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Election 2022: Meet the candidates for Oregon labor commissioner
Claire Withycombe
Salem Statesman Journal
USA TODAY NETWORK
Oregon voters will be choosing a key
enforcer of workers’ rights this year.
Whoever wins the race for labor com-
missioner will be in charge of an agen-
cy with a $35 million budget and more
than 100 employees.
The Bureau of Labor and Industries
enforces wage and hour claims and
other worker protections. It also sup-
ports apprenticeship programs for Or-
egonians seeking job training and en-
forces protections against discrimina-
tion in housing and public places.
All Oregon voters, even those not af-
filiated with a political party, can have
a say in the May 17 election for labor
commissioner.
On that date, if a candidate for labor
commissioner gets more than 50% of
the vote, that person will win the elec-
tion outright. But if not, the top two
candidates will head to a runoff in No-
vember, according to the Secretary of
State’s office.
The state’s current labor commis-
sioner, Val Hoyle, in 2018 called it “the
most important race you’ve never
heard of.” Hoyle, a former state law-
maker, is not seeking reelection be-
cause she is running for Congress in
District 4.
Eight people are trying to become
labor commissioner this year. These
are the candidates:
Aaron Baca, reforestation
company owner
A ballot is placed in a secure drop box at a drive-thru location near the Marion County Circuit Court on Tuesday, May 18, 2021 in
Salem. ABIGAIL DOLLINS / STATESMAN JOURNAL
man said. “So which do you pursue for
the most good?”
Neuman says he wants to motivate
employers to post accurate job listings
that include the qualifications needed
for the job. He said there is still “some
question about the enforcement mech-
anism” for that idea.
Asked if there was anything he would
change about the agency, he said that he
would wait until he was elected to de-
cide what needed to be changed.
Baca, of Cornelius, says that as a
contractor and former electrician he
understands both the struggles of
small businesses and what it’s like to
be part of a union. When he relocated
to Oregon from California, he says it
was too difficult for him as a journey-
man electrician to get qualifications to
do similar work in Oregon.
“I would’ve had to start all over all
over again as a journeyman, to go back
into a four-year program,” Baca said.
He wants to emphasize job training.
“Making more resources available
for basic training skills is crucial, I be-
lieve,” Baca said. “And as well as, these
training programs need to have (an)
introductory year or introductory-
style approach that’s not so committal.
If you’re going to go into a trade,
whether it be a plumber or electrician
or whatever it may be, you’re looking at
four years’ or five years’ commitment
right off the bat.”
Baca said he has not managed a
budget of BOLI’s size but that he has
worked as a manager.
Christina Stephenson, civil rights
lawyer
Brent Barker, real estate broker
Barker, of Aloha, could not be
reached for comment by deadline.
On his website, he says his cam-
paign “will work with business and la-
bor to encourage and promote high
paying jobs to Oregon; protect workers’
rights and improve Bureau of Labor
and Industries (BOLI) social media
public service ratings.” His website
also says he wants to work with
schools to “enhance” job training.
Cheri Helt, former state
legislator and restaurant owner
Casey Kulla, a Yamhill County commissioner, is running for state labor commissioner.
JOSH KULLA
of Bend.
Chris Henry, truck driver
Helt, a restaurateur and former
state lawmaker from Bend, cites her
experience as a legislator, business
owner and school board member as
qualifications. As a member of the
Bend-La Pine School Board, Helt said
she worked to pass Measure 98 in 2016,
which dedicated state money to career
and technical education.
“We now have a designated line
item in our budget for career and tech-
nical education to high schools,” Helt
said. “But what we haven’t done is
really captured the pipeline from those
career and technical education pro-
grams into high-paying jobs.”
For example, she says, the state has
committed to expanding access to
high-speed internet, but there isn’t an
apprenticeship program for broad-
band jobs.
“I think the biggest piece of this is
really starting to build the connec-
tions, right?” Helt said. “Because we
have programs, you just have to find
them and then there’s not arguably
enough of those programs. Right? So
let’s take the mystery out of it. Let’s de-
sign this so that it’s easy.”
Helt also points to her experience
running a business, especially during
the COVID-19 pandemic, when busi-
nesses had to adapt to rapidly chang-
ing regulations.
She says she also wants to use her
understanding of state laws to work on
workforce housing issues. Oregonians
across the state struggle to afford
housing, especially in Bend, an out-
doors town with a booming real estate
market.
“I don’t think I’m going to come with
all the answers, but I’m going to come
with the willingness to bring forward
everybody, and get everybody sat at a
table, and let’s talk about how we can
solve the problem together,” Helt said.
Helt has been endorsed by Oregon’s
former Secretary of State Bev Clarno
and former state Rep. Knute Buehler,
At midnight on Sept. 9, 2021, Henry,
who has been a Teamsters freight truck
driver for 18 years, pulled off the high-
way to file to run for Labor Commission-
er the first minute that registration
opened.
That ended up not working, and he
had to wait until he got home. He and
one other candidate, Robert Neuman,
filed on Sept. 9, according to Secretary
of State records. The perennial candi-
date – who says he also has run for gov-
ernor, treasurer, attorney general, Con-
gress and the Tualatin Valley Water Dis-
trict – is now looking to help his fellow
workers as labor commissioner.
“This was out of a desire that I had in
order to help working-class people,”
Henry said. He wants to see a higher
minimum wage, which he says he would
use a statewide platform as labor com-
missioner to advocate for, and wants to
require companies to provide diversity
training.
Casey Kulla, county commissioner
and farmer
As a county commissioner in Yamhill
County since 2019, Kulla says he has
worked with a range of people with
varying political beliefs to improve gov-
ernment services, and wants to bring
that skillset to statewide leadership.
For instance, when the state-man-
dated vaccines for health care workers,
he helped the county come up with an
agreement – over the course of many
hours of discussion – that Kulla said
was respectful of the workers but also
complied with the mandate.
He thinks that BOLI can better in-
form Oregonians of their rights.
In recent years, the state Legislature
has passed new policies enshrining new
protections for workers, like requiring
overtime for farmworkers and creating a
new program for people to take paid
family and medical leave when they
welcome a new child or care for a sick
loved one. BOLI has the responsibility for
enforcing those rights.
“Most people have no idea that they
have those rights, or that those programs
exist,” Kulla said. “And it feels really im-
portant for people to actually know that
and then know where to go.”
Kulla says he also wants the agency to
step up its enforcement of apprentice-
ship programs and wage and hour laws.
In early 2021, the Oregon Center for Pub-
lic Policy published research finding that
Oregon businesses paid penalties to the
state in only 1% of cases where a worker’s
wage theft claim was found to be valid.
“If there’s not a deterrent in the form of
a penalty, then it’s like a zero-interest
loan,” Kulla said.
He thinks the agency’s process for pe-
nalizing businesses for violations should
be clear and transparent.
And Kulla wants to figure out how to
reduce the workload for the agency’s civil
rights investigators. The bureau gives
equal priority to each case, and the pan-
demic has also resulted in high workloads
per worker, Kulla said. He said addressing
that might mean increasing the number
of workers the agency has to do that
work, but also could mean providing in-
vestigators with technological tools to do
their jobs more efficiently.
Kulla, who runs a farm with his wife,
Katie, growing produce, seed crops and
pasture-raised meat, has raised about
$25,000 in 2022, and his endorsements
include former Gov. Ted Kulongoski and
the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde.
Robert Neuman, worker from Baker
County
Neuman, who says he works to help
manage businesses, says his basic plat-
form is that it should be easier for work-
ers to apply for jobs. He believes the Bu-
reau of Labor and Industries is under-
funded and doesn’t have enough work-
ers.
“So it’s this awkward agency that, ‘All
right. Need to do this,’ but you can only
choose so many things to pursue,” Neu-
About 15 years ago, lawyer Christina
Stephenson’s father got sick with colon
cancer.
Stephenson struggled to balance her
finances and taking care of her dad.
“It was an awful time,” Stephenson
said. “And it was a time where I really
had to guard my paid leave and kind of
dole it out to make sure that I could still
pay my bills, but also take a little bit of
time off to help be a caregiver and be
with my dad during that time. And I re-
member, really distinctly, being so
scared to look at my paycheck because
I’d taken a few days more than I could
really afford to.”
But after she got her paycheck when
he passed away in 2012, she realized
that she received bereavement leave as
part of the contract she was working un-
der.
Having long been interested in public
policy, Stephenson researched the law
and learned that other Oregon workers
could be fired if they took time off to
grieve a loved one. So she mobilized the
members of her grief support group to
advocate at the state capitol for chang-
ing the law in 2013.
Since then, Stephenson has provided
feedback on legal language in bills that
have become state laws, like the new
program to provide paid family and
medical leave to people who have just
had a child or are taking care of a loved
one, and a measure to promote equal
pay.
If elected labor commissioner, Ste-
phenson wants to continue to defend
workers.
“I really think that the job is to make
sure that as Oregon’s economy is grow-
ing and changing, that the workers, the
employers, the consumers, everyone
who makes the economy run, that they
know they have someone in their cor-
ner, someone who’s looking out for
them,” Stephenson said.
Stephenson says she has a good un-
derstanding of what it’s like to run a
small business and worry about making
payroll, too.
“We can make it so much easier for
employers to do the right thing,” she
says. The division of the bureau that is
meant to help businesses comply with
regulations has just six workers in it,
Stephenson said.
Stephenson says that overall, the bu-
reau has half the workers that it did 40
years ago and she wants the agency to
be strategic about how and where it
spends money and enforces workplace
protections. Part of that could involve
using data to see which industries are
least compliant.
Stephenson has been endorsed by
Hoyle, the current labor commissioner,
as well as unions from PCUN, the farm-
workers’ union, to the Oregon State Fire-
fighters Council. As of April 7, Stephen-
son was by far the largest fundraiser for
the race, with her campaign raising
about $109,000 this year.
Claire Withycombe covers state gov-
ernment for the Statesman Journal.
Contact
her
at
cwithycombe@StatesmanJournal.com