Drazan seeks return to state House after failed run for governor, challenging Hieb

Christine Drazan left the state House two years ago to focus on an ultimately unsuccessful run for governor. Now, she wants to come back.

Standing in her way is James Hieb, the Republican veteran appointed to fill the seat when Drazan left in 2022. Hieb didn’t see himself as a seat-warmer.

No Democrats are running in the 51st House District in Clackamas County, and the winner of the Republican primary is all but certain to take office in January. 

Drazan comes into the race with a clear advantage: She’s known across the state from her second-place finish in the most expensive gubernatorial race in Oregon history, and she raised 10 times as much as he did for the primary. Drazan still has more than $100,000 she can spend on ads and voter contact ahead of the primary, while Hieb owes more than $7,000. 

Most current members of the Oregon House have stayed out of the race, though Rep. Shelly Boshart Davis, R-Albany, kicked $250 to Drazan’s campaign in April. 

Here’s a look at both candidates:

Christine Drazan

For months in 2022, there was a serious chance that Drazan, the most recent House Republican leader, could be the first Republican governor of Oregon in nearly four decades. Instead, like the Republican nominees before her, she fell short, capturing 43.5% of the vote in a three-way race that Gov. Tina Kotek won with 47%.

Since losing the governor’s race, Drazan, now 51, has kept up her political profile. She founded a nonprofit organization, A New Direction Oregon, and has spent time traveling the state hosting roundtable discussions about pressing issues including the housing crisis and wildfires.

“Oregonians know me, and they know that there is no stronger fighter for their families and for a higher quality of life in our state, for excellence and public service and certainly for efficiency with tax dollars,” Drazan said.

She surprised Hieb and political observers by announcing in March that she wanted to return to the state House. Drazan told the Capital Chronicle that she always wanted to serve her community, and that she only stepped onto the statewide stage in 2022 because she felt it was important to provide a contrast to Kotek. 

“(Running for the House again) is an extension of my same commitment from the beginning of my time to to be a voice for people that are feeling overlooked or crushed by the power that we have in the state that has a particular perspective,” she said. “It doesn’t always reflect the needs of the community where I live, and so I’m excited for the opportunity to spend some time in the statehouse again and to serve in that capacity again.” 

The House has changed since Drazan and her frequent foil, Kotek, left to run for governor: Speakers Dan Rayfield and Julie Fahey and House Republican leaders Vikki Breese-Iverson and Jeff Helfrich put an emphasis on bipartisan communication and “no surprises” that gave the House a much more collegial atmosphere than it was with Kotek as speaker and Drazan as Republican leader. While Drazan led Republicans on multiple quorum-denying walkouts, House Republicans remained on the floor for votes under Breese-Iverson’s and Helfrich’s leadership. 

Drazan said she found the final result of legislative negotiations on House Bill 4002, the measure that recriminalized drugs and provided more resources for treatment, to be “super encouraging,” and that she’s optimistic the House will be a place where Republicans can have an effect.

During her first term, she helped engineer a coup against then-House Republican Leader Carl Wilson, but she said she’s not looking to challenge current Republican leadership. 

“I’ve always been a team player,” Drazan said. “Even with the title of Republican leader, I would recognize that in the minority you don’t accomplish anything as a lone wolf, and so I will look forward to figuring out how I can support the efforts of folks that are standing up for the minority voices across our state.”

James Hieb

Personal tragedies drove Hieb, 38, to political service. In 2014, he lost two younger brothers to fentanyl and his Army chaplain father to suicide. 

That led him to advocate for expanding mental health and addiction facilities and eventually toward seeking an appointment to the state House in 2022. It was especially meaningful for him to vote this year to criminalize the distribution of fentanyl, a few days short of the 10-year anniversary of his brother’s death. 

“What’s keeping me here is there’s much more work to do, and I have an insight that no other legislator in the building has,” Hieb said. “I use this pain and suffering that my family has gone through to push me so that I can spare other families from going through any sort of similar pain.” 

Hieb enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps at 17 and deployed twice to Fallujah, Iraq, where he sustained a traumatic brain injury. In the Legislature, he championed a law that expanded services for Oregonians with brain injuries.

He also supported state funding for a $115 million Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission distribution center in Canby, as well as funding for a veterans home in Roseburg and a new law that will help give veterans whose cremated remains have sat unclaimed for years or even decades the military funeral they earned. 

“I care more than my opponent ever could, and that’s ultimately why I cannot and will not give up or quit,” he said.

Hieb has had several run-ins with the law, including a 2004 drunken driving arrest, a 2019 citation for not ensuring his then-11-year-old son wore a seatbelt and a night spent in handcuffs at the Clackamas County Fair in 2022 after a drunken disagreement over his refusal to extinguish a cigarette. He says he stopped drinking after that incident, which did not result in any criminal charges. 

Along with giving up alcohol, Hieb’s approach to working with other legislators has changed over the past two years. He said he started off regularly offending people but they later became his friends after he realized the importance of relationships in influencing legislation. 

“I learned that people aren’t going to listen to me if I’m constantly putting my foot in my mouth, and it took me realizing that and trying not necessarily to win an argument, but to try to learn their perspective and watch what pushes them,” he said. “My experience as a white man, blond hair, blue eyes, in rural Oregon growing up in the Army and the Marine Corps was vastly different than many other Oregonians, and learning about their backgrounds and what leads them to their decisions has become drastically more important than ever winning the arguments.” 

Hieb was listed as the only sitting member of the House to be endorsed by the Republican Unity Caucus, a political action committee led by House candidate Ben Edtl that has dedicated its resources toward claiming, without evidence, that Sen. David Brock Smith, R-Port Orford, is a stooge of the Chinese Communist Party. Hieb said he knew Edtl through Oregon Young Republicans and supported the initial concept of a unity caucus to cut down on GOP infighting, but that he has since decided that Edtl has a “habit of misinterpreting facts and twisting things to a point where they could easily be considered lies” and has no interest in working with Edtl.