Betsy Johnson, the unaffiliated candidate for governor, is lagging in the polls behind Democrat Tina Kotek and Republican Christine Drazan. But she's not letting it stop her. “Sitting around watching Oregon in a death spiral, I have one last fight in me, and this is it,” Johnson said. “And I’m not going to surrender a place I love without one hell of a fight.”
In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Oregon's nonunanimous jury system was unconstitutional as well as rooted in racism and discrimination. Senate Bill 1511, now dead, would have extended the court's ruling retroactively to some such convictions.