Republicans maintain monopoly of Marion County Commissioners as Colm Willis wins

Republican Colm Willis has defeated Democrat Bill Burgess for Marion County Commissioner Position 2 by less than three percent in the final results of the Nov. 6 election, which were certified Monday.

Willis finished with 48.5 percent of votes (62,694 total) while Burgess, the current Marion County Clerk, received 45.8 percent (59,234 total).

The margin between Willis and Burgess was between three and four percent in each round of results from the election.

“Our system gives people a voice, gives the people the ability to choose their elected representative,” Willis said. “I’m just grateful to get that opportunity.

“I think one of the things that I’m excited about is I’m excited to look at the future of Marion County.”

This will be the first elected office for Willis, who previously ran for U.S. House of Representatives in 2016.

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Willis will take the seat held by Republican Janet Carlson, who declined to run for re-election.

He will join incumbent Republicans Sam Brentano and Kevin Cameron, who defeated Shelaswau Crier 50 percent to 44 percent in the Nov. 6 election, as Marion County Commissioners.

A Democrat has not won an election for Marion County Commissioner, which includes the state capital of Salem, since 1976.

“The interesting dynamic, if you want to take note of any, is that the county commissioners remain solidly conservative, yet how did the rest of our races go? Not so great,” said Jeff Heyen, Marion County Republicans chair.

“It’s a purple county. Really, that didn’t change. We’re still solidly purple.”

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Burgess previously ran for Marion County Commissioner in 1998, 2000 and 2002, but lost each time.

He has been the Marion County Clerk since 2005 and his term in that office runs through 2020, and said he will continue to serve in that position.

“Actually, shocked and disappointed are two good words about it,” Burgess said. “I had never worked so hard in an election and had so many people working with me and for me doing things like going door to door in smaller cities and contributing to my campaign in so many different ways.

“I thought we had a good ad and everything else, but certainly we were outspent and outmaneuvered. I have to hand it to my opponent because they were able to get more votes. They did that with about $300,000 and we had about $20,000.”

Recount in Idanha races

In the midterm election over 2,200 ballots – about 1.1 percent – of the 131,381 cast in Marion County weren’t accepted due to reasons like no signature on the ballot envelope, signatures didn’t match after multiple attempts to verify them or the label was peeled off.

Burgess said less than one percent of ballots returned were unable to be counted due to being mismarked or other issues.

Oregon has had a voter registration database since 2006 that uses Department of Motor Vehicle registrations or Oregon ID cards, though a few people use utility bills to prove residence, Burgess said.

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Burgess said an automatic recount in Oregon is required if the election is within 1/5 of one percent difference.

He said there will be a recount of the vote in Idanha in this election.

No one ran for the three open city council spots in the city and Jeff Skeeters received five write-in votes while Don Spier and Traci Martinez each got four votes of those received from Marion County.

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Burgess said those will be recounted at 9 a.m. Thursday and combined with the votes from Linn County, in which much of Idanha is located. Linn County also will recount its votes from Idanha.

“That will be up to their council what to do with their results,” Burgess said. “We don’t actually count winners or things like that. Then it is up to the district themselves to determine who actually won.”

bpoehler@StatesmanJournal.com or Twitter.com/bpoehler