It’s easy to make an endorsement for the Crook County Commissioner Position 2. Our endorsement goes to Seth Crawford, 36, a Republican. He won the Democratic and Republican primaries, though the office technically is becoming nonpartisan. He is the incumbent and has worked in real estate.

Let’s start by asserting the obvious, Crook County faces many challenges, but the big one is jobs. Crook County needs more jobs and to hold on to the ones it has.

Crawford doesn’t have all the answers. He had many more specifics than his opponent, Walt Wagner, 73, who is running as unaffiliated.

Crawford wants to look at ways to diversify the county’s economy. The data centers for Apple and Facebook were great successes. More data centers or expansions of the existing ones may be coming, but Crawford says the county can’t be satisfied with that. He is proud of the work the county has done to ensure companies, such as Woodgrain Millworks, which employs more than 100, stays.

He’s been working with others to develop more bike trails around Prineville. Bike tourists and enthusiasts may not bring a lot of new jobs to town initially, but tourists spend money. Once they come to town, they could think of Prineville as a good place to bring their business or raise a family.

Crawford said the county has worked to make government more transparent. The court is holding more night meetings and putting more county documents online.

That issue of the transparency is the only one Wagner, a school board member, went into in any depth. Not enough people show up at the county meetings, he said. When he asks people, he said they don’t know when the county holds meetings. He would try to do a better job of spreading the word by setting up email chains.

Crawford is active in the community, knowledgeable about its challenges and invests his time in projects to enhance the county. Crawford is endorsed.