Candidates for OR Attorney General Face Off
EUGENE, Ore. — Republican Will Lathrop says his work, as a prosecutor in Marion and Yamhill Counties and for a Christian human rights group in Africa, fighting crimes like human trafficking, gives him the right skills for the job of Oregon Attorney General.
“People are making millions of dollars off of exploiting addiction just crushing families and communities. And it’s a role of the attorney general to push back. I have a lot of experience taking on international organized crime and I’m going to do the same in Oregon. I’m going to make it exceedingly difficult for people to exploit other people’s addictions and make their money that way. We’re gonna push back and make it hard to sell fentanyl.”
Lathrop says protecting children would be a top priority for him if he’s elected.
“We’ve become objectively an unhealthy place to raise children. DHS is fostering Children in hotel rooms. We have a huge explosion of online sexual exploitation of children , in our state, and just generally our parks and neighborhoods are not safe for children to play in. And I’ve spent my entire adult career working to protect children in Oregon, nationally and internationally, and we gotta get back to that.”
Democrat Dan Rayfield, Oregon’s former Speaker of the House, is a personal injury lawyer who represented the Corvallis area and the Oregon Legislature for a decade.
“We most recently this year brought Democrats. Republicans, law enforcement and district attorneys together to pass one of our most comprehensive criminal justice reform packages, one that gave law enforcement the tools to get hard drugs off the streets, but also at the same time really recognize we need to solve the root cause of the problem , which is substance abuse. I want to take this same leadership into the Department of Justice as your next Oregon Attorney General.”
Rayfield tells voters these are his priorities.
“Keeping our children safe across the state. Number two, I really believe we need to expand the work that we do on behalf of seniors and consumers, whether that is fly by night scams or whether that is predatory lending schemes. We need to have someone that has Oregonians back. And number three, we need an attorney general that will defend Oregon’s values from national attacks. Things like abortion rights and our environmental laws.”
The two candidates faced off in a Eugene City Club forum. The winner in November will replace Ellen Rosenblum, who ran and won statewide three times. She decided against running for a fourth term.