Former New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof is ineligible to run for governor of Oregon, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday, after he was disqualified for not meeting the state’s residency requirement.
The state’s high court upheld a determination from Oregon’s Democratic Secretary of State Shemia Fagan’s office, which found that Kristof did not meet the three-year residency requirement for seeking the governorship.
“[The court’s] task in this dispute was not to conduct its own assessment of the facts, but to decide whether the record before the secretary compelled a decision in [Kristof’s] favor,” the state Supreme Court wrote in its decision.
“Although the Court recognized that there was evidence that pointed in the other direction,” the decision continued, “the Court could not conclude that the secretary was compelled to find that [Kristof] remained domiciled in Oregon through the early 2000s or that he had regained an Oregon domicile by November 2019, three years before the November 2022 general election.”
Kristof was seeking to replace Democratic Gov. Kate Brown, who is term-limited. "Today’s Supreme Court ruling excluding me from the ballot is, of course, very disappointing," he tweeted shortly after the ruling. "But while I won’t be on the ballot, I’m not giving up on our State."
“We apply the rules. We’re going to apply them consistently, regardless of who someone is or how much money they raised or how famous they are, ” Fagan said in an interview on Monday, before the state’s Supreme Court ruling.
The final ruling shakes up the race to replace Brown. Kristof had far outraised the other two major Democratic candidates, former House Speaker Tina Kotek and state Treasurer Tobias Read, who are part of a crowded field.
Republicans, too, have a number of candidates competing for their party’s nomination. Democrats are likely favored to retain the governorship, regardless of who wins the primary.
But there is a wild card in former state Sen. Betsy Johnson, who served for years in the state legislature as a Democrat but is now running for the governorship as an unaffiliated candidate. She has attracted the support of Oregon’s richest man: Nike co-founder Phil Knight, who gave her campaign a quarter-million dollars.
The state’s primaries are on May 17.
Chris Cadelago contributed to this report.
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By: Zach Montellaro
Title: Nick Kristof's gubernatorial bid is Ore-gone
Sourced From: www.politico.com/news/2022/02/17/nicholas-kristof-ineligible-oregon-governor-00009773
Published Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2022 11:22:48 EST
