ANDREW CUTLER
Publisher/Editor
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Owner
WYATT HAUPT JR.
News Editor
JADE McDOWELL
Hermiston Editor
TUESDAy, OCTOBER 13, 2020
A4
Founded October 16, 1875
OUR VIEW
Vote Dorran
for county
commissioner
I
t’s fair to say the candidates for Umatilla
County commissioner come with some
baggage.
Dan Dorran took home the most votes in
the May primary. Ahead of the Nov. 3 runoff,
he has support from much of the local political
establishment. However, he was arrested for
driving under the influence of intoxicants in
September after drinking at a golf tournament.
Dorran’s challenger, HollyJo Beers, is an
active member of the Three Percenters. In
addition to being involved in the failed recall
of Gov. Kate Brown and anti-COVID lock-
down protests, she’s called members of the
nearby tribes “the most racist people” she’s
encountered.
Pat Maier, who has spent 17 years doing
business through her company 1-A Construc-
tion & Fire, came in third place in the primary
and is now mounting a write-in campaign. She
used a recent voter’s forum to compare sys-
temic racism to being kicked off a youth base-
ball team as a kid.
And just for good measure, the fourth-place
finisher in the May primary, Jonathan Lopez,
publicized a racist letter he claimed was
dropped anonymously in his mailbox before
later admitting he wrote it himself.
Not a strong cast of candidates, but like the
saying goes, someone has to win.
And in this instance we believe, his recent
DUII arrest notwithstanding, Dorran is the
strongest candidate to replace outgoing two-
term commissioner Bill Elfering.
The Hermiston resident served on the Uma-
tilla County Fair Board from 1998 to 2017, and
during his time on the board, the fair’s annual
attendance ballooned from around 20,000 at
the most to more than 80,000. Dorran was
also a member of the steering committee that
worked on the $21 million development of the
Eastern Oregon Trade and Event Center in
Hermiston that is now home to the fair.
Most recently, Dorran served on the coun-
ty’s charter review committee in 2019, giving
him a detailed education on the county’s struc-
ture and bylaws. He currently sits on boards
for the Farm-City Pro Rodeo and Umatilla
County 4-H Association.
Beers has been politically engaged with
Umatilla County’s chapter of the Oregon
Three Percenters, a group she now leads
locally that is devoted to resisting infringe-
ments on the Constitution by the U.S.
government.
In Umatilla County, the Oregon Three Per-
centers have particularly petitioned and lob-
bied for greater protections of the Second
Amendment, which Beers claims as essential
to protecting the rest.
Nationally, the Three Percenters have been
associated with protests against immigrants
and refugees, and were notably sympathetic
toward Ammon Bundy and the 2016 occupa-
tion of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies
them as an “anti-government extremist group,”
although Beers disputes that description.
It’s Dorran’s long-standing engagement in
the county that caused us to endorse him in the
spring and is leading us to endorse him again,
despite his recent arrest. Voters should remem-
ber that Dorran was involved in a two-car col-
lision on Sept. 26. Everyone involved was for-
tunate that there were no injuries; it could have
been much worse. Voters should also remem-
ber it wasn’t Dorran taking the initiative to
issue a statement that broke the news, but the
Walla Walla Union-Bulletin.
Once forced to acknowledge the arrest,
Dorran did and said all of the right things —
taking “full responsibility,” the arrest was a
“hard awakening” and he’s “100%” owning
the choice to get behind the wheel.
If that’s the case, then we applaud that. As
far as we know, there is no history of DUII in
Dorran’s past, and everyone deserves a sec-
ond chance. But we also believe that elected
officials should be held to a higher standard,
which is why we published the news and are
bringing it up again now.
However, our endorsement is based not on
Dorran’s past mistake, but on the future. Going
forward, we believe Dorran will do the best
job in leading the county.
OUR VIEW
Rowan running unopposed for sheriff
U
matilla County Sheriff Terry Rowan
is running unopposed in the Nov. 3
general election.
Rowan is seeking a third term as sheriff,
a position he’s held since first being elected
in 2012. In 2016, he defeated challenger
Ryan Lenhert.
Rowan’s experience in law enforcement
is vast and diverse. He has 23 years of law
enforcement experience — all in Umatilla
County, with service as a dispatcher/control
room operator, corrections officer, transport
officer, civil deputy, criminal patrol dep-
uty and criminal investigator. Rowan also
worked with the Hermiston Police Depart-
ment as a police officer, detective and
agency leader.
Rowan also served as the undersheriff
for the Umatilla County Sheriff’s Office.
It’s an impressive resume, for sure, and
overall, we feel the sheriff has done a fine
job in office, but there are some areas that
could be improved.
We hope in his next term that his office
is more transparent and more commu-
nicative. Case in point, when a man was
killed in an apparent road rage incident out-
side Hermiston on June 20 it took three
days before the sheriff’s office released
any information or even acknowledged
there was a shooting. By the time the sher-
iff’s office released an initial statement that
there had been a shooting, they had already
worked with other law enforcement agen-
cies to locate and arrest a suspect — a cen-
tral detail they failed to tell the public for
almost three weeks.
In this era of social media, rumors fly
and it is important for the sheriff’s office to
be controlling the narrative — and you need
to do that through reliable media outlets.
We also have heard rumblings of grow-
ing issues out of the sheriff’s office, dis-
patch center and county jail that include
staff resigning for ethical concerns and an
unhealthy work environment due to a lack
of accountability and transparency from the
office’s leadership.
It’s important to note, again, that at this
point they are simply “rumblings” and
nothing concrete. However, if they prove
to be true, these are concerning issues and
deserve immediate — and transparent
— attention from Rowan and the county
commissioners.
The sheriff’s office needs to always be
a work in progress. Its leader needs to be
striving to improve. Rowan has the leader-
ship experience that gives him a chance to
deliver, and we hope if — as is likely — he
serves another term as sheriff that he takes
these criticisms seriously and works to
improve his department.
Life is better with good friends, good dogs
COREY
NEISTADT
AS I SEE IT
I
have enjoyed great friendships with
some wonderful people. It just so hap-
pens the best of those people have had
some great dogs over the years. Specifi-
cally, bird dogs.
The second full weekend of October
marks the opening of pheasant season in
Oregon. For about 30 years, I have been
enjoying that weekend in the sod water-
ways, ditches and draws between Fulton
Grain Elevator and Juniper Canyon with
an amazing group of people. Some have
been in the group since our days as Buck-
aroos in the mid-’80s. The newcomers to
the group joined after college, and now our
kids have joined the fray.
Along the way, I have had the plea-
sure to hunt over some great bird dogs
owned by myself and others in the group.
The first was Jake. He was a black lab
who had no quit in him. He was a do-it-all
dog. He could flush a rooster in the morn-
ing and jump ducks in the afternoon. He’d
steal your sandwich if you weren’t careful.
Jake wasn’t around long enough. After he
passed away, Spike joined the group. He
busted through more brush than a coastal
logger.
Spike was joined for a few years by sis-
ters Rizzo and Bernice. They hailed from
YOUR VIEWS
Matlack does what is right
for Morrow County
I started in Morrow County as a
patrol deputy in 1989, and in the years
since I have been honored to work with
some outstanding leaders. However,
none have been as inspirational to me
as Sheriff Kenneth W. Matlack.
I had the honor of working for Ken
from January 2005 through March
2016, when I retired as his undersher-
iff. During that time frame, I came
to know Ken as a great administra-
tor, mentor and friend. Ken continu-
ally worked to ensure that the sheriff’s
office not only enforced the laws but
a kennel on Sauvie Island and were the first
dogs anyone did any research on before
they joined the family. Rizzo and Bernice
were like Ferraris, while Spike was more
like one of those big Army trucks that only
go 45 mph down the freeway.
There weren’t many birds that could
get through that trifecta. The two sis-
ters would motor through the cover, while
Spike lumbered behind, cleaning up the
birds they missed. For a few glorious years,
we enjoyed these three in front of us in
the field. Unfortunately, Bernice inhaled a
piece of cheat grass that became infected,
and she passed away after only three years.
Rizzo grew old with Spike and they lived
long, full lives.
Next came Benny. They say you own
one great dog in your life. Benny may not
have been that dog, but he sure tried —
when it was easy. He didn’t particularly
like busting through the brush for birds. He
liked to run where it was easy, catch their
scent, then dive in the easiest way possible.
Benny hunted this way and drooled on all
of us for 11 years.
Up to this point we had been very com-
mitted to the Labrador retriever, specifi-
cally the black ones. As we’ve gotten older,
some of us are not as fast as we used to be,
sporting reconstructed knees and a few
extra pounds. A couple of us moved on to
the old man dogs, also known as pointers.
Our first pointer was Dot, a German
shorthair. Dot just finished her eighth year
with us and has always been a pleasure
to watch. Guinness, a Drathaar, joined
two years after Dot. He is currently in his
prime. He pointed and retrieved over a
dozen roosters in less than an hour in Juni-
per Canyon on Saturday.
Also, in our group we’ve had the plea-
sure to know and hunt over Libby, Kona,
Ally, Chester, Drake and many more. Wait-
ing in the wings to show us their stuff next
year are puppies Bunny and Darwin.
Like any group of people who have
been lifelong friends, we share major life
milestones. We were all married around the
same time. We all have kids within a few
years of each other. And, it turns out, we’ve
officially reached the age where conver-
sations around the campfire turn to when
we’ll schedule our first colonoscopy and
which of us are suffering from sleep apnea.
Though we generally focus on the
happy things in our lives on our annual
weekend trip, as a group we’ve had our
share of setbacks and heartache. There
have been divorces, the loss of a child, and
several in our group have lost a parent.
Sunday afternoon as we finished hunting
our last ditch, I turned to another member
of our group and remarked how lucky we
all are. Lucky to be able to drop everything
and hunt together for a weekend every year,
lucky to live in an area where the hunting
is so spectacular and the land so plentiful,
and lucky to be able to share the field with
each other, our kids and our dogs.
———
Corey Neistadt is a certified public
accountant at Newhouse & Neistadt, LLC
in Pendleton.
LETTERS DEADLINE
The East Oregonian does not run endorsements of more than 400 words.
The East Oregonian will institute a deadline for letters to the editor, so we can be fair with
all the letters we receive and allow for responses before Election Day, if necessary.
We run the letters on a first-come, first-served basis.
Please submit your endorsement letters to the editor by noon Friday, Oct. 23. You can
email them to editor@eastoregonian.com, or mail them to East Oregonian, c/o Andrew
Cutler, 211 S.E. Byers Ave., Pendletone, 97801.
We will publish our last letters on Saturday, Oct. 31. Any letters received after the dead-
line will not run. Election Day is Nov. 3.
would also “do what was right” by the
citizens of Morrow County whenever
possible.
When he was campaigning origi-
nally, his slogan was “Go The Extra
Mile” and I am here to tell you he has
never failed to do just that.
I encourage you to reelect Kenneth
W. Matlack as your Morrow County
sheriff. Do not risk a proven track
record. I know he will have my vote for
as long as he wants to remain sheriff.
Steve Myren
Boardman