Oregon’s Democrat secretary of state does not list former President Donald Trump or his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, as candidates on the office’s website, and county voter pamphlets exclude them from the biographies of presidential candidates.
Under candidates for president, Oregon Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade’s website lists candidates Kamala Harris, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Jill Stein, but Trump is nowhere to be found. Under candidates for vice president, the website simply lists Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
County voter pamphlets, issued by Griffin-Valade’s office, also omit Trump and Vance from the presidential candidates’ biographies. Pamphlets note that each biography was “furnished” by the candidate’s campaign, and that “candidates are not required to file voters’ pamphlet statements.”
The pamphlets also include a section for political party statements, in which they list the Democrat Party first and the Republican Party fifth.
The pamphlets do list Trump and Vance as candidates one time — in small print on page 26. The Republicans have stars by their name, indicating the “candidate chose not to submit a voters’ pamphlet statement.”
The secretary’s office posted on X that the absent biographies were not a mistake, and that Trump and Vance will still appear on ballots. “The Trump campaign chose not to participate. It was not an omission by officials,” the office posted Thursday evening.
The Oregon Republican Party said in an April press release that “the decision not to submit a statement for the voter’s pamphlet was made by the Trump campaign earlier this year.” Laura Kerns, the secretary’s communications director, told KOIN the Trump campaign did not submit a statement or pay the necessary $3,500 to appear in the voter pamphlet.
Republican state Sen. Dennis Linthicum also told The Federalist the Trump campaign chose not to pay the fee. Linthicum is Oregon’s Republican nominee for secretary of state in November.
“The Trump campaign did not spend the money to file,” Linthicum said. “Why they got left off of the information center from the secretary of state, no doubt, is political maneuvering.”
Linthicum said he was unsure why Trump and Vance are absent from the secretary’s webpage, but subjective rule making with flexible language sometimes allows things like this to happen.
Clackamas County Commissioner Ben West, a Republican from Oregon’s third-largest county near Portland, told The Federalist that county voter pamphlets in the state are the “most important mailer a candidate could ever have.”
“Everyone reviews that around the kitchen table,” West said. “Everyone marks it up and makes their notes and dog-ears the pages.”
West said he had not heard the secretary left Trump and Vance off the online candidate list, but called it “highly irregular” and “bizarre.”
The Federalist has requested comment from Griffin-Valade and the Trump campaign. This is a developing story, and The Federalist will add more information as sources respond.
Griffin-Valade oversees Oregon’s “motor voter” system, which she recently defended after stumbling across loopholes that registered more than 1,500 potential noncitizens to vote, as The Federalist previously reported. Democrat Gov. Tina Kotek has suspended the system during an external review, but state Republicans have called for a more comprehensive investigation.
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