Walt Wagner and Seth Crawford

Crook County Commissioner Seth Crawford won the nomination of both the Republican and Democratic parties in the May primary, but he won’t be unopposed for re-election in November; Walt Wagner, a member of the Crook County School Board, is running an independent campaign for county commissioner.

Crawford, 36, regards himself as a Republican and won his first term on the County Court running as such in 2010. This year, write-in votes won him the Democratic nomination, when no Democrats filed to run in the primary.

Wagner, 73, said he does not consider himself a member of any party. In past years, Wagner has challenged Commissioner Mike McCabe in the Republican primary, mounted a prior independent campaign for the Crook County Court, and run for state House and Senate as a Republican and Democrat.

Regardless of who prevails, the November election will be the last of its kind — earlier this year, Crook County residents voted to drop party labels from County Court elections starting in 2015.

Crawford and Wagner both said jobs and the economy are the leading issues for county residents.

Crawford said he’d like to see the high-tech sector expand in the county and advocates the continued use of incentives such as the county’s enterprise zone to attract and retain business.

Offering tax incentives through the enterprise zone kept Woodgrain Millwork from moving from Prineville to North Carolina earlier this year, Crawford said, saving 200 jobs. The company now plans to add another 60 jobs, he said.

“That was a big thing for our community,” he said. “If we would have lost that, it would have been very, very unfortunate.”

Crawford said the enterprise zone has also lured Buck Stop, a truck bumper manufacturer, that settled in Prineville this summer and is building up toward 20 to 25 living-wage jobs.

Wagner said he’d be willing to travel outside the area to meet with businesses and make the case for relocating to Crook County, a job largely performed today by Economic Development for Central Oregon. Wagner said that while EDCO plays an important role in recruitment, sending an elected official to participate in the process would send a strong message to businesses.

Crook County should explore luring other communities to dump their garbage at the county’s larger-than-needed 1,600-acre landfill, an arrangement that could create 100 jobs locally, Wagner said.

He said he’s concerned to see the county’s poverty rate inching up, even as unemployment has been declining in recent years.

“If we’re really opening up jobs and making jobs available for people, the poverty rate should be adjusting accordingly,” he said.

Crawford said preserving and enhancing the quality of life in Crook County is a top priority if he wins a second term. He said he intends to continue his work with the Central Oregon Trails Alliance to build a network of walking and biking trails around Prineville. Volunteers are already working on building three miles of trails at no cost to taxpayers, he said, and if local leaders stay dedicated to the project, it’s realistic to have a 30-mile trail network within five to 10 years.

“I think a big part of the reason people move to Crook County is our quality of life, but we need to constantly be expanding on that if we want people to move to our community,” he said.

Wagner said he wants to see more collaboration among the county, local businesses and the school district to expose young people to employment opportunities locally. Too many recent high school or college graduates leave Crook County never to return, he said.

“I’ve found we have businesses in this county, whether it be wood products or Les Schwab, where they can actually have a career in this county,” Wagner said. “We can get them into a job and keep them here for a very long time.”

Crawford and Wagner said they want to improve the county’s communications and transparency to improve citizen participation.

Crawford said the county has made strides in that direction during his time in office, switching some court meetings from morning to night to allow more working people to attend. The county has also started putting all meeting materials on its website, not just meeting agendas, he said, and uses email to send such materials to anyone who wants to be added to the list.

Wagner said he’d also like to use email to attract more people to county meetings. He said he’d work with the heads of the county Democratic and Republican parties, as well as other groups, to provide them with information about upcoming meetings for their members.

Thousands of people in Crook County have no access to computers or the Internet, Wagner said, and the county needs to find a better way to reach out to them.

“It’s gonna take some work, but unless you make an effort and take on stuff like this, it’s not going to happen; it’s just going to be status quo,” he said.

Also on the ballot, Crook County Sheriff Jim Hensley is running unopposed, and Cheryl Seely is unopposed in her campaign for Crook County clerk.

— Reporter: 541-383-0387,

shammers@bendbulletin.com