Dictatorship or open-mindedness. Control or cooperation. Being told how things are going to be, or electing people capable of listening to the people who actually put them in office.
What kind of government does Josephine County want?
It was not very long ago that voters were answering that question through recall elections.
Chris Barnett. John West. Andreas Blech.
Three Josephine County commissioners recalled within roughly 24 months.
At some point, that stops looking like ordinary political turbulence and starts demanding a very simple question: Why do we keep electing people only to discover that we want them gone?
John West should require particularly little assistance from our collective memory. Approximately 62 percent of participating voters recalled him in December 2024.
Sixty-two percent.
Yet here we are again, with West attempting to return to the Board of County Commissioners and potentially regain the political power voters decisively took away from him.
Apparently, 62 percent saying “no” was not sufficiently persuasive.
One of the central complaints surrounding West’s recall was his relationship with the public and accusations that he ignored the will of the people. Now look around his political orbit and some remarkably familiar names remain nearby.
Simon Hare. Chad Hansen. Dwayne Yunker.
Coincidence?
Come on.
West has not been standing on the political sidelines watching these men from a distance. He has supported candidates and political allies within this circle, including financially, while his official actions helped advance some of them into positions of power. West joined former Commissioner Herman Baertschiger Jr. in casting the two votes that appointed Yunker to the Oregon House in 2023. Hare has remained a familiar figure in the same county political network, while Hare and Hansen took their relationship beyond politics and into business through Patriot Solutions LLC.
Follow the relationships and the picture becomes considerably less mysterious.
West. Hare. Hansen. Yunker.
Appointments. Endorsements. Campaign support. Business partnerships. Public money.
Different names seeking different offices, perhaps, but Josephine County voters have every reason to recognize the company they keep.
West and former Commissioner Herman Baertschiger Jr. were the two commissioners who appointed Yunker to the Oregon House in 2023. Yunker subsequently won the seat from voters in 2024, but his original entrance into Salem came through that appointment.
Yunker’s record since then has produced questions of its own.
Yunker employed his wife, Gina Yunker, in his taxpayer-funded legislative office while she was also employed as a full-time teacher. Yunker said she performed approximately 16 hours of legislative work each week. The employment itself was legal, but questions followed about the work performed, how those hours were documented and whether taxpayers received work commensurate with the public money being spent.
Again, the question is not complicated.
Show the work.
Simon Hare’s history is considerably longer.
Josephine County hired Hare in 2025 as budget officer under a $25,000 contractual arrangement. Hare resigned in April before completing the county budget amid a bitter confrontation with commissioners Andreas Blech, Chris Barnett and Ron Smith.
The politics were complicated.
The math is not.
The county paid $25,000. Hare resigned before completing the assignment. County officials subsequently confronted the question of recovering the money, and the public record reviewed by this newspaper has not established that the disputed payment was returned.
Now Hare wants to be county treasurer.
You cannot make this stuff up.
Hare’s earlier public history also includes a 2015 DUII and reckless-driving arrest while serving as commissioner. He later entered diversion and publicly acknowledged that alcohol contributed to poor decisions. A separate 2013 investigation followed Hare’s report that his Jeep had been stolen. A detective concluded Hare had made a false report, although the Oregon Department of Justice determined there was insufficient evidence for criminal prosecution.
Those facts do not establish present misconduct, but voters are not required to develop amnesia every election cycle.
Then there is Chad Hansen, and this is where the political circle becomes considerably harder to dismiss.
Hansen and Hare were longtime associates who, in December 2025, appeared before Josephine County officials seeking $125,000 in economic development funding through Patriot Solutions LLC. The funding request was subsequently reduced to $62,000.
What accompanied the request?
According to records and county proceedings previously reviewed by this newspaper, no written business plan. No defined scope. No detailed budget. No measurable outcomes.
Essentially, taxpayers were being asked to finance an idea before the people seeking the money had supplied the ordinary documentation one might reasonably expect before handing somebody tens of thousands of public dollars.
Then another problem surfaced.
Commissioner Ron Smith said the connections between Hansen and Hare had not been disclosed to him when the proposal was initially considered. Those relationships became relevant enough that county officials began asking additional questions and examining the proposal.
So once again, the solution is remarkably simple.
Show the paperwork.
Explain the relationships.
Explain the money.
If everything is legitimate, documentation should make that painfully boring.
Instead, Josephine County politics increasingly resembles a competition to determine who can erect the largest campaign sign while answering the fewest uncomfortable questions.
A giant sign does not erase a political record.
It does not repay $25,000.
It does not document taxpayer-funded employment.
It does not create a business plan.
And it certainly does not erase a recall.
Josephine County has seen this movie already.
Candidates promise transparency. They promise accountability. They promise to listen to the will of the people.
Then they get elected.
Suddenly questions become attacks. Criticism becomes persecution. Disagreement becomes something to defeat rather than something to hear.
That is not leadership.
That is arrogance wearing a campaign button.
County commissioners are not kings. The chair of the Board of Commissioners is not a throne. Public office does not belong to a political fraternity whose members rotate through government positions while everybody else is expected to admire the campaign signs.
Public office belongs to the public.
So, before filling in another oval because somebody’s name has been staring at you from the side of the highway for six months, try something increasingly rare in politics.
Remember.
Remember the recalls.
Remember the promises.
Remember the controversies.
Remember the unanswered questions.
Then decide what kind of Josephine County government you actually want.
Do you want representatives capable of listening, disagreeing, compromising and understanding that they work for you?
Or do you want another government that tells you how things are going to be and expects you to accept it?
Josephine County has already lived through the latter.
We recalled it.
We should not need another recall to relearn a lesson we have already paid for.