Nick Kristof Wants to Be Governor. First, He Has to Be From Somewhere.

YAMHILL, Ore. — Yvette Potter knows her town. No one hears more about what’s on the minds of the 1,105 residents of this farming city, an hour’s drive from Portland. Her phone pings with texts and emails. Older residents prefer to call. People stop her as she walks through downtown. The stroll is brief — Yamhill’s city center stretches for three blocks along Highway 47.

For Potter, Yamhill’s mayor, hearing from the people who live here is a part of the job she loves. Potter picks up on the latest news and gossip, yes, but she also learns what worries people here. Water shortages brought on by drought. Wildfires. Affordable housing and the creep of gentrification. And schools — parents always want to talk about the local schools.

“People here are not afraid to speak up about what really matters to them,” Potter says. “You just need to listen.”

One person Potter has never spoken with is Yamhill’s most famous resident, Nicholas Kristof, the Pulitzer-winning journalist who last fall resigned as a New York Times columnist to run for governor of Oregon.

Kristof thinks of Yamhill as his hometown and has placed it at the center of his campaign narrative to explain his sudden leap from journalism into politics. But Potter says you wouldn’t know that if you lived here.

“No one talks about him,” she says. “He’s far from a hot topic of conversation.”

Kristof, 62, established himself as one of the most influential voices in journalism, using his position on the Times’ op-ed page to champion human rights, public health and democracy across the globe.

Four years ago, Kristof pivoted his attention to the community of Yamhill, where he and his parents moved when he was 12. He examined the broken lives of schoolmates who died early deaths from alcohol, drugs, obesity and suicide. He wrote about what he found in Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope, his 2020 book co-authored with his wife and frequent collaborator, Sheryl WuDunn. The bestselling book delivers a harsh critique of American policies that stole family-wage jobs, offered inadequate public schools, shorted mental health services and treated addiction as a crime, not a public health crisis.

Kristof says his heartbreak over “deaths of despair” that claimed his Yamhill friends led him to leave his beloved Times and, having never run for public office before, reach for Oregon’s governorship.

“There is some consensus that we are not all that we can be, and that political leadership has not provided sufficient vision or leadership or execution,” Kristof said in an interview. “Do we try to get different results by electing the same kind of folks and hope that things are somehow going to be different? Or do we bring in fresh blood, someone with new ideas and a different kind of life experience?”

But people in Yamhill remain frosted over the harsh light that Tightrope and its accompanying CNN documentary aimed at town Yamhill. “We’re not the poor town that his book depicted,” Potter says.

Potter won election as mayor in 2018, right around the time Kristof says he started spending more time on his family’s farm. She knows him from photographs but has never seen him — virtual or otherwise — at community meetings or town events. If he cares about Yamhill and Oregon, she wonders, where has he been? How does he know what concerns people here and across the state? After all, Oregon is made up of hundreds of Yamhills.

Kristof says he has maintained close ties to Yamhill and his friends here. When asked about the mayor’s comments, Kristof said he didn’t recognize Potter’s name or even know that she was mayor of Yamhill.

Kristof explained that his family farm lies outside the city limits. “I mean, she represents the town of Yamhill,” he said. “So I don’t vote for her. She’s not somebody that we interact with.”

The Kristof farm, which has a Yamhill address, is four miles from the town’s center, a photo of which appears on Tightrope’s cover.

“He’s suddenly returned to say he’s now Oregon’s savior,” Potter says. “There’s a sense here that we’re being used. He’s using us to achieve a personal goal. It feels uncomfortable.”

The authenticity question Kristof faces in Oregon is bigger than whether he can name Yamhill officials or votes in local elections.

He’s seeking to show Oregonians he understands the state and can solve the problems it faces. He’s depicted Oregon as a once progressive and proud state now facing a crisis of the soul. He has portrayed himself as someone who after four decades away has returned to rescue Oregon from a “failed political class.” And Oregonians, more than at any time in recent years, appear ready for a new kind of leadership.

But his rush to reach Oregon’s highest office might bring his candidacy crashing down.

On Jan. 6, Oregon elections officials rejected Kristof’s filing to run for governor, concluding he doesn’t meet the three-year residency requirement in the state constitution. Among the hard evidence: Kristof voted as a New Yorker in the 2020 general election when he now claims he was an Oregon resident. Oregon election law says that, by voting in another state, you surrender your residency.

Kristof says that in retrospect he should have changed his voter registration. But he says he's always considered himself an Oregonian and proud son of Yamhill. He’s argued that his continuous ties to his family home qualify him as a resident under state law. The Oregon Supreme Court is reviewing Kristof’s appeal and could decide this week whether he can appear on the May ballot.

His campaign now faces an existential threat of its own making, and it’s blunted what had been an otherwise bold entry in state politics. He’s eagerly attacked fellow Democrats for failing to address Oregon’s most pressing issues, including a homelessness epidemic that has overwhelmed many communities, including Portland, the state’s largest city.

Kristof has also established himself as a serious contender by quickly raising $2.6 million — twice the combined cash raised by the two leading Democratic contenders he will face in the May 2022 primary.

Kristof has gone beyond criticizing the performance of other Democrats. He’s alleged — without evidence — political insiders have tried to sink his campaign by denying him a spot on the ballot. “They’ve been in power for years,” Kristof said on the day his candidate filing was rejected. “And they don’t really have anything new to say. So they’d rather focus on tearing down my candidacy.”

Secretary of State Shemia Fagan, a Democrat and the state’s top elections official, said the evidence was overwhelming. “It wasn’t even a close call,” she said, adding that she based her decision on the ruling of nonpartisan elections officials.

“To accuse career public servants in the Secretary of State's office of some kind of conspiracy to keep him off the ballot is beneath him and the dignity of the office he seeks,” State Treasurer Tobias Read, a Democrat who’s also running for governor, said on Twitter. “I’d expect that kind of talk from Donald Trump, not someone who wants to be the next governor of Oregon.”

Former Oregon Gov. Barbara Roberts, a Democrat, sees those comparisons to Trump as unfair. She hasn’t endorsed anyone in the race, but she admires Kristof’s intelligence and values. She believes he could become an outstanding governor — someday.

“We want to see our leaders work their way up the ladder and earn their promotions,” Roberts says. “We want to see how they do in office before we’ll consider them ready for the top job. Inaccurately complaining that the system is corrupt, it’s not the way you do it.”

Still, if Kristof is victorious before the Oregon Supreme Court, it might bolster his argument that he is the candidate to overcome an entrenched leadership in Salem.

“The questions about whether he really understands Oregon won’t end for him until the election takes place,” says Jim Moore, a Pacific University political science professor. “But if he can say that he survived an attempt by the ‘political class’ to get rid of him, it makes him a stronger candidate.”

There’s rarely been a better year to be a credible challenger to the status quo than 2022. Polls show three out of four Oregonians say they’re worried about the state’s future.

“The degree to which Oregonians believe their government is broken runs deep. I’ve never seen anything like this before,” says Adam Davis, co-founder of the Oregon Values and Beliefs Center, who has tracked Oregonians’ attitudes for more than 45 years.

True, Oregon has seen strong income growth and, thanks to quick action by health officials, the state has seen low death rates from Covid-19. The despair goes beyond the present moment.

Downtown Portland, once a shining example of urban vitality, remains scarred and shattered following the racial justice protests and police clashes following the death of George Floyd in May 2020. Wildfires driven by climate change have devastated rural towns and reached the edges of suburbia.

But the most consuming issue for Oregonians is chronic homelessness. Federal data show the state is routinely ranked among the states with the highest rates of homelessness, and with more than half of the unhoused lacking any shelter. Tent cities line highways, huddle beneath overpasses and cover entire stretches of sidewalks. State and local leaders have sought ways to address homelessness, but it only seems to persist. Meanwhile a host of other problems have been made worse by the pandemic.

“Much of it is in people’s faces,” Davis says. “They see it; they feel it.”

Oregon has gone for every Democratic presidential nominee since 1988. Democrats haven’t lost a governor’s race since 1982.

Democrats have historically benefitted from an edge in party registration, prodigious funding from public employee unions and a GOP that alienated most Oregonians with their opposition to abortion, gay rights and climate change legislation. A full embrace of Trumpism hasn’t helped Republicans here, either.

But Democratic control has deepened rural resentment over the concentrated political power in Portland, where some neighborhoods run so blue they’re often referred to as the Kremlin. And growing dismay about Oregon’s problems could change the equation.

Kristof’s supporters say he brings both a fresh eye to the state’s problems and an optimism that could sway anguished voters.

“I’m drawn to him as an outstanding journalist and outstanding humanitarian and because he’s a hell of a guy,” says Doug Tunnell, owner of Brick House Vineyards in Newberg. “He’s been vastly talented in everything he’s done. He offers a great possibility to move beyond the same old, same old.”

An Oregon native, Tunnell worked for 17 years as a CBS news correspondent, often covering violence in the Middle East and North Africa. He knows that Kristof witnessed horrors in places such as China and Darfur. “In that line of work, especially when you’re spending holidays in hell, it’s easy to become hardened and cynical,” Tunnell says. “Nick has not let that happen. He came out of his experiences with a greater sense of compassion.”

It’s a quality Kristof’s childhood friends have always seen. After graduating Yamhill-Carlton High School in 1977, Kristof spent a year as state president of Future Farmers of America, often drawing attention to starvation around the world.

“We’ve often asked him if he ever thought about running for office,” says Bob Bansen, a Kristof school friend and organic dairy farmer in Yamhill. “He’d always said no. He believed he could have a bigger impact doing what he was doing for the Times.”

Sue Baumgartner, another classmate, recalls when Kristof told a gathering of friends last July he was running for governor. “I thought, ‘You’re such a decent person, Nick — why would you want to get involved in politics?’” Baumgartner says. “But the truth is we need more decent people like him elected to public office.”

The switch may have flipped around the time of Tightrope, with Kristof now saying he wants do more than just write about these problems. In his book, Kristof recounted growing up on a 73-acre farm with his parents, both college professors at Portland State University. He called Yamhill kids like himself “escape artists” who managed to move away and succeed. Kristof earned degrees at Harvard and Oxford before joining the Times in 1984.

Not surprisingly, Kristof approached his idea of becoming Oregon governor like a reporter. He invited elected officials, past and present, and other observers to the Yamhill farm, in effect interviewing them about the state of Oregon politics. Moore, the Pacific University professor, says Kristof quizzed him last March about what made past Oregon leaders successful. “I thought he was doing research for a column,” Moore says. “It turns out he was filling in gaps in his knowledge.”

Kristof is now able to offer a focused, stat-peppered analysis of Oregon’s homelessness crisis that stems from a deficit of affordable housing, mental health services and addiction recovery programs. He cites the deeper need for better schools and higher-wage jobs. “My friends who have been homeless, would not be homeless if they were earning $60,000 a year,” he said in an interview. “Instead, if they’re earning $20,000 a year at the margins.”

Kristof acknowledges state and local leaders have been working to solve these issues for years. What he says is missing is follow through and accountability to see that programs work as intended. “It’s not just about good intentions,” he says. “If good intentions were enough, we’d be in great shape.”

In many ways, Kristof’s argument for his candidacy is that he’s Nick Kristof, an unabashed liberal, a public intellectual and a skilled listener who’s investigated solutions to the world’s most pressing problems. As he told Willamette Week, Portland’s alt-weekly, soon after his announcement, “I think we need new leadership, and here I am.”

Kristof says he’s not worried about his lack of executive experience when it comes running a $25 billion, 46,000-employee state government. He’ll hire the best people to help him. He thinks his media experience and his “communications toolbox” will allow him to frame the state’s agenda and rally public support for his ideas.

Kristof at times appears more like a Davos man than a Yamhill kid. His reporting for the New York Times has made him a high-demand speaker, placing him alongside global elites he’s not shy about naming. During one private meeting with business leaders last fall, Kristof advocated creating a “climate tech” hub focused on green energy. According to one person on the call, Kristof told the group that as governor he’d consult Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates for advice. Kristof says he doesn’t recall invoking Gates’ name.

His campaign says more than 6,000 Oregonians have sent in donations, but his pipeline to the uber-rich has been central to his political strategy. Nearly 75 percent of his $2.6 million in campaign donations has come from outside Oregon, with billionaire donors such as LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, who’s given $100,000, and WeWork co-founder Miguel McKelvey, who’s contributed $50,000. Bill Gates and Melinda Gates, who received flattering coverage in Kristof’s columns, have sent his campaign separate donations of $50,000.

Kristof’s out-of-state bankroll established him early as a serious threat to the leading Democrats running in the May primary, Read and former House speaker Tina Kotek. Kotek, a Democrat from Portland, is the more formidable of the two. The longest serving speaker in state history, Kotek is also a favorite of the state’s public employee unions, which have poured millions into campaigns in the past decade to elect Democratic governors and help Kotek maintain control of the House.

But the anti-incumbent sentiment will not help Kotek, who voters associate with another Portland Democrat, outgoing Gov. Kate Brown, who is among the least-popular governors in the country. Whoever wins the nomination will face more than just the Republican candidate. Former state Sen. Betsy Johnson is a conservative Democrat who's now running for governor as an independent. Johnson, who often voted with Republicans in the legislature, has $3 million in her campaign account, more than anyone else in the race, and much of it from Oregon corporations and business leaders.

First, Kristof needs to persuade the state’s supreme court justices he’s wrongly been denied a place on the May primary ballot.

In court filings, the state’s lawyers pointed out that Kristof chose not to register as an Oregon voter in 2020. Instead, the filings show, he cast his absentee New York ballot by mail while he was in Oregon.

Until recently, Kristof maintained a New York driver’s license. The Capital Chronicle, an online news site, also reported Kristof listed his Scarsdale, N.Y., home as his mailing address for his Oregon property tax bills into 2021. His income tax returns could show which state Kristof declared as his full-time home. His lawyers say he filed Oregon income taxes as a full-year resident in 2020, but Kristof hasn’t made his tax returns part of the case file, and he’s declined repeated media requests to release them.

Despite the records, Kristof says he has been a resident of Oregon long enough to satisfy the three-year requirement. He and his lawyers argue in court that Kristof has always been an Oregonian at heart. He considers the Yamhill farm home; he and his family spent summers there; he’s making a big investment in the orchard and vineyard; and he has used the farm for his return address on letters. In an earlier memo, Kristof’s lawyers point to other Oregon bona fides: He’s hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, he’s eaten at Mo’s, a legendary Oregon seafood restaurant, and Crystal the family dog competed in Oregon dog shows.

It’s not clear which way the court will go. The residency question for governor has never been tested before. Kristof’s subjective, sentimental argument could have traction. The definition of "residency” is in dispute, and precedents dating back to the 19th century cite a person’s intentions to return to Oregon as adequate proof.

Kristof says his sense of connection to Yamhill remains fundamental.

But voters in his hometown are a tough crowd. Like most of rural Oregon, Yamhill County votes red. Trump won the county by four points in 2020, but the town and area around Yamhill went for Trump by a 2-to-1 margin. “Most of my friends here don’t agree with Nick’s views on things,” says Bansen, the dairy farmer. “This is not going to be his natural audience.”

Walt Fulcher has crammed his barber shop on North Maple Street with military memorabilia — battle helmets, insignias and photographs. A Trump flag hangs from the ceiling. Fulcher says he hasn’t remained open for business during the pandemic, but locals gather every morning to chew over politics and the news.

Fulcher says bitterness lingers here over Kristof’s depiction of Yamhill and his focus on a few people who had tragic lives. “You can find bad outcomes for people anywhere,” Fulcher says. “That doesn’t mean you need to create more government programs when the ones we have now don’t work.”

Yamhill County Commissioner Casey Kulla agrees with Kristof’s argument for better jobs, improved schools and more effective programs to address homelessness. Kulla, a local farmer, is a progressive who unseated a conservative incumbent in his first-ever campaign in 2018. He recently dropped a long-shot bid for governor, saying he couldn’t compete against Kristof’s fundraising haul; he’s now running for state labor commissioner.

Kulla believes Kristof was providing a tremendous public service as a New York Times columnist — and is puzzled by his decision to run for office.

“People here are flummoxed,” Kulla says. “He’s intelligent, no doubt. But he might be better off running for something where he can learn how government works. He’d make a terrific county commissioner.”

For Yvette Potter, Yamhill’s mayor, her questions about Kristof have nothing to do with the fact he has never bothered to introduce himself to her or learn her name. A registered Republican, Potter recognizes that she’s easily labeled as someone who wouldn’t vote for Kristof anyway. But her response to his candidacy is complex and personal.

In her full-time job, Potter is a housing coordinator for the homeless. Last year she helped more than 50 people find permanent housing — her specialty are veterans and older people. She’s seeing more and more single women over 65 unsheltered or living in cars.

“I appreciate that Nick is talking about this issue,” Potter says. “It would be nice for someone to have a real impact. I'm living this issue every day.”

Moore, who’s observed generations of Oregon political campaigns, says Kristof must show he can go beyond just articulating Oregon’s challenges — assuming Kristof prevails in court and wins a place on the ballot.

“He does intellectually understand the issues, but he’s missing the experience of working on these issues and building up relationships and trust with people,” Moore says. “You can write a lot of columns, but you’ve got to get in there and get your hands dirty and solve those problems.”