A county commissioner is facing investigation from the state Government Ethics Commission over allegations she used her position as a county commissioner to help her daughter avoid a traffic violation. (Campaign photo from Bethell for Governor)
One of the top GOP challengers in Oregon’s 2026 governor’s race is facing investigation from the state Government Ethics Commission over allegations she used her position as a county commissioner to benefit her children.
Marion County Commissioner Danielle Bethell, a Republican from Keizer, announced in April she would seek her party’s nomination for governor in the 2026 primary race, setting her up for a primary election against state Sen. Christine Drazan, R-Canby who announced her bid for the position in late October. Though Drazan is so far considered a frontrunner for the nomination, Bethell has garnered a number of high profile endorsements from Republican legislators.
The decision by the commission at its Friday meeting to go forward with investigating Bethell could throw cold water on a campaign otherwise gaining steam.
One of the complaints against Bethell centers on her response to a Marion County deputy sheriff who pulled Bethell’s daughter over in December 2024 for a traffic violation. Bethell told the officer that any ticket could not end up in Marion County Court because of Bethell’s position on the county commission, the complaint alleges. Two of the charges against Bethell’s daughter were dismissed in August 2025, court records show, with her eventually owing a $265 fine for driving while using a mobile device.
The other complaint centers on a more than $1.1 million addition to a contract Marion County Commissioners voted to approve in September for the Salem-based Slayden Constructors Inc. The company employs Bethell’s son, according to Casey Fenstermaker, an ethics commission investigator.
In response to the investigation, Bethel told the Statesman Journal on Friday that she had declared a “potential conflict of interest” over the contract and accused the deputy sheriff of “trying to establish a negative intention on my part.”
A spokesperson for Bethell’s campaign, Betsy Schultz, on Monday referred the Capital Chronicle to Bethell’s statement in the Statesman article and added a brief comment from Bethell. “In navigating these events, I made the best decisions I could to be as transparent and ethical as possible,” she said.
The Marion County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday about Bethell’s claims.
The traffic stop
Dashcam footage discussed at the Friday ethics commission meeting showed that when one of Bethell’s daughters was pulled over for a traffic citation, she called her mother because her insurance card had expired, Fenstermaker said. Bethell can be heard on speaker phone in the video, according to Fenstermaker, telling the deputy sheriff who pulled her daughter over, that she, Bethell, could send a copy of a current insurance card by phone.
When the deputy sheriff explained the process for handling charges related to the expired insurance card, Bethell advised the deputy sheriff that her daughter could not go to court in Marion County because Bethell is a county commissioner. Shen then told the deputy they should be more “thoughtful,” Fenstermaker told the commission. Following the interaction, Bethell reached out to Marion County’s Justice of the Peace, Justin Kidd, to provide details about the citation and traffic stop, Fenstermaker said.
Bethell has already received some back-up from her allies in local government when it comes to the investigations. Counsel for Marion County provided the ethics commission with a statement in support of Bethell, arguing she was exercising her constitutionally protected speech and the deputy sheriff misunderstood her statements, Fenstermaker told the commission. Her exchanges with Kidd also did not pose an ethics violation, the statement from Marion County counsel argues.
Fenstermaker, however, reiterated that a child is considered a relative under Oregon government ethics law, and that Bethell may have used her office to have county counsel submit personal arguments “in an attempt to avoid the financial detriment of hiring an attorney in this matter.”
Responding to that claim, Bethell told the Statesman Journal that she did not ask Marion County to represent her, and that she was concerned about litigation in Marion County Justice Court, which handles traffic violations, because she is involved in writing the court’s budget.
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