“We’re Not Gonna Let Him Win”

My Conversation With Oregon Governor Tina Kotek on Standing Up for Oregon

By Andy Neal

Two days ago, I had the opportunity to sit down with Oregon Governor Tina Kotek for nearly an hour, and I’m still processing the fact that I just typed that sentence.

It was surreal. I’ve spent the last several years building this platform around hiking, mental health, my own story, and increasingly around advocacy and public lands. That work has taken me into some unexpected places and some conversations I never imagined I would be having. Sitting across from the governor of the state I love was definitely one of those moments.

We covered a lot of ground. We talked about who she is beyond the office, what she has learned as governor, mental health in Oregon, wildfires, public lands, and some of the challenges facing our state. I’ll be sharing more pieces of that conversation, and I’m working on getting the full interview out soon.

But there is one section I keep coming back to.

We started talking about federal overreach and what Oregon has experienced under President Trump. Governor Kotek talked about how relentless it has been and why she continues talking about the president even when people ask why she focuses on him so much.

“It is a daily assault on the values of our state,” she told me.

She talked about federal grants coming with conditions, the constant battles with the administration, going to the courts when necessary, and the sense of hopelessness she hears from people who are exhausted by all of it.

Then she said something that stuck with me.

“My job is to take a deep breath every single day and say, ‘We’re not gonna let him win. We know what we believe as Oregonians.’”

That was probably the most inspirational part of the interview for me.

There was no hesitation. She stood on principle. She stood on business. She was unwavering about defending Oregon.

We talked about what happened when the Trump administration attempted to deploy the Oregon National Guard into Portland. Kotek talked about bringing people together across different levels of government and throughout the community, fighting the administration in court, and Oregonians showing the rest of the country how we respond.

And yes, she remembered the frog suits.

“We showed the nation that we can say no,” she said. “We won in the court, we won in the court again, and after 100 days, the Oregon National Guard went home to their families.”

She told me other governors have since asked her how Oregon did it. For Kotek, it was an example of people here understanding what was happening, coming together, and standing their ground.

That immediately made me think about something I experienced here in Southern Oregon.

After Alex Pretti was shot by ICE, there was a vigil in the plaza in Ashland. At the end of the vigil, people stood together holding candles and sang “America the Beautiful.”

I filmed it.

And that video ended up reaching around a million people.

I told Governor Kotek about that moment because it remains one of the most beautiful things I’ve experienced here in Oregon. Ashland gets stereotyped as this granola, hippie, liberal town, and, to be fair, it kind of is. But that night there were people standing together from different backgrounds, races, creeds, and political beliefs because they knew something wasn’t right.

And there they were, together, singing “America the Beautiful.”

When I told Kotek that story, our conversation landed somewhere that I think is incredibly important right now.

“We love our country,” she said. “We love our state, and we are not gonna get rolled over by this president.”

That’s it.

You can love this country and stand against what its government is doing.

You can love America and demand that the president follow the law.

You can love your state enough to defend it.

And you can disagree about a thousand other things while still recognizing moments when something simply isn’t right.

I love Oregon. I love our public lands, our communities, our weirdness, and the people who call this place home. And after sitting across from our governor and hearing her talk about this, I walked away grateful that when it comes to defending Oregon against federal overreach, she is willing to stand up and fight.

There is much more from my conversation with Governor Kotek that I’ll be sharing soon, including the full interview.

But this was the part I wanted to share first.

Because right now, I think a lot of people need to hear it:

“We’re not gonna let him win.”

Photo by Andy Neal.

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