Bonham is running on the Republican ticket for the Oregon State Senate, representing the recently re-drawn District 59, which now includes The Dalles, Hood River County, portions of Multnomah County (Columbia River Gorge) and rural areas of Clackamas County. The district was formerly held by Republican Sen. Chuck Thompson, who retired. He is on the ballot with Democrat candidate Raz Mason.

“It wasn’t a done deal, to run in for the Senate,” Bonham said. “I put a lot of thought into it before deciding to run.” Talking to senators he has come to know from his work in the legislature, Bonham weighed the pros and cons of being a state senator. In the end, he decided it would be an honor to be a voice for rural Oregonians and business people in the Senate.

Unlike the house, Bonham was told, “You can’t burn your bridges as a senator, because there are so few senators.” That’s a plus, said Bonham. “I enjoy my work and my colleges down in Salem. It’s a neat environment, there are a lot of engaged and thoughtful people there. I’m focused on having positive relationship in the legislature,” he said.

The senate district is rural, but has twice as many constituents in a geographic area half the size of his current house district, Bonham noted. He can reach the most distant points of the district within an hour and 45 minutes driving time.

During the session, Bonham lives in Salem, returning to his home in The Dalles for the weekend.

Priorities

“We have to talk about land use, and how it impacts housing,” Bonham said when asked what the biggest challenges facing the district are. “Housing and affordability are top of mind,” he said. Even those who own homes now are impacted, he said, because although the price of their home will have increased if they sell and look for a new home, those prices have also increased exponentially. “People have no ability to upgrade their home,” he explained.

Bonham said he supports new laws passed by the legislature to increase density in urban areas (“I voted for that,” he said) but said increasing acreage available for housing also needed to be part of the solution. “In some areas, a lot of land isn’t farmland anymore,” he said. Instead, single-family homes are located on 5 or 10 acre parcels — hobby farms — that gobble up a lot of land.

Those lands should be made available for subdivisions, he said. “We’re going to have to have a little bit of sprawl, whether we like it or not,” he said.

Balance

Bonham said voters have a lot of good choices available this election, citing the governor’s race as an example. All three candidates are smart, experience people. But he does hope the senate or the governorship flips to a Republican majority.

“Balance is really the key,” he said. Such balance — as opposed to a super-majority as currently enjoyed by the Democrat party — opens the door to bipartisan work. “Neither party feels voiceless,” he explained. “Someone in leadership needs to make sure that decisions made are bipartisan.

That was his biggest issue with the cap-and-trade bill Republicans killed by leaving Salem to forestall a vote. “We wanted that to go to a vote,” Bonham said, saying Democrats had no mandate to make those changes because they did not campaign on the issue. “Cap and trade would have disproportionately hurt people in my district,” Bonham said. “It was a tough decision,” he added, but at that time and place was the right one.

Citing some of the conversations he had across party lines and among his colleagues, Bonham said “trust is established through hard times like that. Your decision show your integrity.” He was selected by his peers to serve as co-chair of the conduct committee, he said, because people could trust his integrity.

He added that policy should be set by the legislature, and not by the governor. “That’s just wrong,” he said, citing the governor’s directives to state agencies regarding climate change as an example.

Bipartisanship isn’t easy, but its not as hard as the politics suggest, he added. “The vast majority of legislators are there for good reasons,” he explained. “We talk most about policy, not politics.”

Background

Bonham has owned Maupin Stoves and Spas in The Dalles for more than 15-years. “It’s an amazing business, with a lot of great employees. My employees are what allows me to be on the legislature,” he said. He lives in The Dalles with his wife Lori, and has two grown children.