PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, OCTOBER 22, 2021
Todd to run for Marion County DA,
will be fi rst contested DA race in decades
Criminal defense attorney Spencer Todd will be running for district attorney in 2022.
By JOEY CAPPELLETTI
Of the Keizertimes
Spencer Todd announced last
week that he would challenge District
Attorney Paige Clarkson in the 2022
election, making it the fi rst time since
at least 1988 that there will be a con-
tested district attorney race.
Todd, born and raised in Salem and
now a criminal defense attorney, said
the ability to give voters a choice for
such an important position infl uenced
his decision to run.
“The amount of power that the DA
has is actually shocking in terms of
basically being the fi nal arbiter on who
gets charged with what crime and who
doesn’t get charged with what crime,”
when they are done.
Todd, whose parents are both attor-
neys, began his law career at 16 years
old in the Marion County Courthouse
— where he built shelves for the records
department. From the “dusty” base-
ment of the courthouse, Todd went
on to graduate from law school at
Willamette University and has worked
for the past eight years as a criminal
defense attorney in Marion and Polk
counties.
Only eight years since graduating
from law school, the jump from public
defender to district attorney is quite the
step up. But Todd said the current way
of doing things isn’t working, and for
change to happen, diff erent opinions
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said Todd. “And so a big part of it for
me was I think that voters, and every-
body in Marion County, deserves two
options instead of just a simple, this is
the way it is.”
The current district attorney,
Paige Clarkson, was elected in 2018
and appointed by previous District
Attorney Walt Beglau who had served
since 2002.
The job of a district attorney and
their offi ce, among other things, can be
to determine whether criminal charges
are brought to court, which cases are
dismissed or diverted from court, and
often suggesting sentence lengths.
District attorneys often run in uncon-
tested races and support a replacement
Submitted photo
need to be heard.
“The way we’re currently doing
things doesn’t work. It wastes money
and it doesn’t create the long-term
solutions that we need,” said Todd.
“We send more people to prison in our
population than anywhere else in the
world. It doesn’t work. We keep trying
the same thing and so at some point
we’ve got to try something diff erent.”
One of Todd’s objectives if elected
is to “stop sending people to prison for
as long when that doesn’t translate to
public safety.” Instead, he believes that
money would be better spent dealing
with the cause of issues, such as mental
illness and drug addiction.
Todd also said the current prosecu-
tors in the DA offi ce are overworked
due to, among other things, the fact
that too many cases are taken to court
that could be resolved other ways. In
certain cases, Todd said, deals settled
outside the courtroom are necessary
for the larger picture.
“Sometimes a deal just needs to
happen. It just does because it saves
us a trial. We don’t have to put the vic-
tim through testifying. There are no
appeals. It saves us the resources of the
jury having to come in,” said Todd.
The Marion County District
Attorney vote will take place during
the primary election on May 17, 2022.
Sam Goesch
Ins Agcy Inc
Sam Goesch CLU, Agent
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