Kotek’s 36-county tour will take her through the heart of conservative Oregon

Tina Kotek will spend her first year as governor traveling to places that gave her the least support in November.

At a Dec. 12 Oregon Business Council event, the governor-elect announced that she was launching the One Oregon tour across the state.

“I am committed to visiting every county in Oregon in my first year in office, with an eye toward building strong, working partnerships across our state — especially when it comes to housing, mental health and addiction care and education,” she told her audience in Portland.

Kotek kicked off the tour by visiting Yamhill County and stuck with her themes, making stops at the Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center and Head Start of Yamhill County before holding a roundtable with local government and nonprofit officials to discuss housing and homelessness.

Kotek plans to repeat this process 35 more times across the state once she takes office Jan. 9. Although the former state House speaker had a sometimes contentious relationship with conservatives, her team believes these issues are unifying.

“These issues are the focus of the tour because they are issues of shared concern across Oregon, and they will be the areas that she will focus on first as Governor,” Lindsey O’Brien, a spokesperson for the transition team, wrote in an email.