Marion County Commissioner Danielle Bethell announces run for governor

Marion County Commissioner Danielle Bethell wants to challenge Gov. Tina Kotek for her job.

Her campaign for governor, which has been a year in the making, is unfolding slowly as the primary election for the Republican nomination is just over a year away.

She publicly posted her campaign website on Facebook Friday after quietly launching a campaign committee earlier this year.

Bethell, who’s in her fifth year as a county commissioner, is seeking the governor’s office to address housing, improve public safety and strengthen the economy, her campaign website says.

On the website, Bethell promises to focus on leading “a government that actually works for the people it serves.”

“I’m not coming into this thinking I have the solution for everything and that I think there’s a problem with everything, because there are things in Oregon that are going well,” Bethell said in an interview with Salem Reporter Friday. “A leader’s responsibility is to stand in the gap of where things are struggling or failing and bring people together and collaborate on a solution.”

Bethell, who lives with her children and grandchildren in southeast Marion County, was first elected commissioner in 2020. She and her husband co-own Bethell Plumbing and Bethell spent four years as the executive director of the Keizer Chamber of Commerce.

During her time as commissioner, Bethell has been critical of Kotek and the state government for issues ranging from taxes to addiction treatment funding.

Bethell said her years of experience in executive government leadership distinguish her from Kotek. Before becoming governor in 2022, Kotek served as a state representative and spent nearly a decade as Speaker of the House, but had never led a government agency or held statewide elective office.

“We’ve never had a governor that’s actually run a government before that understands the full scope of what it means,” she said, listing services Marion County operates including behavioral health, transportation, law enforcement and the district attorney’s office.

In early February, Bethell updated her campaign filing to reflect her bid for governor, but plans to formally announce her campaign in early summer so she can focus on her role as commissioner until the legislative session ends.

She so far has little competition for the Republican nomination. Two men with little previous government experience, Robert Neuman and Kyle Duyck, have also opened campaign accounts, according to state records.

The primary election will take place in May 2026. The election for governor is in November 2026.

As a county commissioner, Bethell said she worked alongside fellow commissioners to secure disaster relief money for people affected by the 2020 Santiam Canyon fires.

“I’ve been a spearheader and major influencer in the recovery of the Santiam Canyon wildfire,” she said. Since 2021, county government has partnered with different organizations to house wildfire victims and rebuild homes along the canyon.

One issue she’s focused on for years is addiction treatment.

Several years ago, Marion County partnered with local organizations to start His Place, a transitional housing program for fathers to recover from addiction and care for their children. The county recently celebrated the start of a similar program, Our Place, which houses couples in recovery.

Addressing public safety and addiction have been a large focus of county government, particularly in the effort to re-criminalize drug possession after the voter-passed Measure 110 decriminalized it in 2020.

Bethell testified in support of a new bill that made drug possession a crime again last year and set up new programs around the state to set drug users on the path to recovery. 

“As the (Association of Oregon Counties) president, I had the privilege to lead the voice of county commissioners in the legislature and actively with the governor to bring real life situations to the legislation that was passed,” Bethell said.

She served as the association’s president for a year starting at the end of 2023.

Bethell served on the Salem-Keizer School Board from 2019 to 2022 and advocated strongly against removing police officers from local schools, clashing over the issue with then-Superintendent Christy Perry.

Bethell in November 2021 posted on Facebook that she was considering pulling her children from Salem-Keizer schools due to “a lack of real education and safety.”

“In some of the classrooms in this district, we want to force kids into some level of identity when they haven’t even figured out how to comb their hair properly,” Bethell told Keizertimes in 2021. “We’re forcing kids at young ages to take on the education and definition of certain types of identity, whether it be gender or sexuality or race or culture, and it’s literally by opinion, stealing their innocence from them.”

She resigned from the school board in October 2022, giving no reason for the decision.

Bethell remains a vocal supporter of law enforcement and returning police to schools.

After winning re-election unopposed last fall, Bethell started her second term as commissioner in 2025.

Kotek, and the governor’s office in general, has retreated from working closely with Oregon counties and ignored county leadership in recent years, Bethell said.

Bethell said she believes understanding different county needs is necessary to solving issues facing Oregonians.

“Because I have that knowledge, and I have those relationships, and I have the opportunities ahead of me to bring people to the table who have been successful at the table with me, it inspires me to want to consider doing that on a greater scale,” she said.

When asked about what issues she’d like to focus on changing in Oregon if elected, Bethell said she wasn’t prepared to answer the question but wants to approach issues from “people’s perspectives, not from a policy-making perspective that people can’t understand.”

Contact reporter Madeleine Moore: [email protected].

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