Election 2022: Oakridge business owner, Lane Events supervisor vie for House District 12

Michelle Emmons, running as a Democrat and Independent, and Republican Charlie Conrad are facing off to become state representative for District 12.

Current District 12 Rep. John Lively, D-Springfield, is moving to District 7 due to redistricting.

District 12, an area that had been mostly within District 7 prior to redistricting, covers the mountainous rural areas surrounding Oakridge and Lowell, and towns north and south of Eugene, including parts of Junction City, Creswell and Cottage Grove.

Emmons is a small business owner from Oakridge. She said she wants to bring rural representation to the district and help its communities thrive. Conrad is a former law enforcement officer who now works as the operations supervisor for Lane Events Center and lives in Dexter.

Emmons focused on jobs, climate, schools

Emmons owns a small hospitality and events business in Oakridge. She was the lone Democrat in the spring primary. This would be her first time serving in the state Legislature. She is focused on improving education, housing, infrastructure and job opportunities. She is also the Independent Party nominee.

Whether it’s through assisting local agriculture workers or protecting towns in the case of wildfires, Emmons said she wants to make communities more resilient to disasters, while also protecting the environment.

“What's on everybody's mind and especially mine, being an evacuee of Oakridge, is climate resiliency and the impacts of climate change throughout our region, in particular the rural communities that are next door to forests,” Emmons said.

Emmons’ experience includes working as an upper watershed manager for Willamette Riverkeeper, a nonprofit group dedicated to protecting and restoring the Willamette River, as well as doing business recruitment for theOakridge Westfir Chamber of Commerce and working as a marketing and advocacy director for Downtown Eugene Incorporated.

One way of protecting the environment, Emmons suggests, is giving incentives for logging and farming operations that are environmentally conscious.

“For instance, there can be incentives for farmers that meet their yearly inspections and follow regulations and then do more than what is regulated in order to care for their lands and our waters,” she said.

Emmons also wants to find ways to preserve available water in case it’s needed to fight wildfires or to protect farmlands during a drought.

She said she wants to help rural towns fill job vacancies and provide housing for people like young doctors, police and firefighters. She also wants to improve school infrastructure.

Emmons said she wants to address the need to improve broadband infrastructure and cell phone service in rural areas. When her family had to evacuate due to wildfires this month, Emmons said they had to rely on someone knocking on their door because the electricity was shut off and there was no cell service.

According to the Oregon Secretary of State's Office, Emmons' campaign had raised just under $14,700 this year as of Tuesday. It had spent a little over $6,000. It has a current balance of $8,631.

Public safety, jobs among top concerns for Conrad

Improving job opportunities, education and public safety in Oregon are issues Conrad is most focused on.

Conrad said he has wanted to run for state office for 30 years. In the May primary, he won over three other Republican candidates with 30.5% of the vote.

He said over the decades he felt motivated to run after seeing others get elected he thinks don’t prioritize residents.

“That’s not what I want to do,” he said. “It’s really about the people in the community and moving things forward.”

Conrad said he wants to focus on public safety and the economy, whether it’s improving job opportunities, combating inflation or supporting local businesses.

For much of his career, Conrad has worked in law enforcement, first as a corrections officer at the Lane County Sheriff's Office, and then as an officer for the Springfield Police Department for 14 years.

Increasing the number of officers in departments that have officer shortages is one of his priorities.

During his time as an SPD officer, Conrad was the focus of a $450,000 lawsuit settlement in 2015 against the city of Springfield alleging he used excessive force in 2012 that injured a deaf homeless man while putting him in custody for a psychiatric evaluation. The agreement also called for SPD to revise policy on how officers deal with people who have hearing, speech or visual impairments. A police department investigation concluded that Conrad did not use excessive force against Toll, former Police Chief Tim Doney said.

Other changes he wants to see are getting more resources for responding to mental health crises so that someone trained to handle those situations can go instead of officers.

“The more that we can support getting mental health professionals to respond to what truly are mental health calls and to be able to spend the time with people to solve and hopefully resolve their issues, it’s much better for all involved and much better outcomes,” Conrad said.

Having worked for law enforcement, Lane County Parks and the League of Oregon Cities, Conrad said he thinks his diverse work history gives him a strong understanding of how cities function and how to handle different legislation.

Conrad has previously said it’s important for Republicans to be able to work across the aisle with Democrats since the GOP are the minority, but emphasized a desire to return the state to more conservative policies.

“The regulations on smaller businesses and some of the other regulations that have been imposed on us over the last few years, those need to go by the wayside," he said in April. "We need to bring that process, that philosophy, back to more of a conservative approach."

According to the Oregon Secretary of State's Office, Conrad's campaign had raised just over $60,200 this year as of Tuesday. It had spent a little under $28,300. His campaign has $6,000 in outstanding loans, and a current balance of $25,837.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to mention a 2015 lawsuit against Springfield that involved Conrad, and that Emmons is the Independent Party nominee.

Louis Krauss covers breaking news for The Register-Guard. Contact him at lkrauss@registerguard.com, and follow him on Twitter @LouisKraussNews.

This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Oakridge business owner, Lane Events supervisor vie for House District 12