Deschutes County Board of County Commissioners candidate Ron “Rondo” Boozell was arrested Thursday evening for trespassing at a Bend candidate forum he wasn’t invited to participate in.
Bend Police arrested Boozell on trespassing charges at Open Space Event Studios on Lafayette Avenue in the Bend Central District. According to Lieutenant Aaron Wells, organizers called police around 4:30 pm — half an hour before the forum was set to begin — and asked to trespass Boozell for causing a disturbance. Wells said officers tried to convince Boozell to leave, to no avail.
“We told him he could leave or be arrested for trespass, and he said he wanted to be arrested,” Wells told the Source.
Boozell was booked into Deschutes County Jail around 6 pm and released a short time later on the condition he not return to Open Space Event Studios, according to Jason Carr, a spokesperson for the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office.
For Boozell, it’s the latest in a saga of unruly incidents during various campaigns for local office, including his 2018 attempt to flee arrest for allegedly failing to pay child support and a 2016 altercation with a downtown business owner during a public marijuana “smoke out” demonstration. He’s been a frequent commenter at Bend City Council and Deschutes County Commission meetings. He also has a string of misdemeanors going back decades, according to previous reporting.
Boozell is one of six candidates running for Position 3 on the board of commissioners.
The forum went on without issue following Boozell’s arrest, according to organizers. The forum focused on housing policy.
It was one of several county commissioner candidate forums hosted prior to the May 19 primary, when 15 candidates will be on the ballot vying for four different seats. Only nine of those candidates were invited to participate in Thursday’s forum, which was hosted by Partners for Affordable Housing, a coalition of nonprofit and for-profit housing developers, industry groups, advocacy groups and others. The coalition’s policy, according to a document provided to the Source, was to only invite candidates who had raised $1,000 or more in campaign contributions by the filing deadline, March 10.
Boozell hasn’t filed any fundraising money with the Oregon Secretary of State. In an interview, Boozell took issue with the fact that he and others weren’t invited to participate in the forum, calling it anti-democratic.
“They don’t believe in democracy,” Boozell said in an interview, adding, “I think they hate democracy. Why wouldn’t they want to hear from another corner of the community?”
In its policy, the housing group says the $1,000 fundraising threshold is the “minimal bar demonstrating public support for candidates.”
“An eligibility standard for forum participation was considered and adopted by the coalition due to the high number of candidates in the race, and the need to produce an impactful program during a short evening event,” the policy reads.
Boozell said he was invited to attend the forum without participating.
According to Erin Foote-Morgan, whose public relations firm, FM Civic, runs the affordable housing coalition, Boozell began “loudly shouting at event organizers when they shared expectations for behavior” and was “persistently disruptive” after arriving. He was told that if he continued, the police would be called, Foote-Morgan said.
“He was very blunt: ‘I’m not leaving unless the police drag me out of here,’” Foote-Morgan said.
Boozell didn’t deny raising his voice.
Boozell participated in a candidate forum for Position 3 on Friday in Redmond, hosted by the Redmond Kiwanis Club, the Redmond Executive Association and the Rotary Club of Redmond.
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