Question:
You are asking the voters of Oregon House District 3 to place their trust in you and send you to Salem as their state representative. What motivated you to seek this office, what do you believe is currently missing from the district’s representation, and what do you believe you can accomplish for Josephine County that is not being accomplished today?
This question originally appeared in a Grants Pass Tribune article: Read More
Answer:
Most of life isn’t political. It’s getting the kids to school, caring for aging parents, building a life in a place you love. And the truth is, the system isn’t working for us. I am going to Salem to demand better for Josephine County.
I’ve spent my career on the other side of that counter. I started as a home visitor, sitting in living rooms with new parents. I’ve owned two small businesses, taught at Rogue Community College, and served on the Three Rivers School Board. For the last four years I’ve run a consulting practice that local governments, state agencies, and nonprofits hire to make their systems work better for the people they serve.
By the time a bill reaches the House floor, most of the real work is already finished. The decisions that matter happen earlier, while budgets are being drafted, while language is being negotiated, while an agency is writing the rules that determine who actually qualifies for something. Josephine County needs someone in those rooms.
Over fifteen years I’ve built relationships with legislators and with the agencies that decide how money and programs reach communities like ours. What’s missing today isn’t access to Salem. It’s someone with the standing to use it on our behalf, and I am running to do just that.
I will look closely at what happens to a dollar between the day the Legislature appropriates it and the day it reaches a person in Josephine County. That’s money our community never sees, and it isn’t a partisan issue. It’s a competence issue.
Constituent service will be my team’s highest priority. When a resident, a small business, a nonprofit, or a local government hits a wall with a state agency, they should have a representative who picks up the phone and helps.
And that means all of House District 3. When I say House District 3, I mean Grants Pass, Williams, Cave Junction, and the Illinois Valley, including the communities that hardly ever get named in Salem at all, like Selma and Takilma. Grants Pass is the largest city in this district, but it is not the whole district.