SALEM, Ore. (Legal Newsline) – A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who grew up in Oregon will not be able to run for governor there because he didn’t meet the state’s residency requirement.
The Oregon Supreme Court on Feb. 17 ruled against Nicholas Kristof in his fight to get on the ballot as a Democrat, finding Secretary of State Shemia Fagan was right to exclude him because he wouldn’t have been an Oregon resident for the three years before the election.
Kristof grew up in Yamhill County but can’t claim to be a recent resident of the state, the court ruled. Kristof left the state in 1978 for college and began working for the New York Times in 1984.
Between 1978-2000, though, Kristof was registered to vote in Oregon and maintained an Oregon driver’s license while purchasing farms in the state.
In 1999, he bought a home in Scarsdale, N.Y., and the next year started filing income taxes and registered to vote there. He also got a New York driver’s license, which he held until December 2020.
The opinion says he began spending more time in Oregon in 2018 and 2019 to write a book about Yamhill County. He hired employees for his Oregon farm and bought more land to expand it.
He filed both Oregon and New York income taxes in 2019 and 2020 but voted in New York for the 2020 election.
“We think it important, though, to explain the reason that the secretary did not commit legal error in attaching such significance to voting,” the decision says. “Relator’s characterization of voter registration as ministerial is mistaken.
“Although registering to vote may involve paperwork or other ministerial tasks, the choice of where to register is a meaningful one, as it provides evidence of the political community to which a person feels the greatest attachment—the community in whose elections that person wishes to have a say.
“We observe that the basis for the secretary’s decision was not, in and of itself, that relator failed to register to vote in Oregon. Neither Article V, section 2, nor the doctrine of domicile requires that a person register to vote in a jurisdiction.
“Many people who are domiciled in Oregon are not, and may never have been, registered to vote. What the secretary found significant is that relator registered to vote in a different state and cast ballots in that other state’s elections over a period of two decades.”