Oregon Republican gubernatorial candidate Nick Hess addresses the audience during a forum Thursday, March 24, 2022, at the Pendleton Convention Center.  

PENDLETON — There wasn’t much daylight between the eight candidates on stage at a Tuesday, March 24, Umatilla County Republican Party gubernatorial forum at the Pendleton Convention Center.

The candidates generally agreed they were going to reverse the policies of Democratic Gov. Kate Brown, the state should move to a school choice model, the Second Amendment needed to be protected and all government mandates needed to be repealed.

The candidates didn’t get much time to expound on their thoughts. The size of the field — West Linn political consultant Bridget Barton, Hillsboro retiree Reed Christensen, Tigard entrepreneur Nick Hess, Baker City Mayor Kerry McQuisten, Bend marketing consultant Brandon Merritt, White City massage therapist Amber Richardson, Redmond contractor Bill Sizemore and former Alsea School District Superintendent Marc Thielman — had only 30 seconds each to answer most questions.

But all candidates still got a shot at making their case to a good-sized audience in Pendleton. The candidates were mostly polite with one another but occasionally took shots at some of the candidates who weren’t in Pendleton, which included many of the field’s top fundraisers — former state House Minority Leader Christine Drazan, of Canby, Salem oncologist and 2016 Republican nominee Bud Pierce, Sandy Mayor Stan Pulliam and former state representative and Oregon Republican Party Chair Bob Tiernan, of Lake Oswego.

Oregon hasn’t elected a Republican governor since 1982, but each candidate explained how they would be the one to reverse the trend.

Barton stressed to the audience both her experience advocating for rural Oregon and her status as an “outsider.” She told the audience that she would work hard in Salem to advance their priorities.

“I’m here to tell you that I would stand in front of a train for you,” she said.

As governor, Barton said she would immediately replace the state’s deputy superintendent of public instruction, who leads the Oregon Department of Education.

Christensen said the most important issue was to end Oregon’s vote-by-mail system in favor of a one-day, in-person election so the state could get “election integrity.”

He also highlighted his participation in the attempted insurrection in Washington, D.C., in 2021. Christensen faces federal charges for assaulting Capitol police.

“I was arrested by the FBI,” he said. “I’m currently in the system. I care.”

In almost all of his answers, Hess said he would work to make Oregon government more transparent and listen to residents instead of lobbyists.

Like former Gov. Vic Atiyeh, Hess said he was a Republican from the Portland metro area, which would give him an advantage in trying to break the GOP’s losing streak in gubernatorial elections.

“I know it sucks to think about a Portland person, but a Portland person is how we get somebody who’s conservative elected,” he said.

McQuisten used her opening remarks to remind the audience she helped pass a Baker City resolution that criticized Brown and her COVID-19 restrictions.

“I wrote a resolution you may have heard of that told Kate Brown to pound sand,” she said.

McQuisten said moderates such as Pierce and Knute Buehler couldn’t win the general election, but she, as a “staunch conservative,” could.

Nonaffiliated voters recently surpassed Democrats as the largest group of voters in the state, and Merritt said Republicans needed to win those voters if they were going to win general elections and govern effectively.

He also criticized Drazan for allowing a gun control bill to pass so Republicans could get a seat at the table for redistricting only for Democrats to gerrymander anyway.

“Compromise is never an option,” he said.

Richardson said she was intentionally running her campaign frugally, adding she had only spent $3,000 on her campaign.

She also compared herself to former President Donald Trump, saying she was unpredictable and was able to successfully evade the state’s attempts to censor her.

“The state doesn’t know what I’m going to do next,” she said. ”Every time I try to do something, they never know what to expect.”

Sizemore owns a painting business, but he might be best known for passing multiple ballot measures that limited property taxes in the 1990s. He also ran for governor in 1996, but lost to Gov. John Kitzhaber in a landslide.

Sizemore leaned on his experience passing ballot measures and fighting with public employee unions, skills he thought would help him reform Salem.

Thielman touted his time as a “man of action” in Alsea, where he and the school board passed a resolution making face masks optional before the state lifted its own mandate.

He said the state should require schools to teach gun safety courses in fifth, eighth and 10th grade. As governor, he also would have the state arrest Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt.