Letter to the editor teaser

I was glad to see the County Republican Central Committee encourage unaffiliated voters to register for the primary. I have been unaffiliated for most of my voting history and in recent years came to see that I had helped hollow out the functional center of what is still a two-party system, contributing to the mess of partisan extremes we live with.

Still, no candidate came along to move the needle and make me re-register until I became acquainted with Jim Doherty, Republican from Heppner, running for Oregon Senate District 29.

District 29 runs from here to The Dalles. It is a major transportation corridor, with the Columbia River, the interstate, rail, and the Port of Morrow. There is major power generation, data storage, two reservations, a university, and lots and lots of agriculture and ag processing. There’s a natural gas pipeline coming through, there’s power transmission, there are groundwater issues. It’s more than just cows.

As a third-generation Oregon rancher, Jim knows the cow perspective. As a former Morrow County Commissioner, he also has a centered perspective on this changing district of 140,000 people. Morrow County includes the second largest port in the state, the incoming Amazon data centers and PGE’s 350 megawatt renewable energy facility.

As past president of the Association of Oregon Counties, he knows the people and the challenges and where the dollars flow. I rarely get out of Wallowa County, but when I do make the trip down the Columbia and back, I am always impressed by the dynamism of this region that makes me proud of where I raised my family and made my living (with cows). I’ll vote for Jim Doherty.

Andy Fairchild

Enterprise