The Parts of Running I Was Most Afraid Of
Before I seriously considered running for office, there was one part of the job that genuinely scared me; the demands.
People are getting shot. Agencies are overwhelmed. The legislature is a massive, complicated body with competing priorities. The media, the party, donors, advocacy groups, challengers, and influencers all have opinions and endless time to comment on the political Hunger Games.
And it is, undeniably, a Big Job.
I was raised to believe that Big Jobs come with a very specific expectation: they take precedence over everything else. Family life becomes secondary. The hours become unreasonable. The job becomes an identity more than a responsibility. I absorbed that assumption so deeply that it kept me out of politics for years.
The Myth of the Big Job
There is a cultural mythology around leadership in this country that equates effectiveness with personal sacrifice. We romanticize exhaustion. We celebrate leaders who never stop working. We quietly reward performative busyness. But we almost never ask the obvious follow-up question:
Does that actually produce better outcomes?
Because in most complex systems, burnout doesn’t produce clarity. It produces noise. It produces rushed decisions, ego protection, and an inability to distinguish between what is urgent and what is important. Government is already structurally vulnerable to overcomplication. Layering a culture of martyrdom on top of that doesn’t produce better governance. It produces more bureaucracy, more performative activity, and less accountability for actual results.
What Parenting Changed For Me
Parenting forced me to confront time, energy, and priorities in a way nothing else ever has. Children do not negotiate with performative productivity. They do not care about optics. They require presence, consistency, and clear decision-making. They expose very quickly when you are overcommitting, avoiding hard choices, or confusing activity with effectiveness.
Parenting has made me less tolerant of wasted time. Less impressed by hierarchy for its own sake. Less willing to engage in meetings that exist only to protect egos or maintain appearances. It has also made me deeply comfortable with delegation, trust, and accountability, because raising children requires building systems where other people help carry responsibility, and everyone understands their role.
Those are not distractions from leadership. Those are core leadership skills.
Why I Now Think This Is a Strength
The fear I used to have about balancing public leadership and parenting has evolved into something else. It has clarified my priorities. I am not interested in politics as a game. I am not interested in ladder climbing or positioning for the next race. I am interested in doing the job well.
And doing the job well does not mean personally doing everything. It means building systems where smart, capable, mission-driven people can do their work effectively and being accountable for whether those systems produce real outcomes for Oregonians.
With strong childcare and structural support, a 50-hour work week is not only realistic, it is sustainable. And sustainability in leadership is not a weakness. It is what allows leaders to stay grounded, make better long-term decisions, and remain connected to the people they serve.
Leadership Without Losing Humanity
I did not pursue politics earlier in my life because I had not yet learned how to ground myself in my humanity independently of professional identity. Parenthood forced me to do that work. It forced me to decide who I am when I am not producing, performing, or achieving. It forced me to define my values outside of career metrics. That grounding is what makes leadership possible now.
Because leadership without that grounding often becomes about ego, fear, or status preservation. Leadership grounded in real life tends to focus on outcomes, accountability, and service.
What This Means For How I Would Govern
Parenting hasn’t just changed my schedule. It has changed how I think systems should function.
It has made me deeply skeptical of leadership models that rely on exhaustion, performative activity, or the assumption that individuals can compensate for broken systems through sheer effort.
As governor, this philosophy would shape how I approach governance:
• Prioritizing implementation quality over announcing new programs
• Requiring agencies to measure real outcomes instead of activity metrics
• Investing in workforce stability and interagency collaboration
• Focusing on preventative investments that reduce long-term crisis costs
• Setting fewer, clearer statewide priorities so agencies can coordinate effectively
Government works best when it is designed to succeed without heroic individuals. My goal is to build systems that deliver results consistently, transparently, and sustainably.
Why This Matters For Oregon
Oregon is at an inflection point. The problems we are facing are not simple. They require coordination across agencies, sectors, and communities. They require leaders who can distinguish between visible activity and meaningful progress.
We also need leadership that reflects how people actually live, not leadership insulated by systems that assume unlimited time, unlimited resources, and unlimited personal sacrifice. I want to do this job well. And doing it well means staying close enough to ordinary life to understand the stakes, while building systems strong enough to serve millions of people effectively.
I do not believe public service should require abandoning family, humanity, or personal grounding. I believe those are exactly the things that make public service trustworthy.
