Democrat spent the past eight years as treasurer, pledges to hire election staff with experience and expertise in election administration

By Julia Shumway, Oregon Capital Chronicle

In an auditorium on his alma mater’s Salem campus on Monday, Jan. 6, Tobias Read took his oath of office as secretary of state with a promise to spend the next four years working to make Oregon better.

Read, a Democrat who spent the past eight years as treasurer, was elected secretary of state in November, easily defeating Republican state Sen. Dennis Linthicum. He was sworn in at Willamette University, where he graduated in 1997 with a bachelor’s degree in politics and economics and had his first political experience working at the state Capitol across the street.

And now the Beaverton Democrat is the state’s chief auditor and chief elections officer and next in line for governor should Gov. Tina Kotek resign or die in office. He’s inheriting an office that has seen significant turnover — Oregon has had six secretaries of state and two acting secretaries during the past decade — and is still reeling from the political scandal that ended former Secretary Shemia Fagan’s career two years ago and years of threats and unfounded conspiracies targeting elections.

“As your secretary of state, I’ll work every day to make sure that Oregon isn’t just a place where democracy survives, it’s a place where democracy flourishes,” he said. “We’re lucky in Oregon. We’ve inherited enormous advantages and tremendous opportunities, and we owe it to the people who came before us and the people who will come after us to leave this place better than we found it.” 

He cited late U.S. representative and civil rights leader John Lewis, who in his final, posthumously published essay in 2020, wrote that democracy is not a state but an act, and that each generation must do its part to nurture and strengthen it. 

“Our obligation, yours and mine, is to honor the generations who worked to establish it and to preserve it, and to serve those who will inherit it from us,” Read said. “That is not an abstract union. It’s a daily act of commitment. The way we contribute to a more perfect union, or in our case, a better Oregon, is by serving the people who put their trust in us — not by defending government for its own sake but by ensuring that government delivers real, tangible results that improve the daily lives of Oregonians.”

Oregonians deserve a government that earns their confidence, Read said, but recent years have seen increased cynicism and eroding trust. He said his top priority is to fix that, with special attention paid to elections, government accountability and participating in government. 

Changes planned

He said he’ll start by hiring election staff with experience and expertise in election administration — the state’s most recent elections director, Molly Woon, was a longtime Democratic spokesperson who previously served as deputy director of the Oregon Democratic Party and a spokesperson for the Senate Democratic caucus and Democrat Kate Brown when she was secretary of state. Read announced just before Christmas that he would replace Woon with Lane County Clerk Dena Dawson, who worked in election offices in Colorado, Nevada and Multnomah County before running elections in Oregon’s fourth most populous county. 

“Oregon has been a pioneer in vote by mail and expanding access to the ballot,” Read said. “These are good things, and we must defend these achievements, as well as the dedicated election workers and county clerks who make them possible, but we must also work to rebuild trust in our elections by ensuring that the Secretary of State’s Office is, and is seen by voters as being neutral, unbiased and nonpartisan.”

He also plans to change how the Audits Division identifies which agencies and programs to audit to avoid politics or personal agendas. An audit of the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission’s marijuana regulations ended Fagan’s tenure as secretary of state, after reporting from Willamette Week revealed she was working a $10,000-per-month side gig for one of the state’s most prominent marijuana retailers. 

Drew Johnston, a former Read aide who now works as government affairs director for the Seattle Seahawks, introduced him. Johnston’s father, Bryan, was a Democratic state representative from Salem who gave Read his first political job: a $35 weekly stipend in 1995 to help with filing bills, a process that required a lot of paper in those days. 

A little more than a decade later, Read returned to the Capitol as a state representative, and his old mentor’s son joined him as a legislative aide. Read served five terms in the state House, including a stint as majority leader, before being elected treasurer in 2016. 

“Political slogans are kind of like refrains and echoes, and so this 30-year-old Tobias had the subtly brazen political slogan of ‘For the long run,’” Johnston said. “And so it is amazing that he has been able to make good on that promise and we are here celebrating not only his eighth general election, but his third statewide election.” 

Oregon Historical Society Executive Director Kerry Tymchuk rehashed some notable and notorious previous secretaries of state, including the state’s first: Lucien Heath, who came to Oregon on the Oregon Trail and served simultaneously as mayor of Salem and secretary of state before departing for California. Two other early secretaries, Stephen Chadwick and Frank Benson, would go on to serve simultaneously as secretary of state and governor — ignoring that such double-dipping was entirely unconstitutional. 

Read also will make history, Tymchuk said. Not only can the 6-foot-7 Read steal the title of tallest secretary of state in Oregon history from the legendary Gov. Tom McCall, he’s the first secretary of state to have previously held another statewide elected office. 

Julia Shumway has reported on government and politics in Iowa and Nebraska, spent time at the Bend Bulletin and most recently was a legislative reporter for the Arizona Capitol Times in Phoenix, Arizona.