SALEM — The top candidates seeking to become Oregon’s next secretary of state touted their legislative experience and ability to get results during the first primary debates Tuesday, April 9, saying their track records would enable them to restore voters’ trust in an office that has faced significant upheaval in recent years.

Four Democrats and two Republicans participated in forums hosted by the City Club of Central Oregon. The winner of this May’s Democratic primary will be favored heading into the fall general election. Oregon voters have only elected a Republican to serve as secretary of state once since 1985.

The Democratic primary frontrunners, state Treasurer Tobias Read and state Sen. James Manning, both said Tuesday that they would protect the integrity of the office if elected.

Shemia Fagan, Oregon’s last elected secretary of state, resigned last May after it came to light that she had taken a $10,000 a month consulting gig with an affiliate of embattled marijuana company La Mota at a time when her office was auditing the cannabis industry.

Current Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade, who was appointed by Gov. Tina Kotek after Fagan resigned, is not running. The secretary of state oversees elections, serves as the state’s chief auditor and heads the Oregon Corporation Division. They also sit on the Oregon State Land Board and chair the Oregon Sustainability Board.

Read, the only candidate that has held statewide office, touted his successes as a former lawmaker and as state treasurer for the last seven years, saying he will protect Oregon’s voting system and ensure that the office conducts data-driven audits to avoid corruption.

“I don’t think anyone has ever accused me of being the most exciting, flashiest candidate in any race that I’ve run, but it seems to me that we’ve had enough excitement and drama in the Secretary of State’s Office of late,” Read said. “I want to bring the same focus on integrity and results to the Secretary of State’s Office that I’ve had as your state treasurer.”

Manning, a state senator since 2017 and a veteran who served 24 years in the U.S. Army, pledged to restore integrity in the Secretary of State’s Office, increase transparency in the office’s auditing system and expand voters’ access to the ballot.

“I think ahead, I see things that could be and then I implement those,” Manning said. “I am result-oriented. There’s no one like me. I am fully accountable to myself and to all of my constituents.”

Two other Democratic candidates, James Crary and Dave Stauffer, also participated in the forum. Stauffer, a retired attorney and engineer, ran unsuccessfully for the office in 2020. Crary is a former attorney who has twice run unsuccessfully for Congress.

If elected, Manning said his top priority would be to conduct thorough audits of agencies to address equity-related issues, such as the disproportionate hiring of men and lack of racial diversity in some state agencies. He also said he would demand an audit of the Oregon Employment Department to ensure Oregonians who have struggled with the department’s new software system can more quickly access unemployment benefits.

Read said his top priorities would be protecting Oregonians’ right to vote and providing sufficient support to staff members to ensure that audits are carefully selected and done with the right intentions. He said audits should not be driven “by a particular agenda, but by efficiency and effectiveness.”

Manning and Read both said they would work hard to reduce corruption in the office, but they cited different tactics to do so. Read touted his experience overseeing audits as treasurer, adding that he oversees the state’s massive public employee pension fund and has carefully managed it during his tenure.

“I’ll take that same sensibility to the Secretary of State’s Office and look for opportunities to make sure that we have safeguards in place,” Read said.

Manning said he would lead the office by example and reduce corruption by setting an office-wide expectation of integrity and honesty, adding that he did that in his former role as an inspector general in the Army.

“This is about leadership. This is about values. This is about integrity,” Manning said. “These are basic values of honesty and integrity. Those are the things that I will instill and those are the things that I will set an example and live by.”

As the state’s chief elections officer, Manning said, he would work to expand voters’ access to the ballot and protect Oregon’s mail-in voting system. But he did not share specific strategies.

To maintain or improve Oregon’s voting systems, Read said he would ensure successful implementation of Oregon’s recently-approved campaign finance law to increase transparency of campaign contributions and minimize skepticism from voters. He also said he would explore programs to increase voters’ confidence, such as establishing a statewide program that would track voters’ ballots or a program that would allow voters to see the ballot-counting experience firsthand.

This fall, Oregon voters will vote on a measure that would implement ranked-choice voting in future federal and statewide elections. The Secretary of State’s Office would oversee the implementation of the program.

Manning, who last year in the Legislature voted to refer the measure to voters, said he likes the idea of ranked-choice voting but said he is concerned that the system could hurt candidates who are not as well-known.

“I did vote to move it out of the Senate because it’s … going to the people,” he said. “Whatever the people decide, as secretary of state, that’s what I will implement.”

Read didn’t give a direct answer, saying that he is “enthusiastic about things that are going to make it easier for people to vote” but is concerned about the logistical challenges of implementing ranked-choice voting statewide.

“Who prints the ballots? What’s the technology and its capacity to deal with a different system? How will we count ballots, particularly in races that span more than one county?” Read said. “Having to think through all of these details is going to be really essential if voters pass this proposal. … That’s why it’s so important to have a secretary of state with a demonstrated track record of taking complicated, challenging concepts and delivering results.”

The winner of the Democratic primary in May will face one of three Republican candidates in November. Two of them, state Sen. Dennis Linthicum and business analyst Tim McCloud, participated in a separate forum Tuesday. Linthicum decided to run for office after the Oregon Supreme Court ruled that he cannot run for reelection because he participated in a Republican-led walkout of the Senate in 2023. McCloud has not held a previous office and unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2022.

Linthicum and McCloud both said restoring election integrity would be their top priority if elected. Both said they believe voter fraud has impacted state and federal election results in recent years and said they would attempt to end Oregon’s vote-by-mail system. There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud at the state or federal level.