Nine years ago, Union County voters overwhelmingly voted to pass Measure 31-89, which limited county commissioners to two terms, or eight years, in office. A whopping 68% of voters supported the change, which came from Union County Citizens for Good Government. Now, more than eight years after the measure took effect, Union County Commissioners will no longer be limited by term limits.
In January, the county commissioners unanimously voted to have the measure brought to the courtroom, requesting the circuit court to examine the constitutionality of the measure. Earlier this month, County Clerk Lisa Feik shared that the court ruled in favor of the commissioners, ending term limits. Union County Commissioner Paul Anderes joins us to share why he and his fellow commissioners voted to bring this measure to the courts. We’ll also hear from Jim Mollerstrom, the former organizer for Union County Citizens for Good Government, to share why he was pushing for this initially and his thoughts on the change.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Nine years ago, Union County voters overwhelmingly approved a term limit ballot measure for the county commission. Two-thirds of voters said that county commissioners could serve no more than two consecutive terms, or eight years in office. But earlier this year, the commission asked the county court to weigh in on the constitutionality of that measure. The court did so and recently struck down those term limits.
We’re going to get two perspectives on this right now. Jim Mollerstrom was one of the big champions of the term limit measure as a former organizer for Union County Citizens for Good Government. Paul Anderes is a current member of the Union County Commission. Welcome to you both.
Paul Anderes: Thank you.
Jim Mollerstrom: Good afternoon. Hi, Paul.
Anderes: How are you, Jim?
Mollerstrom: Hey, not too bad.
Miller: Jim, what led you to push for term limits in Union County about 10 years ago?
Mollerstrom: A couple, three things. One is, I was a part of another small group of citizens, a grassroots kind of a situation, where the … [inaudible]. And the measure approved for, first of all, the positions to become nonpartisan versus partisan. And that created a situation where over 4,000 more registered voters in Union County, at that time, would be eligible to vote in the primary and wouldn’t have to wait for the general election. So our thoughts were, it was a part of opening up democracy, choice of self-governance, and that was the premise of that.
Miller: And that passed overwhelmingly as well, actually by about the same percentage – about two-thirds of voters said, yes, make these county board elections nonpartisan. That was in 2014.
Mollerstrom: Yeah, it was about 63%, 64%, right in there. In fact, one of the commissioners, who was a candidate at the time, thanked me for taking that cause on because he felt that that would assist in his campaign. Because it, again, created a situation where over 4,000 more registered voters could vote in Union County – which in Union County, 4,000 people, that’s about 28%, 29% of the registered vote. So about a third of the people were now eligible to vote.
Miller: In the election that could, by itself, decide who would be on the board. They could always vote in the general election, but not in the primary.
Mollerstrom: Correct, they couldn’t really be a part of the selection process, if you will. So if you were a third-party independent, you basically had to wait for the primaries to shake out who was the Republican candidate and who was the Democrat candidate, basically.
Miller: So that was a couple of years earlier. What was the connection between that successful effort and the term limit effort that you then spearheaded after?
Mollerstrom: Well, part of it was, like you said, an overwhelming response, not only in gathering signatures, but the actual vote. Then that spurred the conversation between our group, Union County Citizens for Good Government, to then pursue term limits. As a thought for, one, is to, again, increase community involvement in the process, increase the opportunity for potential candidates, and also dealing with some perceptions of long-term “career politicians.” So it was kind of a combination of those three things that led to the effort to start the term limits petition, which we did.
Miller: I want to hear more about your reasoning, but as I noted, we have somebody who was elected to the county commission after the term limits were implemented.
Paul, why did you want to run for county commission back in 2018?
Anderes: Well, at that point in my life, I was retiring from being a teacher of 32 years, and very involved in my community, wanted to give back to my community, and this seemed like a really good second act. I loved being a teacher, I thoroughly enjoyed it, but in different ways – I like being a commissioner equal to, or maybe even sometimes more, than being a teacher.
Miller: Your first election was in 2018, as I mentioned, that was after term limits went into effect. How much did you think about that when you first ran? There’s no term limit on being a teacher, so it’s an obvious difference, among probably many others, between your first professional act and your second. When you started, the rules were clear. You could do this for eight years and not longer. How much did you think about that?
Anderes: To be honest with you, I didn’t think about it very much at all. I would offer that I thought about the nonpartisan portion of it more than the term limits.
Miller: Did you support the term limit ballot measure when it was in front of you as a voter a couple of years earlier?
Anderes: You know what, I can’t say with 100% on either one of them, but I think I was in support of both of them. And my opinion is that I probably wouldn’t be sitting here today if we had partisan elections. What that did is it allowed a number of independent and non-affiliated voters to vote in our election. I think those votes were some of the votes that helped me get over the top.
Miller: But clearly, at the time and even now, it seems like that nonpartisan switch loomed larger for you than the term limit?
Anderes: Correct, correct. And honestly, I was just hoping to win and really not embarrass myself. I had not been in politics at all. I’d never run a campaign. What I knew about running a campaign was very little. I actually ended up buying a book that was about running local elections, and it wasn’t terribly helpful. [Laughter] But like I say, I didn’t know a whole lot about running at that time.
Miller: Is there a “How to Become a County Commissioner for Dummies” book?
Anderes: I don’t recall the title of it, but that’s basically what I got.
Miller: “Chicken Soup for the County Commissioner’s Soul.” So what led the county commission to ask the county court to weigh in on this issue, to say, are these term limits constitutional or not?
Anderes: Well, for me, it was clarity. People would come up to me and say, “Are you running again?” And I’d say, “No.” And they’d say, “Oh, you’re term limited.” And I said, “Well, yes,” but I said, “It’s been found unconstitutional in other areas.” Douglas County is probably the most notable. Susan Morgan challenged it there, very early on, and was successful in getting it struck down. But I wanted to be able to give people an intelligent answer because I didn’t know whether ours … because they were worded just a little bit differently, like many of these are, and that’s what spurred it for me.
Then, it gained a little bit of momentum and our legal counsel said, “Here’s a couple of different pathways that you can take to answer the question.” And we chose to pursue that. The courts ruled a couple of weeks ago. And our county clerk is the one that reported back to us that it had been, in fact, struck down.
Miller: Right, can you explain what Union County Circuit Court Judge Thomas Powers said?
Anderes: I don’t have that information. What we got was that it was found unconstitutional. I’m paraphrasing now from our county clerk, in that those of us that were sitting could file for an additional term – which I am not planning on doing.
Miller: It’s worth noting that one of your colleagues, Matt Scarfo, who was first elected, like you, in 2018 – so, like you, his term is going to be up at the end of next year – has said that he is going to be now seeking a third term. He has said this: “I would definitely like to see a third term. Two terms is definitely not enough in this position.” So you’re saying that you have definitively ruled out running again, or you don’t think you’re going to?
Anderes: I’m not 100%, but I would say probably not.
Miller: Jim, as we heard just now from Paul, Union County is not the first jurisdiction to have a local judge overturn their term limits. That happened first in Douglas County, a decision that was upheld by the Oregon Court of Appeals. How do you think about that …
Mollerstrom: I’m very familiar with the Douglas County situation from start to finish. I was pretty involved with them in our effort as well as their efforts, so …
Miller: Great. Well, that’s the question I’m about to get to. How do you think about that Douglas County precedent in the context of the Union County ordinance?
Oh, it’s a worrisome pause. Jim Mollerstrom, can you still hear me?
OK, Jim, go ahead.
Mollerstrom: Yeah, could you repeat, please?
Miller: How do you think about the Douglas County precedent in the context of Union County’s ordinance?
Mollerstrom: A couple, three things. Again, I was pretty involved in a lot of that. The Douglas County thing was a little more complicated. Part of the language made it problematic, made it effective immediately, or retroactive, so Commissioner Morgan, as Paul alluded to, was denied a filing. And then that’s what went on to court. She ended up suing her own county, and then the lawsuit then went into court and Judge Barron ruled onward and upward, and so forth. So, our language was much more simpler at the time.
There was also a misunderstanding amongst a lot of folks that the Douglas County Court of Appeals ruling affected everybody, blanket statewide, no matter what, no matter who – which is not accurate, as even the Union County legal counsel pointed out to the commissioners, that it had to be case by case. And even several years ago, it was made clear to the county commissioners in Union County that the primary option would be for a candidate to actually have to challenge the language, not necessarily the county challenging its own language or its own policy. So those are some big differences there that we see.
With that said, it was interesting cause I have a copy of the minutes from the commissioner meeting Jan. 22, 2025, where this first got brought back up. And then the decision was then made for the county to basically go into court and ask for clarification, or test its own policy, rather than a candidate. I also was involved with Yamhill County that had had term limits since 1995, 1996.
Miller: And it’s worth saying that Multnomah County has term limits, the largest county in the state has term limits for its board of commissioners.
Just to take this to the bigger picture here, Jim, one of the classic lines that I’ve heard from people who are against term limits is that the ultimate term limit of a kind is a ballot box – that if voters want someone out of office after one term or after 10 terms, all they have to do is elect somebody else. What’s your response to that argument?
Mollerstrom: You know, it’s fairly accurate. But in certain areas, whether you’re one party or another, that kind of predominates that area, you’re gonna pretty much always get an elected official, an incumbent, repeated or of the same party … which is, again, back to the nonpartisan issue, because stereotypically you’re gonna get Republicans on the east side, Democrats on the west side. That’s kind of a given.
So our issue is … again, it is citizen involvement, it was more about our self-governance. How we wanted to govern ourselves in Union County was to have term limits for elected official county commissioners, to avoid a lot of those long-standing issues of, it’s always gonna be this person or that person. In fact, in Union County for years, there was typically maybe two candidates for county commissioner.
Shortly after term limits was involved in the last go round, I think it was 11 candidates filed and nine ended up being in the final run for commission. So we went from two to nine. So we wanted more involvement, more opportunity, more choice and more motivation and people in the community. Because there’s also the feeling of, “Well, there’s not enough talent in your community, so that’s why we always got to go with whoever.” Well, obviously that’s not true.
Miller: Paul Anderes, I’m curious, as you said that you’d paid more attention to making these races nonpartisan than you did to the term limits ballot measure. But I’m curious, after having served for seven years now on the county commission, if your own personal thoughts about term limits have evolved or changed in any way?
Anderes: Oh, most certainly. Again, I’m not positive that I voted for it, but I’m fairly confident that I voted for the term limits. And you made a point that the ballot box is the ultimate in determining term limits. However, it’s a fact that incumbents are very hard to beat. I mean, you look at Senator Wyden from Oregon, who’s been in D.C., or Congress or Senate for over 40 years, close to 45 years. And if you look at the war chests that he’s got for a campaign, it’s very difficult to overcome that. Not impossible. I mean, Senator Merkley took out Senator Gordon Smith. It is possible, but it is difficult.
Miller: What about the flip argument, which is that there’s a learning curve and the longer you’re somewhere, the better job you can do in that place, the more people you know, you have a sense for what the job actually entails. And I should say you have 45 seconds to answer that question.
Anderes: Very much so. Relationships … For the first time in my seven years in office, I had a meeting with the chief of the Forest Service a week-and-a-half ago. Last governor, Governor Brown, I had conversations with her on the phone. That was over COVID outbreak we had, but now I have regular meetings with Governor Kotek, with other county commissioners. So again, it’s those relationships that we’ve built and how the people … I know who to pick up the phone and call now, more so than I did when I first started.
Miller: Jim Mollerstrom and Paul Anderes, thanks very much. I appreciate your time.
Mollerstrom: I don’t get a chance to counter?
Miller: I gave you a lot of time earlier, but unfortunately, we are out of time now because I want to share some feedback we’ve gotten from the last couple weeks. But thanks so much. That’s Jim Mollerstrom and Paul Anderes. Jim Mollenstrom is the original petitioner of the Union County term limit vote. Paul Anderes is a current member of the Union County Board of Commissioners.
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