Last summer I was among a group of Republicans that started reaching out to many affected groups throughout the County that were being ignored by two of the three County Commissioners and then began drafting language for the recall petition for Josephine County Commissioner John West. The recall petition language was limited to 200 words, and we could not fit all our major concerns in 200 words.
So, we listed the main concerns generally along with a few of the more specific examples of those concerns. The final recall petition language began with the overall concern, “This Petition requests the recall of Commissioner John West for ignoring the will of the people and for actions that have…”
I was asked in a recent video interview, what’s the difference between ignoring the will of voters and just taking a political position different from a group of people that are trying to accomplish something. I could write a long article on that topic alone, but when dozens of people call, email, or show up to City or County meetings and 95% are on one side of an issue, many times that reflects a broader view of the public. Those dozens of people represent many more out in the public. Those are just the citizens that were bold enough to speak out or willing to take a significant amount of time out of their day to attend a meeting and express their opinion on a topic. After taking a significant amount of time out of your day to communicate with your elected officials and being completely ignored when you do so, the frustration builds and builds. Commissioners West and Baertschiger did this time and time again in 2023 and 2024.
But even more concrete examples of “ignoring the will of the people” in the last two years were Commissioners West and Baertschiger’s attempts to dismantle or harm voter approved special districts and service districts. As stated in the recall petition, this included financial attacks by Commissioner West on the independent and voter-approved Josephine Community Library District and defunding the voter-approved Josephine County OSU Extension Service District. And then came a significant act of disrespect for Josephine County voters by withdrawing General Fund revenues from the Sheriff’s office budget only six months after County voters approved a new tax rate for a new Law Enforcement Service District to support the Sheriff. Because in my experience, the only thing that annoys voters more than paying higher tax rates is paying higher tax rates and getting almost no additional services in return for those higher tax rates. The Sheriff was rightfully upset about last summer’s budget process because two of the three commissioners wouldn’t let him fulfill the promises he made to County voters when campaigning for the new law enforcement services district in 2023.
I could have written dozens of articles about all the false statements Commissioner West and the Central Committee leadership of the Josephine County Republican Party made while coordinating their campaigns against the recall. They sent out mailers in which almost every statement in the mailers were not true. They did the same with ads in certain newspapers. Too many false statements to count were made on radio and video interviews. Many of the statements are easily proven false by simple public records requests, clearly indicating a lack of respect for voters’ intelligence. And rather than ask forgiveness and move on, they decided to double and triple down on the false statements and then use a series of frivolous lawsuits to attempt to intimidate their political opponents.
Voters saw right through this and voted almost 2 to 1 to recall Commissioner John West from office in the December 17th vote. It was nearly a landslide vote in election terms.
It should not surprise me when just a few days after the vote, Commissioner West and Josephine County Republican Party Chair Holli Morton blamed the voting results on “confused” voters. But surprise me, it did.
After being recalled from office in a nearly landslide vote, in a local media interview just a few days after being voted out of office, Commissioner West completely dismissed the results of the vote. West stated he’s considering running again in 2026 and saying he had people come to him saying they were confused, and they wouldn’t have voted yes on the recall.
Holli Morton, Josephine County Republican Party Executive Committee Chair, was on the Bill Meyer radio show just three days after voters soundly kicked West out of office. Friday morning, December 20th Holli Morton called the recall petition a series of “wild allegations,” and said “all 17 ethics” complaints against Commissioner West had been dismissed, which is far from true. Morton also stated that West “sued petitioner Lily Morgan immediately as soon as he saw what she was putting out.” This is wildly false considering West waited 4 months after the petition language came out to bring his frivolous (in my opinion) lawsuit against the petition language.
Morton went on to claim a bunch of people came into the Republican office saying they wanted to change their vote. And then the grand finale of false statements by Morton, “they didn’t allow for the contesting of any of those recall petition points on the ballot.” Yes, they did Ms. Morton, your candidate John West just chose not to use his 200-word statement of justification to contest any of those specific points. The recall petition was given 200 words to explain the reasons for recall, and Commissioner West was given 200 words on the ballot language to provide his ballot statement of justification. West simply chose not to argue any of the petition points on the ballot language. Morton ended the radio interview by saying “people are low information people; they didn’t know what’s really going on…”
In other words, Commissioner West and JoCo Republican Party Chair Holli Morton blamed their election loss on confused voters. Apparently, they don’t even think the average voter can read a ballot measure and decide on their own how to vote. If there is a more obvious example of the lack of respect for the citizens and voters of Josephine County, I haven’t seen it.
We now have two newly elected commissioners that will be sworn into office in less than 10 days. And they will be selecting the next Commissioner to appoint to Commissioner West’s seat when the recall vote is certified on January 8th (according to the County Clerk’s most recent elections update posted on the County website).
There is a way our two newly elected County Commissioners can honor both County voters and the County Charter in selecting the next County Commissioner appointment. The County Charter reads as follows:
FILLING OF VACANCIES
(1) The Board shall publish notice of a vacancy to be filled by appointment in newspapers of general circulation in the County. This notice shall request qualified individuals to apply to serve until the person elected at the next general election takes office by filing an application with the Board of Commissioners. The Board shall appoint a qualified person to the vacancy from the applications received. The Board shall fill a vacancy within 30 days after the occurrence of the vacancy.
If the Board does not have a quorum because of vacancies on the Board, the power to appoint, to fill such vacancy, is thereby transferred to a Temporary Board composed of the other elective administrative officers.”
Given the two new Commissioners will only have 30 days to accept Commissioner applications and make the new Commissioner appointment, the best way to honor both voters and the County Charter would be to have the County’s other elected officials weigh in on the Commissioner appointment process. The County’s other elected officials include the Assessor, the Clerk, the District Attorney, Legal Counsel, Sheriff, Surveyor, and Treasurer. All County elected officials, representatives of the people in their respective County governance areas, should rank Commissioner applications and make a recommendation of their top candidate choices for Commissioner.
And our two newly elected Commissioners, Ron Smith and Chris Barnett, can then make their appointment based on the collective advice of all the County’s elected officials. This process would be a win-win for our two incoming Commissioners. It will honor voters by soliciting the advice of all County elected officials. It will also say to County department heads who serve at the pleasure of County voters, we honor and respect your opinions. And finally, it honors the spirit of the County Charter by using a process similar to the one that would be used if the two Commissioners could not agree on a commissioner candidate to appoint to the vacancy.
Both the process and the outcome of the Commissioner appointment to replace recalled Commissioner John West will set the stage for the Josephine County Board of County Commissioners for at least the next two years. We will soon find out if our two new County Commissioners respect the will of the people more than the special interest agenda which dominated the Board’s decision making in the last two years. Don’t be “confused,” because voters in this special recall election spoke loud and clear that they don’t want a repeat of the last two years.
