GOP’s Pierce presses to be Oregon governor

Pierce, who just turned 65, is an oncologist (cancer specialist) and hematologist. He has been a doctor for 35 years, and has been in Salem since 1994.

It took a little longer for Pierce to reconfirm a second bid for governor he had already announced for 2022. Republican political consultant Chuck Adams joined Bud and Selma Pierce — a retired dentist who had lost her second bid for an Oregon House seat a month earlier — to talk about preliminary steps for his campaign on the very morning of her death. (No charges were filed against the driver.)

Pierce said he could not brush aside the 2020 images of civil unrest and homeless people, and faltering schools and businesses, during the coronavirus pandemic.

“Over time, I decided I would go back in,” Pierce said during a recent interview at his office at Salem Health, which operates the hospital and other health care services.

Earlier in October, he revisited Portland, where he and Selma Pierce bought a condo in 2008, and filmed a couple of campaign videos near a downtown park, which is now fenced off.

“All I said was that this was a great park, my late wife and I brought our dogs down here, and we need to bring that back,” he said.

Pierce said that shortly after the video shoot was completed, a man with a hammer and 2x4 board approached them.

“If you agree that we need that not to happen to any of our citizens, you are with me all the way,” he said.

Pierce said he was still formulating how Oregon should respond to future pandemics as the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic continues. Oregon has recorded more than 4,000 deaths in a population of 4.2 million, but Pierce said future pandemics are likely to be worse — and viruses have ranged from AIDS to Ebola and Zika over the decades he has been a doctor.

“What this told us was that we are ill-prepared for a major pandemic,” he said. “This is probably a warm-up. We have got to get focused on the real things.”