With only weeks to go until Election Day, the story of US politics continues to be one of Republican retrenchment and Democratic expansion. Polls show Democrats now have a real shot at winning races in the traditionally Republican strongholds of Ohio, Kansas, Texas, Nebraska, Iowa and even South Carolina. So, how then to explain what’s happening in Oregon?

In a state where Democrats have long controlled most levers of government, the party’s incumbent governor, Tina Kotek, is at serious risk of losing to her Republican opponent, state Senator Christine Drazan. New polling shows the race is statistically tied. If Drazan wins, she will become Oregon’s first Republican governor in more than 40 years — and will have pulled it off despite an extremely unfavorable national political environment for Republicans and President Donald Trump.

To be sure, this race is an outlier. But Democrats shouldn’t ignore it. What Kotek is facing is almost certainly a harbinger of what others in the party will face in 2028, when winning elections will have less to do with the machinations of a lame-duck president than addressing voters’ growing frustrations over basic governance.

Consider the findings of a recent poll by Oregon Public Broadcasting: 58% of likely voters said their state is moving in the wrong direction.

There’s anger that more progress hasn’t been made on homelessness, with encampments still visible outside empty storefronts in Portland, Oregon’s largest city. Housing and healthcare costs are still sky-high, the state’s economy is still recovering from the pandemic, and its public schools are still some of the worst in the US.

Kotek ran four years ago, promising to fix all of this. Given that she hasn’t, it’s perhaps unsurprising that 60% of likely voters have a negative opinion of her, according to the Oregon Public Broadcasting poll. What surprising is that’s only three percentage points better than how likely voters feel about Trump.

It was only last year that the president tried to usurp Kotek’s authority and send National Guard troops into Portland, ostensibly to protect a federal immigration facility from “antifa.”While Drazan accused Oregon Democrats of letting “violent mobs and domestic terrorists” threaten ICE agents, it was Kotek who earned the most praise for taking charge of the state’s response and ultimately forcing the administration to back down.

Yet, such political plaudits may only go so far when voters are fed up with their day-to-day lives. At least, that’s Drazan’s hope. After narrowly losing to Kotek in 2022, she has spent much of the past four years attacking both the governor and the Democrats who control state government for failing voters.

“Oregon needs to be done with one approach to the world. Single-party control has not been good for us in my home state. And we need that balance,” Drazan recently told Fox News. “We need people to be at the table that have been ignored in the past to be able to turn our economy around, frankly, and turn our schools around and serve the people that are facing addiction and slowly dying on our streets.”Of course, such dire assessments of incompetent Democratic leadership aren’t new or even unique to Oregon.

In blue states and congressional districts across the US, Republicans are making similar arguments about their Democratic opponents: Why reelect them when they’ve raised taxes while making a bureaucratic mess of government?

It’s an argument that resonates with so many left-leaning voters, particularly in increasingly unaffordable blue cities, that even Democrats running against other Democrats are using it. In Los Angeles, for example, progressive Nithya Raman, who is challenging incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, is pledging to “build a city that works” — and so many voters believe the city is broken that Raman is up by 11 percentage points, according to recent polling.

However, the problem for most Republican candidates in this midterm cycle is that while many voters have major problems with Democratic governance, they don’t trust that the GOP can do better — at least right now, while the party is led by Trump. Gallup, for example, recently found that more Americans now have a favorable view of the Democratic Party than the Republican Party, a reversal from last year.

That Drazan has been the exception (so far) may reflect Oregon’s electorate. Close to 40% of voters in the state are independents, followed by Democrats with roughly 30% and Republicans with about 25%. Compare that to California, where Democrats outnumber Republican voters nearly 2-to-1, and Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton is trailing badly in every poll, despite his promises for “change” to a similarly frustrated electorate.

Still, for Kotek, Oregon’s long track record of electing Democrats and support for left-leaning policies may ultimately save her reelection bid. The governor has gone to great lengths to tie Drazan to Trump, pointing out her Republican opponent’s support for his agenda on issues such as immigration and mail-in voting.

Kotek has also wisely admitted her own shortcomings and, by extension, those of her party.

“I understand things have been hard for the last couple years,” she said on Tuesday during a debate with Drazan. “And I’ve been working hard to help make the state that we all want to have.”Kotek seems to understand that if voters give her another chance, it might be the last one. Nationally, Democrats need to understand that too.