Washington, DC – This week, the candidates running for Attorney General in Oregon faced off in a debate, and the clear winner was Democrat Dan Rayfield. During the debate, Rayfield highlighted his commitment to protecting abortion rights, preventing gun violence, and tackling the fentanyl crisis.

His extreme far-right GOP opponent, Will Lathrop, avoided any questions regarding abortion protection or access – including when it came to protecting the abortion medication mifepristone.

Key moments from Rayfield during the debate:

• “We need an attorney general that will be an attorney general for all Oregonians, that means expanding the work that we do to protect our seniors, our consumers, and our working families and that’s things from wage theft, fly by night scams come in and out of our communities, and many other things like predatory lending.”
• “From the attorneys general office where the nexus comes is really tackling drug delivery with the resources the legislature recently allocated and being able to lead and coordinate federal, state, and local law enforcement entities to get better results.”
• “Things are well-settled law until they’re not well-settled law and that’s what you’re seeing here and this is a wonderful pivot my opponent not to talk about a really critical issue. As attorney general, I will be there to defend Oregon women from a national abortion ban. And what that looks like is when the federal government passes a national abortion ban, that law will be in conflict with our Oregon laws, and you can count on me to protect Oregon laws and abortion.”
• “When I served in the legislature we passed things like universal background checks, we passed ghost gun legislation to ban ghost guns, the things that are used in crimes all across the United States now. Right now what is developing is a critical role the attorney general plays in defending those laws…As your next attorney general, I will defend the constitutionality of those gun violence prevention laws.”

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