Democrats’ legislative majorities are unlikely to go away in November. As governor, that means you would need to work with a party whose priorities you’ve been harshly critical of. How will you work with Democrats to actually make progress, as opposed to simply blocking their ideas?

Dudley: That’s something I’ve done throughout my life, throughout my career, is work with people from different backgrounds. I think sports prepares you for that. In my life, I’ve always dealt with people of various backgrounds. And I think as governor, I will come in, first of all, you’ll have a mandate. You’ll have won the election based on the ideas, and the ideas that I will be running on are based on education, economy and livability, and those issues, so I will have that mandate. Then the next is that the Legislature will have to negotiate, and that’s something that hasn’t happened, hasn’t been happening. And I think the people deserve it, and I think they will get the message as well, that the people are demanding that we do better in these categories. It’s hard to defend being at the bottom of the barrel in so many areas.

And so I would look forward to working with others with different ideas and coming to the table and saying, “Hey, here’s what we have to do.” And I think that’s incredibly important. And I will come in with the level of urgency that these issues deserve on day one. I will hit the ground running to deal with these issues from education to our economy and to livability including affordability and safety.

OPB: President Trump continues to try to undermine vote-by-mail. Oregon has no other means of conducting an election, and mail elections here were initially pushed by Republicans. Do you agree with the president’s recent executive order on mail voting or the Save America Act that he has pushed? Why or why not?

Dudley: Well, I’m focused on winning the election based on the ideas I’m presenting. I’m not focused on the federal issues in that regard. So I’m purely focused on bringing people together saying, “Here are the issues that we have to address. Our state is in a crisis where we deal with these issues.” Whatever happens federally, we’ll deal with when that happens or doesn’t happen, but that’s not something I’m focused on.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/05/01/chris-dudley-oregon-governor-issues/