Meet the Candidates for Nomination: Christine Tacha

Name: Christine Tacha

Seeking the nomination for Governor of Oregon.

Party Affiliation: Pacific Green Party

Home: Portland

Why do you want to pursue this role? What interests you about it? What are the top issues you're campaigning on?

I love my state. My greatest passion is helping people, and I've done that for 12 years at Radio Cab. As time wore on, and current events became volatile, it became clear that my mode of helping was akin to draining the ocean with an eyedropper. I'd like to do more, so I can rest easy at the end. I haven't spent my life preparing for a political career so I don't mind taking the heat if it gets the right conversations going. My campaign would focus on environmental rights, worker's rights, human rights and corporate accountability

The Green Party and You - Please choose one of the 10 Key Values and tell us what it means to you.

Ecological Wisdom

To me, ecological wisdom means recognizing that we already have the answers and a wealth of knowledge at our disposal both from the indigenous people who stewarded this land long before corporations came in to extract from it and the most current green technology. Indigenous people have the wisdom of their forebears and we have the science and technology to enact that wisdom now. What's missing is the political willingness to put people over profits. A shift from profits to what's right is necessary. We must demand that corporations use green technology rather than choosing the cheaper option that causes ecological damage. We simply cannot continue to pretend money and shareholder value are more important than the planet.

Do you support the Green Party's position on universal healthcare nationally and/or statewide?

*https://www.gp.org/single_payer
**https://www.pacificgreens.org/support_health_care_for_all_oregon

Yes. Single payer healthcare is the most direct path to a happier planet.

Do you support the Green Party's position on BDS, and Palestinian rights?

*https://www.gp.org/israel_palestine
**https://www.gp.org/bds_peaceful_approach_to_change

Yes. I support peace and demilitarization of all peoples on the entire planet. War is a relic of a bygone era and needs to be dismantled and replaced by communication and cooperation. Only through peace will we find unity. I believe genocidal acts beget more genocidal acts. As such it's our duty to end them now for future generations.

Do you support ranked choice voting or similar voting reform?

Yes. Ranked choice voting is the only true vote in my opinion.

Anything else?

I want to talk about women. The Constitution says all men are created equal, and we've spent 250 years pretending that was just a figure of speech. Women still do not have explicit constitutional equality in this country, and that conversation is long overdue. Right now, women's rights are more under threat than they have been in a generation. Reproductive autonomy is being stripped away state by state, and the political appetite to roll back even more protections is growing, not shrinking.

Beyond our borders, violence against women is treated as a cultural issue we're not supposed to touch, especially when the country doing the harm has something we want. We look the other way on the brutalization of women because a government sits on oil reserves or holds a strategic position. That's not diplomacy, it's complicity and I think an Oregon governor's race is as good a place as any to start saying so.