ELECTION 2020
MyEagleNews.com
Wednesday, October 7, 2020
A3
OREGON HOUSE DISTRICT 60
OWENS wants to represent the
people, protect the rural way of life
SPELL hopes to give people a
choice, vows to listen to everyone
Incumbent Crane
farmer says
bipartisanship
is important
for a successful
representative
Third-generation
Grant County
resident seeks new
jobs to keep younger
generations around
By Rudy Diaz
Blue Mountain Eagle
By Rudy Diaz
Blue Mountain Eagle
After being appointed as
representative for Oregon’s
House District 60 in Janu-
ary, Mark Owens said he has
worked to listen and be a voice
for the people in the district
and plans to continue that if
re-elected in November.
Owens, who lives in Crane,
said Harney County is what
allowed him and his family to
live the American dream. He
met his wife and started his
family in Harney County and
bought his own farm there.
He said, while trying to
make a living became harder
due to a changing society, it
drove him to get into public
service.
“I got on the school board,
I got on the planning commis-
sion and a lot of boards, and
I started to feel that I could
help with the correction to
make Oregon more business
friendly,” Owens said.
When the state representa-
tive position became available,
Owens, who was a Harney
County commissioner at the
time, said the position would
give him a chance to develop
as a leader and be a voice to the
community and possibly make
change, which is why he pur-
sued the position.
He said an important aspect
of being a representative is
being a voice to the 73,000
people in House District 60
and making sure he can artic-
ulate their concerns during dis-
cussions on policy.
“My primary job as rep-
resentative is to represent the
people, maintain our custom
and culture and try to protect
our way of life,” Owens said.
Some of the concerns
expressed by constituents in
District 60 were fires and the
need for better land manage-
ment, bringing money and jobs
into the economy, government
and state agencies running
out of control, unemployment
issues, permitting and licens-
ing and lifting restrictions on
schools, according to Owens.
He said the concerns are
widespread and that House
District 60 submitted 33 legis-
lative concepts on concerns.
“It’s been interesting, and
it’s a broader perspective than I
thought it was originally going
to be,” Owens said. “A lot of
it stems back to the desire and
needs to have accountabili-
The Eagle/Rudy Diaz
Mark Owens, R-Crane, is the incumbent in the race for represen-
tative of Oregon’s 60th House District.
ties in our agencies, make sure
small businesses are not penal-
ized and we become more
business friendly.”
COVID-19
presented
another trial that raised con-
cerns. Owens said COVID-19
is a real disease that needs to be
taken seriously. However, he
said Oregonians have allowed
COVID-19 to run their lives
through policy and action.
“We need to learn how to
live with COVID and not have
COVID live our lives,” Owens
said.
He said children and small
businesses have been the most
affected by the policy actions
and restrictions. Owens said
kids should have the chance
to get back to school build-
ings, and it should be easier for
small businesses to reopen.
“We still need to pro-
tect those that are vulnera-
ble and those that are con-
cerned,” Owens said. “We still
need to take precautions, but
we’ve got to get back to some
normalcy.”
The partisan environment at
the state capital does provide
challenges, Owens said. He
said, by nature, he is not a par-
tisan person and was a county
commissioner in a nonpartisan
environment.
As
commissioner
he
worked with many other com-
missioners and never knew
if they were Republicans or
Democrats.
“It didn’t dawn on me until
the first emergency session,
we were down there and we
had bipartisan support of lia-
bility coverage for schools,”
Owens said. “We had 10 Dem-
ocratic representatives write
a letter to the speaker, asking
for the amendment, and the
Republicans supported it. We
had the votes to get it through
the house ... but (Gov. Kate
Brown) decided to pull it to
leverage it for later.”
Good policy needs to be
bipartisan and needs public
participation, Owens said.
“Bipartisanship is huge, and
it’s probably the number one
thing that would make me suc-
cessful as a representative of
Beth Spell has lived in
Grant County all her life, with
the exception of college and
the beginning of her marriage,
and she’s now campaigning
to be representative of Ore-
gon’s 60th House district as the
Democratic nominee.
Spell’s father and grand-
mother lived in Grant County
all of their lives. Spell’s
great-grandparents moved to
Grant County in the late 1860s.
“I am Grant County, born
and raised, and very much feel
that this is the land that I’ve
been called to live in and try
to make it as good a place as
possible for people to live in,”
Spell said.
ELECTION
2020
OREGON HOUSE
DISTRICT 60
the district,” Owens said. “You
need to represent every per-
son in your district regardless
of their party affiliation, and in
order to get that done, you’ve
got to leave that partisanship at
the door and become bipartisan
in order to work successfully
with everyone.”
There are exceptions for
bipartisanship such as spe-
cific moral and constitutional
issues. He said he is pro-life,
supports the Second Amend-
ment and freedom of speech
and said there are no grey areas
for these topics.
Owens said people should
vote for him because he is ded-
icated to serving the commu-
nity of House District 60, he
can continue to learn to be a
voice of the community and he
has the personality and tools to
affect positive change.
“I think I can be successful
in that environment in Salem
more so than a lot of people,
and if I didn’t think I could
promote positive change, I
wouldn’t be here,” Owens
said, “I have a real passion and
desire to see our communities
do better.”
Spell was a school teacher
for a number of years and was
on a negotiating team for her
union when contracts were
negotiated with the school
board. She said this experience
helped her find the ability to sit
down and work with somebody
who had a contrary position.
The conversations would
not be contentious as she
worked to keep the discussion
in the middle ground, she said.
She also served on several dio-
cese-wide committees for her
church, the Episcopal Diocese
of Eastern Oregon. She said she
developed a lot of mediation
and discussion skills with peo-
ple of varying positions.
Spell decided to run because
she said people need a choice in
deciding a representative.
“It’s not an election unless
they have a choice, and for a
number of years, our represen-
tative has been selected mid-
term by a group of commission-
ers and other county officials,
and rarely does anybody ever
run against them,” Spell said.
“They’re really in that posi-
tion without receiving a man-
date from the people.”
Contributed photo
Beth Spell, the Democratic nominee for Oregon House District
60, decided to run because she said people need a choice.
Spell said, as she goes fur-
ther into the race, there have
been a lot of issues that have
been ignored. She said, by
offering people a choice, she
is offering them a different
perspective.
Spell said the needs of
Eastern Oregon don’t seem to
be communicated very well,
and the prominent difference
between the eastern and west-
ern sides of the state are their
thoughts on what makes life
livable.
“We need to develop a strat-
egy and a style of communica-
tion so we can work with those
people that are a majority of the
population so our needs are met
and we can meld the two differ-
ent cultures to work together,”
Spell said.
Spell said Eastern Ore-
gon needs family wage jobs
so younger generations can
stay and raise their families.
New technology and new ideas
would help make this possible,
she said.
“We can’t keep trying to
move backwards to the way
things were when I was being
raised in the ’50s and ’60s,”
Spell said. “Those jobs are
gone, and they’re probably not
coming back just like the jobs
we had 100 years ago — those
are gone too. We need to look to
the future.”
Spell said, if elected, she
will look at and investigate the
concerns of the people regard-
less of their political affiliation
because her job will be to rep-
resent everyone in District 60.
Spell said there has been
significant conflict in Eastern
Oregon regarding how to deal
with COVID-19.
“I think people need to lis-
ten to the scientists and the doc-
tors and follow their recom-
mendations and be careful,”
Spell said. “In a position of
leadership, a leader should be
encouraging people to follow
guidelines and be careful and
not take unnecessary risk.”
She said almost everybody
has a fragile person in their
life, and to flaunt guidelines
for personal freedom is putting
friends and family in jeopardy.
She added that the resistance
has also prolonged the need for
restrictions and mandates from
the state.
“We can shorten the influ-
ence of the pandemic if we
were more careful,” Spell said.
Spell said she knows peo-
ple are tired of the influence
that COVID-19 has had on life,
but the longer people fight it the
longer the problem will persist.
Spell said people should
vote for her because she will
stay in the room during legisla-
tive sessions, and if the discus-
sion gets hard, she is not going
to leave because she is going to
represent everybody in her dis-
trict. She said she’s a good lis-
tener determined to talk and
work cooperatively with every-
one. Spell is also the Work-
ing Families Party nominee.
She said this party focuses on
workers: child care opportuni-
ties, affordable housing, family
wage jobs and more.
“Those are the things we
need to work towards to make
our community viable for the
future,” Spell said.
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