State Rep. Ken Helm, D-Beaverton, participates in a committee meeting in December 2022. Helm will retire from the state Legislature at the end of 2026 after more than a decade representing the Beaverton and Cedar Hills areas. (Photo by Connor Radnovich/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
State Rep. Ken Helm, a Democrat representing Beaverton and Cedar Hills, will retire from the Oregon Legislature at the end of 2026 after more than a decade in office.
Helm announced his retirement Wednesday and endorsed a successor: Beaverton City Councilor Ashley Hartmeier-Prigg, who is one of two candidates running to be the Democratic nominee for the 27th House District. The other is former anesthesiologist and current Beaverton School Board Director Tammy Carpenter, who challenged Helm in the Democratic primary in 2022.
No Republican contender has entered the race so far in the solidly Democratic district where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly three to one. Non-affiliated voters outnumber registered Republicans by about two to one.
“Serving the people of Beaverton has been one of the great honors of my life,” Helm said in a statement, where he also endorsed Hartmeier-Prigg. “Ashley is a proven public servant who understands the unique needs of our community, and she has the experience and vision to be an exceptional state representative.”
Helm, a Beaverton lawyer with specialties in land use and water laws, was first elected to the state Legislature in 2014 after the Oregon League of Conservation Voters encouraged him to run.
He quickly established himself as an advocate for climate and conservation policies, including sponsoring cap-and-trade legislation to require polluters reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as well as laws to modernize the state’s rules around protecting and managing water quality and quantity.
“I would say my core values haven’t changed at all. I came to the Legislature with a strong environmental and conservation ethic, and I leave with an even stronger one,” Helm told the Capital Chronicle.
Helm, who grew up in Bend, said he’s retiring in large part because he wants to get back to spending more time in Oregon’s wilderness with his partner while they’re still physically fit.
“There’s a lot of trails I want to backpack, a lot of rivers I want to run, a lot of fishing I want to do,” he said.
Helm served on the House Energy and Environment Committee, Agriculture, Land Use and Water Committee and the Judiciary Committee.
In his work on water policies, he and Rep. Mark Owens, a Republican from Crane in southeast Oregon, have become frequent and effective collaborators, a rare bipartisan duo from opposite sides of the state who agree more needs to be done to preserve water and to help water users.
Helm first met Owens when he visited Harney County to learn more about water issues when current U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz, now representing Oregon’s 2nd Congressional District, held Owens’ seat.
“It was easy to get off on the right foot with Mark, because I came to visit his part of the world on water,” Helm said. “We had already met, and he knew that my interest in water and his part of the world was genuine, and I think that paved the way to some of the next steps where we were able to carefully work with each other, see if it was going to work out and whether we could trust each other.”
This drives home, literally, Helm’s advice for all of his colleagues in the Legislature who want to foster bipartisan working relationships across the state.
“Drive to where they live. And don’t complain about how many hours it took you to get there, because they drive it every week. Just go. Go see, go be with them,” he said.
Helm described himself as a “project-oriented” rather than “position-oriented” lawmaker, and he hopes to keep serving the state Legislature after retirement as an at-large member of the Environmental Restoration Council. That council is charged with managing how to spend the state’s $700 million settlement with chemical giant Monsanto over PCB contamination.
“There’s a lot of work to be done, and I’ve got a lot of energy for what’s left,” he said.
Endorsing a successor
“I’ve had a lot of conversations with him about what I would be signing up for,” Hartmeier-Prigg said about lessons from Helm, especially about potentially entering a larger political arena in a particularly caustic time.
She said they’ve discussed the importance of keeping the focus on issues that local constituents care about. Among them, she said, are environmental stewardship, housing availability and affordability and dignified wages and work.
“I want people to be housed, fed and have a job that allows them to meet their needs,” she said. “Given what’s happening at the federal level, it’s important to me to bolster efforts the state has underway.”
Hartmeier-Prigg added that her experience reaching consensus on the Beaverton City Council, where she’s served since 2021 and has been in a multi-year structural budget deficit, she said, has prepared her well to work with lawmakers facing a strained budget due to federal tax changes and spending cuts.
Hartmeier-Prigg said her successes on the city council include boosting local and state investments in affordable housing projects, and getting built the city’s first permanent shelter, in collaboration with Portland Metro, a regional governance office, as well as Washington County and the state.
Prior to joining the city council, Hartmeier-Prigg served on the Tualatin Hills Park and Recreation board from 2019 to 2021.
She is a graduate of the University of Portland, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in political science, and Willamette University College of Law, where she earned a law degree.
She spent much of her career as a project manager at Nike and currently works as director of product management at Crate & Barrel.
“I grew up in Beaverton. It’s something I have so much pride in,” she said. “I’m running because I love my community, and I’m going to find those people in the Legislature that ran for those reasons.”
Commented
Sorry, there are no recent results for popular commented articles.