Oregon — Gov. Tina Kotek’s re-election committee has collected $8.85 million in cash contributions since late December and spent $2.86 million of it, according to an Oregon campaign-finance export covering Friends of Tina Kotek from Dec. 24, 2025, through Sept. 3, 2026.
The 4,999 transactions show a campaign financed far more by large organizations than by typical Oregon households. Itemized groups, political committees, national party vehicles, unions, and businesses, accounted for about $6.72 million. Itemized individuals gave $1.80 million. Unitemized gifts of $100 or less added another $332,338.
The money arrived as incumbent Democrat Kotek prepares for a November rematch with Republican state Sen. Christine Drazan of Canby, the same opponent she narrowly defeated in 2022.
Top organizational donors
Five organizations supplied nearly $4.2 million — almost half of all cash raised in the period:
- Democratic Governors Association (Washington, D.C.) — $1,500,000 (July 27)
- Democratic Governors Victory Fund (Indianapolis) — $1,000,000 (June 26)
- Citizen Action for Political Education (CAPE), PAC No. 33 — $700,000 in four gifts from late July through August. CAPE is the political arm of SEIU Local 503, which represents thousands of Oregon state workers.
- Oregon Nurses Political Action Committee — $600,000 in four gifts from March through early August
- Local 48 Electricians PAC (IBEW) — $400,000 (June 26)
Together, the two Democratic Governors Association vehicles put $2.5 million into the account in six weeks. That single pipeline exceeds all itemized individual giving in the entire eight-month window.
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Labor-aligned committees and unions beyond the top five added still more. The American Federation of Teachers’ federal committee gave $250,000. AFSCME International gave $200,000 on July 27. UFCW’s Active Ballot Club gave $200,000. Firefighters’ groups in Washington, D.C., and Oregon added $50,000 each. Counted together, union and union-PAC cash in this file exceeds $2.5 million.
That concentration matters in a state capital where the governor sits across the table from public-employee unions on pay, benefits, and staffing. SEIU 503 and AFSCME bargain with the state Kotek administers. Nurses and electrical-trades PACs have their own stakes in hospital rules, prevailing-wage policy, and large construction projects.
Who wrote the personal checks
The five largest individual donors in the same records:
- Kelly Kimball, Agoura Hills, Calif., listed as founder and chairman of Vitu — $150,000 ($100,000 on April 24 and $50,000 on Aug. 18). A related company, Motor Vehicle Software Corporation doing business as VITU, separately gave $49,999.50.
- Jay (JB) Pritzker, Chicago, governor of Illinois — $100,000 (Feb. 25)
- Stephen Silberstein, Belvedere, Calif. — $75,000 (July 14)
- Gordon Keane, Portland executive at Digital Vision Inc. — $37,250 across eight gifts
- Nicholas Greenfield, Portland employment attorney — $30,000 ($5,000 in March and $25,000 on Sept. 2)
Other sizable personal gifts included $23,500 from Molly McCabe of Santa Monica and $20,000 each from attorney Ronald Abramson of Washington, D.C.; Portland attorneys Tom D’Amore and Robert Beatty-Walters; and Portland housing developer Benjamin Pray.
The individual file is two economies stacked on top of each other. The median itemized individual gift was $50. More than 2,600 itemized personal contributions were under $100 and totaled only about $65,000. By contrast, 453 individual gifts of $1,000 or more accounted for $1.47 million, most of the personal money.
Where the dollars came from
Cash contributions by filer category in the export:
- Political committees (mostly Oregon PACs): $2.43 million
- Individuals: $1.80 million
- “Other” entities (dominated by the DGA’s $1.5 million): $1.75 million
- Unregistered committees (including the $1 million Democratic Governors Victory Fund, plus national union and corporate PACs): $1.51 million
- Business entities: $769,200
- Unitemized contributions of $100 and under: $332,338
- Labor organizations booked in that category (AFSCME International, Oregon AFSCME Council 75, Oregon State Fire Fighters Council): $270,000
Business checks were real but secondary. Avamere Skilled Advisors and Centene Management Company LLC each gave $100,000. Rule42 Sports Group LLC, a Lake Oswego-linked startup, gave $50,000. NextEra Energy Resources gave $30,000. Trial firms and other law offices added more than $117,000 as businesses, on top of large gifts from individual lawyers.
Oregon addresses still supplied the largest single-state total, about $4.10 million. Washington, D.C., was next at $2.33 million, followed by Indiana at $1.00 million — the Victory Fund’s Indianapolis filing address — and California at $593,250. A $150,000 January gift from Building a Stronger West of Los Angeles and a $250,000 August gift from Building a Stronger Oregon, a miscellaneous PAC, added another layer of organizational money that is harder for voters to map to a workplace or membership list.
In-kind support was modest by comparison: $74,920, led by a $23,936 charter-fare gift from Rubicon Investments Corporation and event support from Moda Health.
Where it went
Cash spending in the same window totaled $2,855,647. The campaign ran a surplus of about $6.0 million on these books, though the export does not include a starting cash balance or activity before Dec. 24, 2025.
The largest vendor was Canal Partners Media, paid $1.10 million in two July and August invoices coded as broadcast advertising — radio and television. Other major outlays:
- ADP payroll, taxes, and related costs: $553,323
- Democratic Party of Oregon: $207,500
- Empirical Media LLC: $182,830
- GBAO polling: $126,575
- Ascend Digital Strategies: $124,875
- Three Point Media: $124,647
Purpose codes show the shape of a general-election operation: about $1.10 million on broadcast ads, roughly $433,000 on wages and benefits, and hundreds of thousands more on digital advertising, consulting, polling, and overhead. ActBlue merchant fees alone ran $44,674.
Fundraising accelerated after the May 19 primary. June brought in $1.93 million, July $2.59 million, and August $2.05 million. Spending jumped with it — $796,000 in July and $831,000 in August — as television time was reserved.
What the ledger shows
Eight months of filings describe an incumbent with a national party ATM, a dense network of public-sector and trade-union PACs, and a thinner stream of ordinary Oregon checks. Small donors are numerous. They are not what filled the account.
The structure is legal under Oregon’s reporting system. It is also a reminder of how statewide races are financed when six- and seven-figure transfers from party committees and labor PACs face few practical ceilings. Voters can see the names. They cannot see, from these rows alone, what those donors expect if Kotek wins a second term on Nov. 3.
Figures are drawn from the committee’s ORESTAR transaction export dated through Sept. 3, 2026. Totals treat each listed transaction as reported and do not attempt to reconstruct cash-on-hand against earlier 2025 activity outside the file.
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