Nic Tartar makes a living planting landscapes of native vegetation, but he knew the field of sagebrush and empty sidewalk outside the new Bend Central Library was no place to gain support for his bid for Position 6 on the Bend City Council.
That’s where he found himself after he learned of the library’s policy against campaign signature-gathering. It was one roadblock in a failed effort to collect the 150 signatures needed to get certified for November’s general election ballot.
“That turned out to be more difficult than I thought,” he said.
Tartar was one of four city council candidates who either didn’t get the signatures or withdrew from the race as the filing deadline passed Aug. 25. The falling-off — paired with a lack of candidates filing in the first place — has resulted in a largely uncompetitive election for the top decision-making body in Central Oregon’s largest city.
Three of seven council seats are up for grabs, but in two of them, only a single name will appear on the ballot. The only contested race is for the mayor’s seat, where a late-entry challenger with little name recognition probably has long odds to oust a well-supported incumbent.
The election favors the status quo — a slate of candidates backed by the local Democrat party that often votes as a unified front to prioritize increased spending on bicycle and pedestrian projects, infill housing and new policies to reduce carbon emissions.
Still, the Council has a fair share of vocal critics. It’s a dynamic that has left some — including candidates who will sail to victory — questioning why there aren’t more candidates stepping up.
“I am honestly very surprised,” said Councilor Ariel Méndez, who was the lone candidate to file for Position 5. “In my particular race, I had someone suggest it was obviously because everybody likes me and loves my platform. Looking at my email inbox, that’s probably not true.”
Tartar, who moved to Bend from Portland two years ago, said he generally likes the direction the City is heading, and believes most other people do as well. But he feels it could more to enforce fire-proof landscaping and encourage the transition from water-sucking lawns to drought-tolerant plants. Maybe he could offer ideas to reduce traffic congestion, he thought.
“I think some new blood in there would be a good thing,” he said. “Incumbents, if they’re wildly popular, is a good thing, but there should be some opposition. It shouldn’t just be handed to the incumbents.”
Signature struggles
Tartar wasn’t the only one who met signature-gathering challenges.
Aerospace Engineer Dan Sorrells visited bike shops, parks and even the river wave in attempts to gather signatures, posting videos to Instagram along the way. On July 13, he said he turned in 185 signatures to the Deschutes County Clerk’s Office, but only 107 of them were validated.
A month later he called off his campaign due to a partner’s cancer diagnosis.
In his videos, Sorrells talked about affordable housing as a priority, floating ideas like a vacant home tax and cracking down on short-term rentals.
The 150 signatures Bend requires to qualify for the ballot are far more than other Central Oregon jurisdictions. Redmond requires 50 signatures for City Council and 100 for mayor. Sisters requires 10. La Pine requires 11. Deschutes County charges a $50 filing fee but doesn’t require any signatures for its elections.
Party endorsements dwindle the field
Other candidates successfully collected signatures — and gained notable political backing — but still decided to drop out.
Bobbi Cummiskey, a policy analyst and climate specialist with the Oregon Department of Transportation, filed for Position 6 in June and received an endorsement from sitting councilor Mike Riley, who opted to step away from the seat. According to her website, Cummiskey also got endorsements from Méndez and Deschutes County Commissioner-elect Jamie Collins.
But there was one endorsement she didn’t receive that mattered most.
“I did not receive the Deschutes Democrats endorsement, and I don’t see a path to winning office without it,” she wrote in her withdrawal paperwork Aug. 24.
Cummiskey did not return a phone call from the Source.
Bend City Council and other local races are technically nonpartisan, but local Democrat and Republican parties still endorse and support candidates. With a wealth of left-leaning candidates emerging in recent elections, the endorsement process has created a high-stakes competition months before voters ever weigh in.
Those who don’t receive an endorsement sometimes drop out before the election. Others decide to stay in the race despite not receiving the endorsement — usually with little success. In 2024, longtime incumbent Bend Councilor Barb Campbell received just 15% of the vote in a three-way race after the Democrats endorsed a different candidate. Redmond School Board Member Amanda Page also chose to stay in the race after Democrats endorsed her opponent before a Deschutes County Commission primary earlier this year. Page said the process was weighted against her because she refused to sign a pledge to only support other candidates endorsed by the party.
For Position 6, Democrats, along with the firefighters’ union and State Rep. Emerson Levy, endorsed Elana Reinholtz, who will run unopposed. Reinholtz is the associate marketing director with Camp Fire Central Oregon, a youth leadership nonprofit. She formerly worked in marketing and business development for Mint Mobile and founded a jewelry brand focused on promoting social causes. She also serves on Bend’s Budget Committee.
According to her website, Reinholtz’s vision includes “homes working families can afford,” bold action on climate” and “investments in sustainable infrastructure.”
An uphill battle
While the value of the Democrat endorsements can cause controversy, the local Republican party has the opposite problem.
In Bend, a historically purple but increasingly blue city, registered Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly two to one. Since 2018, counts of registered Democrats have increased by about 5,000 while registered Republicans dropped by about 1,500. Still, Democrats don’t make up a majority of Bend voters, at 36%, only slightly higher than the proportion of non-affiliated voters.
A big shift occurred in 2020, when four new progressive candidates swept a City Council election. In 2022, Republican-backed candidate Chris Piper, a former councilor, fell short in a bid for mayor with 44% of the vote. That’s the closest any Republican — or other challenger — has come to winning in any of the last three Bend City Council elections.
“When the Democrats ran in 2020, they were very organized,” said Mike Walker, a downtown Bend property owner and manager for 20 years. He’s a common critic of the City Council, picking apart city budgets and transportation statistics in op-eds for local papers.
“It just flipped,” he continued. “They had such control on the Council, it almost scared some people off.”
To Walker, the Council lacks people with experience running businesses who, “know how to get stuff done.”
As to why there aren’t more opponents in the mix, many people are older and passed the season for community service, he said. Younger business owners are busy with work and families. Relatively low pay could also be a factor. City Councilors receive a $30,000 annual stipend, plus benefits, while the mayor receives a $50,000 stipend.
As for himself, “I don’t like to be the center of attention. I would never want to sit up on the podium.”
Deschutes Republicans Chair Keith Rockow said he wasn’t approached by anyone interested in running for Bend City Council.
“It’s a big uphill battle,” Rockow said. “A lot of people don’t want to subject themselves to the scrutiny, the cruelty, the mudslinging, all those things that could come out.”
Rockow said that while the party hasn’t officially endorsed a candidate for mayor, a small group within the party helped support Bernadette Strome, who filed for mayor six days before the deadline and still collected enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.
That’s one hurdle of many she’ll have to clear in a steep climb to defeat incumbent Melanie Kebler, an attorney who is seeking her second mayoral term going into her seventh year on the City Council. Kebler has already reported nearly $5,000 in campaign fundraising this year and has the endorsement of the Deschutes Democrats.
In an email to the Source, Strome wrote that she is ready to, “shift The City’s priorities back to the people and to serving the needs of our community and the greater good of Bend.” She said she wants to prioritize housing affordability and “reduce the friction for homegrown businesses to encourage sustainable local jobs.”
When asked if she planned to seek a party endorsement, Strome called her campaign non-partisan and said an endorsement would risk bringing national political divides into local government.
A former student at Bend High School and Central Oregon Community College, Strome was a manager at the Jackson’s Outpost cafe in Northwest Crossing and runs a small vintage denim resale business. Her filing paperwork says she is not employed and has experience as a “homemaker.”
Strome told the Source she has “grounded” and “practical” experience, despite the lack of involvement in government or the public sphere.
“My qualifications come from living the everyday realities of our community,” Strome wrote in an email to the Source. “As a single mom, balancing family issues and working responsibilities raising four children in Bend and managing real-world money issues, I understand the financial pressures our residents face daily.”
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