West Salem residents will choose between two city council candidates in a rematch race on May 19. 

In the running for the Ward 8 seat is Councilor Micki Varney, a retired salmon biologist, and challenger Chris Cummings, a local IT business owner who previously went out for the role in 2022. That race was neck-and-neck, with Varney winning by just 181 votes. 

Four years later, the candidates are headed into round two with shared priorities of homelessness, traffic and public safety. Varney says she brings a data-driven, scientific perspective to the role, while Cummings wants to bring his business expertise, something he said the council could use. 

Ward 8 covers most of West Salem, including areas around Orchard Heights Park, Eola Ridge Park and West Salem High School. 

Election guide: Read more about the 2026 city election here and find your ward here.

City council elections are nonpartisan, and the office is a four-year, volunteer position.  Candidates are campaigning as two slates that are politically opposed, with more progressive candidates backed by Progressive Salem and conservative candidates backed by Marion + Polk First. Varney is part of the progressive slate and Cummings is part of the conservative slate.

Meet the candidates and hear their perspectives on key Salem issues, including the city’s budget, homelessness and public safety, below.

Background

Varney

Varney is originally from Walla Walla, Washington, and has 33 years of experience as a salmon biologist and fisheries researcher. 

A job with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife brought her to Oregon in 2010. She has lived in West Salem since 2012. 

Before coming to Oregon, she filled a city council seat in Dayton, Washington. 

Varney said her early council service “told me I can make a difference, and it was very rewarding.”

She retired in September 2025, and now dedicates her time to the council, West Salem Neighborhood Association, League of Women Voters and the seven city boards and committees she serves on as a councilor.

Varney was embroiled in an ethics investigation last year over the abrupt departure of former city manager Keith Stahley. A state commission concluded that she, the mayor and other councilors “deliberately coordinated and orchestrated” an illegal serial meeting by discussing Stahley’s job performance outside of public view. Varney accepted responsibility for the violation and pushed the council and city officials for greater public transparency about Stahley’s departure in the days following his ouster. 

In 2025, Varney supported a city property tax levy to help Salem to maintain its library, parks and senior center. She knocked on doors and did social media outreach to connect with Salem residents about the issue. The levy passed with nearly 60% of the vote.

Varney has also taken action to address traffic issues in West Salem, introducing an amendment to the city’s traffic plan to address congestion on the bridges that connect to downtown. She has also spearheaded efforts to reduce speed limits on Northwest Edgewater Street and Northwest Orchard Heights Road and secured a protected pedestrian crossing at Northwest Orchard Heights and Northwest Parkway Drive that will be installed this summer. 

Varney said she is seeking reelection “to continue the work that I and the council have accomplished in the last four years.”

“I find it really, really rewarding to be able to make people’s lives better, solving problems and using my experience in terms of addressing big challenges and coming up with solutions,” she said.

Cummings

Cummings is a Salem native and the CEO and founder of Petra Technologies, an IT company. He grew up in north Salem and graduated from North Salem High School. He moved to West Salem in 2005.

Cummings said he’s learned how to run a business through “hard knocks.”

“Being a longstanding business owner that has been through many, many, many challenges over the last 30 years … there’s a lot of things that you pick up and figure out and pivot and learn how to do,” he said.

Cummings is ready to bring his business experience to the city council. He wants to use his background to make city budget decisions, improve efficiency and remove red tape for local businesses and developers.

Cummings said he ran in 2022 because he was displeased with how homelessness and infrastructure were being tackled by the council. 

Still not seeing movement on the issues, Cummings decided to run again in 2026. He believes the council has been especially slow to make decisions on homelessness, which he lists as his top priority, followed by traffic and public safety. 

Looking back on Varney’s time in office, Cummings said he would have done a few things differently.

He said he would not have voted to reappoint Kyle Hedquist, a convicted murderer, to the city’s Community Police Review Board – a decision he called “common sense reasoning.” 

On the levy, Cummings said he opposes new taxes and fees for citizens. He called the 2025 tax levy a “last resort,” saying there are other avenues to explore to pad the budget. 

Homelessness and housing

Varney

Varney believes the city has made “slow, continued progress” over the years to address homelessness. She said tackling homelessness is not typically a city responsibility, but is something the city has done because “the federal government, counties … are reluctant to do so.”

“We’ve been able to connect thousands of people to services, homes, get them into transitional housing and permanent supportive housing. We’ve actually been really successful,” she said of the city’s efforts. 

The city’s most recent efforts to expand homeless services include more hours for a city team that cleans up encampments and the police department’s Homeless Services Team. The fire department also began a mobile crisis team as a pilot program.

For her ward, Wallace Marine Park is a focal point of the issue. Varney said camping in Wallace has been on the decline thanks to city outreach work.

Varney said she’s seen the progress in person while visiting Wallace in recent weeks. She said the teams have shown to be effective so far and plans to support continued funding for them if reelected.

Cummings

Homelessness is Cumming’s top concern and a significant driver for his second bid for the Ward 8 seat. While he shares Varney’s support for the crisis team and Homeless Services Team, Cummings believes his opponent hasn’t done enough on homelessness.

“I’ve not seen any motion brought to the table by her to do anything with homeless,” Cummings said.

Cummings believes the council at large has been slow to act on homelessness. He points to rising homelessness rates locally. If elected, he plans to keep the issue top of mind for the council. 

“If we don’t talk about it at council for months, it just means we’re not tackling the problem. So council needs to get up to the point of actually talking about this (homelessness) on a per‑meeting rhythm, so that we can keep moving,” he said.

Cummings plans to move on homelessness by strengthening partnerships with county departments. He would also support continued funding for the fire department and police teams.

He posted on his campaign Facebook page about a recent visit to encampments at Wallace.

“Should your city tax money keep cleaning this up? Should society enable them to keep living this way? There are places to go for these folks—overnight beds and shelters do exist at no charge to them. There are also places that will help them get back on their feet,” he wrote. “As city councilor I will be digging intensely into what policies are holding our city back from being completely clean, healthy and safe.”

Taking from his business background, Cummings wants to track progress on homelessness in the city with clear data, like the number of people moving from the streets to a shelter or encampment counts over time. 

Public safety and infrastructure

Varney

Varney wants to keep the police and fire department at the top of the budget.

She supports expanding the Salem police force to ensure officers have backup and less forced overtime. 

“Our police officers need to be and feel safe at work. They need to have backup,” she said.

Varney gave a personal example of why more officers are needed: Her son, a police officer in Washington, was injured when responding to a call.

“He responded to an emergency call, it was an assault, and there were two people against one, and he jumped in there. He had one guy in handcuffs, and the other guy attacked him. He called for backup, but nobody was available … I don’t want to see that happening here.”

Funding those jobs is a sticking point, Varney said. She said that funding could be done through a public safety fee, if the community supports it; restructuring the existing city operations fee on utility bills or possibly pulling from the city’s new paid downtown parking fund. 

Traffic is another public safety matter the candidates are mulling. 

Varney wants to spur intergovernmental collaboration to pave a path to develop a third bridge over the Willamette River. 

“I will work with county and city leaders across our four county region to create a regional transit plan and a Willamette River crossing that will actually work for our region,” she said. “We had one plan back in the ’70s, and it got shelved. I want to put the pieces in place so that we can do that.”

Varney wants to alleviate demand for the existing bridge by adding more basic services in West Salem, like a bottle drop, laundromats and lodging. She also wants to push for more options, like more accessible and convenient public transportation, and developing more bikeable, walkable streets.

Cummings

Cummings, who is endorsed by Salem’s police and fire unions, said he’s a “hard no” on reducing the police or fire budgets.

He believes Salem needs more police officers and wants to bring back bike patrols, especially to the downtown area.

He said the presence of more officers on Salem streets will help prevent crime. 

“When the cat is away, the mice are playing,” he said. “We need to keep our police presence climbing and getting better with more people being added to the police team, so that we can have more patrols that actually physically can be seen, that will help push it down.”

He plans to support the cost of filling those roles by increasing the city’s revenue collection overall.

On building a third bridge over the Willamette, Cummings said the “ship has sailed.” He said the prospective bridge is a missed opportunity by the council, but he’s keeping his “eyes and ears” open for other infrastructure solutions.

He believes new housing developments in West Salem should be tied to infrastructure improvements. For state-mandated developments, he said the city should go back to the state and ask for funding to support the population growth from the developments. 

City budget

Varney

Varney believes Salem needs more community-backed revenue options to expand its budget. 

“We have not solved the systemic problems with costs increasing faster than revenues, and it’s going to catch up to us again,” she said. “We need other revenue options, and it’s up to the community to decide what we’re going to do.”

She supports asking voters to renew the levy, which is set to expire in 2030.

“If we want our libraries and Center 50+ and the park to continue being taken care of, we’re going to have to,” she said. 

She would like to have a more permanent way to bring in revenue, like creating a new taxing district for the library that would let it levy property taxes, if the public supported it. She used the existing transit district, which funds Cherriots, as an example of this.

Cummings

Cummings is prepared to tackle the Salem budget like he budgets for his business. 

He wants to find new revenue streams by tracking down unpaid fees by Salem businesses, including lodging fees and downtown parking invoices. He would like to create a job within the city to find unpaid business revenue.

“We need to now back up and say, ‘OK, what should be coming in through the top as the revenue that we’re not getting, that we should be getting.’ That’s where I think we’re going to find our next piece of gold,” he said.

He also wants to press the state to pay to offset the cost of tax-exempt state-owned property inside city limits. That’s something city leaders have pursued for years without success.

“That’s one of the reasons why I think the city of Salem … is being starved,” Cummings said. “We have so much of the state sitting inside the city property, and so the city does not have nearly the same percentage of property paying for the city taxes, say, as Bend or Eugene, because Bend and Eugene don’t have as many state properties sitting in the middle of their city limits.”

He is against raising taxes for citizens. When the time comes to renew the levy, Cummings said it would require further analysis. 

He believes the levy was a last resort the city pursued when it had “wrung the water out” of the existing budget. If elected, he wants to work immediately to fill the gaps so that the city doesn’t run further into the red. 

Campaign finance and endorsements 

Campaign finance data is from the Oregon Secretary of State as of Monday, April 27.

Varney

Total raised: $11,583

Total spent: $1,455

Cash on hand: $4,782

Top five donors: Micki Varney (loan), $3,000; Oregon AFSCME Council 75 (statewide government employee union), $1,000; Progressive Salem, $545 in-kind; Judy Coyle, $525; American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (city of Salem employee union), $500; Robert Coe, $500 (tie).

Major endorsements: Oregon League of Conservation Voters, AFSCME Local 2067, which represents city of Salem employees including librarians, UFCW 555, state Sen. Deb Patterson and state Rep. Paul Evans.

Cummings

Total raised: $30,877

Total spent: $31,576

Cash on hand: $5,589

Top five donors: Marion Polk First PAC, $22,036 cash and in-kind; Mountain West Investment Corp, $5,000; Salem Fire PAC, $1,500; $1,000 each from Bill Riecke, Mid-Valley Affordable Housing Coalition (political action committee for the Homebuilders Association of Marion & Polk Counties), Oregon Realtors Political Action Committee, Richard Withnell, N Levin Industrial Real Estate and Richard Duncan.

Major endorsements: Salem Police Employees Union, Salem Professional Firefighters Union, the Home Builders Association of Marion & Polk Counties, Mid-Valley Association of Realtors, Marion + Polk First, former Ward 8 Councilor Jim Lewis, Polk County Commissioner Lyle Mordhorst and Ward 4 Councilor Deanna Gwyn.

Have a news tip? Contact reporter Hailey Cook: [email protected] .

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