Jessica Gomez, a Mediford-based business owner, talks about priorities for the state during an interview at Columbia Gorge News in The Dalles. She is running for Oregon governor in the Republican primary next spring.
THE DALLES — “Oregon needs a reboot, so we can begin to thrive again. We are struggling right now and we have to have strong leadership to get back on track,” says Jessica Gomez, a Medford-based business owner, and she would like to provide that leadership as the next Governor of Oregon.
Jessica Gomez, a Mediford-based business owner, talks about priorities for the state during an interview at Columbia Gorge News in The Dalles. She is running for Oregon governor in the Republican primary next spring.
Mark B. Gibson photo
Gomez is a Republican candidate and has filed to run in the May 2022 primary election. The 2022 Oregon gubernatorial election will take place Nov. 8, 2022. Due to term limits, Gov. Kate Brown cannot seek re-election in 2022.
When asked if she was a “traditional” Republican, or a “Trump supporter” Republican, Gomez said, “I see myself as a forward-thinking Republican. I want to maintain a great quality of life for our children, for me that is the most important thing. We have to be able to come together over common goal — and it takes strong leadership to do that. If you’re governor, you’re governor for the entire state. We need to focus on what will make our state thrive and prosper. We all want good education, strong businesses and safe communities.”
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Born and raised in low-income household in Long Island, New York, Gomez was “home schooled,” she said. “They did the ‘home’ part, but not the ‘school’ part,” she explained, and as a result she struggled to read in her early years. In late 1980s her family moved to southern Oregon. That was the height of the “Timber Wars,” as the spotted owl was recognized as a threatened species and the logging industry in the state was shutting down, she said. “The economy was very bad,” she said. “There was a lot of family financial stress.” She spent some time in homelessness, but when she was 15 “my grandmother tracked me down and took me back to New York.”
Her grandmother, a bilingual school teacher, helped her catch up on her education.
She eventually married, and returned to Oregon with her husband, Patrick Kayatta in 2003. Together they started their own business in Medford, Rogue Valley Microdevices, a computer chip manufacturing company that today employs around 30 people. Gomez serves as CEO of the company.
She said she didn’t think someone today could go into business now the same way they did. “The (Oregon legislative) environment now is so unfriendly to business,” she explained.
Her company has grown, but struggles with many of the same issues facing Oregon businesses throughout the state. “It’s always been a struggle to find employees, the workforce participation rate in Oregon is low,” she said. The pandemic made things worse, she added. “Young parents had to stay home, care for the kids,” she said.
That’s one of the reason she has filed to run for governor.
“As governor I would like to sponsor legislation to promote at work, on site childcare,” she said. To encourage the service, the cost would be tax deductible for both the employer and the employee, she said.
It will not be her first election; Gomez ran for a Senate seat in 2008.
Gomez said that if elected as governor, she would focus on 3 top priorities; the economy, education and public safety.
Economic priorities
Oregon needs to build strong, resilient regional economies, she said. “We emphasize metro areas too much,” she explained. Rural economies need stronger water infrastructure, better broadband infrastructure and a skilled workforce, she said.
Educational priorities
Oregon needs to get a better return on its educational investment, Gomez said. “We are not seeing a return on the state’s investment in education,” from K-12 through higher education, she said. “It’s a significant investment, we should expect more. We aren’t spending our dollars strategically.”
As governor, Gomez said she would work to establish a statewide apprenticeship program that starts in high school. She would also work to develop a statewide college credit transfer program for the state, so that credits earned at any community college or public university in the state can be transfered to any Oregon college. “It’s pretty hard to transfer credits, and kids are losing a lot of their investment when they change schools,” she explained.
On her website, Gomez adds that parents should be able to choose the best public school for their child, provided there is space, and Charter schools should be supported; a K-12 graduate required to take remedial courses at an Oregon public college should be provided those courses at no cost; high school curriculum should be aligned with regional worforce needs and partnerships developed with industry to develop apprenticeships for high demand jobs; students should have the opportunity to earn college credit for work experience; and a Universal Credit Program should be created.
Public safety priorities
“We’ve got to support our men and women in blue — de-funding is not the answer,” said Gomez. “We need to provide (law enforcement) support, leadership development and crisis intervention skills, give them the best tools we can to keep our communities safe.”
She said Oregon needs a governor who takes public safety seriously, a state where appropriate first responders are deployed and the correct response is professionally executed. “We must provide targeted resources for continued education and mental health support for police and first responders,” she said.
“We need to get the homeless sheltered, off the streets,” she said. On her website, “Jessica Gomez for Governor,” she writes, “The issue of unsheltered homelessness is complex. We can solve this crisis by implementing a comprehensive plan paid for by reallocating existing dollars toward coordinated mental health and public safety infrastructure. Relying on local service providers to stitch together multiple small funding streams does not work and the outcomes are disappointing. The homeless need shelter, she said, and “we need to get them into services that can address addiction issues and mental health.”
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Gomez serves on the Business Oregon Commission, the state’s economic development agency, and is a founding member and currently chair of the Oregon Tech Board of Trustees; she is also on the Oregon Health Authority Board, having previously served on several subcommittees. She worked in the Oregon state legislature with Sen. Alan Deboer, a Republican out of Ashland who served from 2017-2019.
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