Four candidates are running for Deschutes County Commission Position 5, a brand-new seat added by a 2024 ballot measure expanding the county commission from three to five members.
The late addition of Sisters Mayor Jennifer Letz added another layer of complexity to the May 19 primary, likely shrinking the chances that any candidate will receive the 50% of the vote needed to win and forego the November general election. Letz will challenge Bend business owner Rob Imhoff and American Red Cross regional director Morgan Schmidt — both of whom have a significant head start in campaigning and fundraising. Local political gadfly Ron “Rondo” Boozell is also vying for Position 5.
Because the seat is new, the winner will serve a two-year term until 2028, and future winners after that will serve four-year terms.
The period to file as a candidate for county commission began in September. But Letz didn’t file until the last possible day, March 10.
Letz, who runs a wildfire consulting business with her husband, said she filed when she did because she was busy, doesn’t like long campaigns and wanted to let the dust settle on a busy filing period with four open positions and 15 total candidates.
She said she’s not concerned about coming in late.
“I feel like I’m in a good spot,” Letz said in an interview. “I understand that some candidates might have more advantages in regards to endorsements or fundraising; just because they’ve been doing it longer, that makes sense.”
Meanwhile, Imhoff and Schmidt have been campaigning for months. Imhoff’s campaign has compiled nearly $94,000 since October while Schmidt has raised nearly $60,000 since July. Each gained an endorsement from a major local party: Imhoff from the Republicans and Schmidt from the Democrats.
A 2022 voter-approved ballot measure did away with partisan primary elections for Deschutes County Commission, but parties still play a role in helping candidates get elected.
Letz said the switch to nonpartisan primaries opened the door for her to run.
For Imhoff and Schmidt, the election is a second chance after coming up short in bids for county commissioner over the last few years.
After losing to Deschutes County Commissioner Phil Chang in the May 2024 primary, Imhoff led the Republican party’s opposition campaign against Measure 9-173, the ballot measure to expand the commission, arguing it would make the board more costly and less transparent.
He owns an automated window shade company in Bend. Earlier this year he announced a plan he calls “Unleashing Deschutes County’s Economic Engine,” hinging on a policy requiring the County to spend 75% of the money awarded through contracts on local businesses.
In another announcement, Imhoff said the county should help move Mt. Bachelor ski area to local ownership, piggybacking off a recent community effort to buy the mountain that ended when corporate owner POWDR Corp. took it off the market in April 2025. In an interview, Imhoff said some people misinterpreted his announcement as a plan for Deschutes County itself to buy the ski hill by going into debt. Rather, he would want the County to leverage its position to facilitate the sale to another local entity, he said. That could entail negotiating a swap with the U.S. Forest Service for the land on which the ski area sits, then using revenue from the lease to provide discounted passes for Deschutes County residents.
In an op-ed, Schmidt said the plan was far-fetched.
Schmidt has been working as executive director of the American Red Cross for Eastern and Central Oregon since losing to county commissioner Patti Adair in the 2022 election. Before that, she was a pastor at the First Presbyterian Church in Bend, which hosted a warming shelter for homeless people.
That work was part of what inspired her to run in 2022, Schmidt told the Source, because she felt Deschutes County wasn’t doing enough to address homelessness. She said she views this campaign as an extension of that effort.
Affordability is a top priority, along with public health services, she said.
“I haven’t seen in the last four years since that campaign, major improvements to the things that matter most to the people who live here,” Schmidt said in an interview. “My commitment is to the community to us, our families, our businesses to be able to thrive here. I’m just not seeing that with our current county leadership.”
Opposing views on homelessness
Imhoff said he wants to take a tougher approach to homeless camping by imposing a 6-mile no-camping buffer around cities. That comes as the County grapples with long-standing encampments on undeveloped government-owned lands near Bend and Redmond. Recently, the County asked the City of Redmond to pause encampment removals until people can move into a 36-site managed RV and tent campsite under construction in the area, which will cost about $1.2 million to build and run for two years.
“The main focus has to be compassion, but I think compassion can sometimes have different meanings to different people,” Imhoff said. “There’s a difference between a hand up and a handout. The handouts are obviously not working.”
“The underlying current for my campaign is let’s find solutions,” he added. “We’ve proven that throwing money at it and then taxing people more and then throwing more money at it doesn’t solve some of these core issues.”
Imhoff has said he wants to discourage what he views as “homeless tourism” — unhoused people moving to Deschutes County to receive services. According to the annual Point In Time Count survey conducted in January 2025, 70% of homeless people in Central Oregon have lived here longer than five years.
Schmidt called the homeless tourism concept “simply not true,” and said the County should be investing in homelessness projects “on all fronts.”
“It’s not the dream,” Schmidt said. “We don’t want to see people camping out in dirt. But while we’re working on more long-term solutions, I think those managed options are really important.”
Letz said she wants to the see the County “clamping down” on homelessness on rural county lands, citing increased wildfire risk. She called the managed camp a “step in the right direction,” but said she would prefer something “more stable” like a mobile home park.
“We’ve got to get people out of camps,” Letz said. “We’ve gotta use all the tools in the toolbox to get people moving in a direction of more stability.”
Wildfire at center stage
For Letz, the issue of wildfire risk overshadows all others. That’s partially because of her background: After college she worked as a wildland firefighter and backcountry ranger for the National Park Service. She then working as a sustainability manager for the U.S. Forest Service before starting the wildfire consulting business.
“There isn’t one part of this county that isn’t at moderate to great risk of wildfire impacts and losses,” Letz said. “This issue is not going to go away, and has obviously gotten worse and worse over the years, the threat and impact of wildfire.”
As mayor, Letz pushed Sisters across the finish line to adopt a defensible space — or vegetation buffer — codes for new development, followed by a building code for wildfire-resistant materials. The County, along with the City of Bend, recently adopted that same code. Letz said she wants to “keep the ball rolling” with wildfire mitigation work.
Imhoff and Schmidt also said wildfire is a top priority, with Schmidt citing experience in wildfire disaster response with the Red Cross and Imhoff mentioning the need to continue juniper tree removal to reduce fuels.
Letz said she also wants to work on creating a Deschutes County park system.
“Rondo” runs again
Boozell’s name may be familiar to Deschutes County voters: he’s been a constant figure at Bend City Council and Deschutes County Commission meetings for years and a perennial candidate for local office. He made headlines during his 2018 campaign when he was arrested for contempt of court after failing to pay child support.
Boozell, 64, he wants to run again to “better represent the local viewpoint.” He told the Source he is “coming out as homeless” this campaign after living for 10 years without a home.
“I’ve been fined-tuned to be intentional about the issues we need to solve,” he said. “A lot of those aren’t going to be specific until I get on the job.”
In an interview, Boozell said he would be an “activist commissioner” and called himself the “best DEI candidate” for county commission. Boozell is white, but says he would bring diversity as a senior and a veteran. He was a technician in the Navy from 1979 to 1983, he said.
At recent meetings, Boozell has urged the county commission to adopt a policy banning Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers from operating in Deschutes County without a warrant, which he says is a “big part” of his campaign. He told the Source he’s fighting the Bend Park & Recreation District for allowing Jehovah’s Witnesses to hold religious signs in Bend parks, which he says is a violation of the First Amendment. He also said he was banned from Facebook for violating the platform’s community standards through a group called “Best Partisan Rebellion Ever.”
“We’re not having these discussions where everything we do is defending our party, defending the lies of our party,” he said.
The district predicament
The current county commission’s proposed measure to split the county into five geographic districts in future elections will be on the ballot in November. If it passes, the districts would go into effect in 2028. That means some winners this year might not be eligible to defend their seats in the next election, or be forced to move to another part of the county.
Imhoff and Schmidt, for example, both live in Bend, outside of the proposed district tied to Position 5, which covers Sisters and wraps into northeast Bend. Schmidt said she’s hoping voters will shoot down the proposed maps, which most Democrats have opposed. Imhoff said he supports the districting measure, and he may move to a rural area in the district if he wins the election. Otherwise, he’d have to challenge Chang, an incumbent, again in two years.
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