Jason Faler spends most of his weekends collecting signatures at the Salem Saturday Market.
That’s usually when the 49-year old combat veteran and former healthcare executive pitches himself to registered voters living in Oregon’s 6th Congressional District, asking them to sign a petition supporting his spot on the November ballot.
Unlike the major party candidates who paid a $100 fee to the Oregon secretary of state to run in the May primary, nonaffiliated candidates face a steep procedural hurdle. To make the ballot, Faler must collect about 3,500 valid signatures by Aug. 25 — a number equal to 1% of votes cast in his district during the last presidential election. Oregon law requires nonaffiliated voters to collect signatures or hold an assembly of electors, which would require Faler to gather signatures from more than 500 supporters in the same place at the same time.
Nonaffiliated voters are Oregon’s largest voter bloc, making up 37% of registered voters — or 1.1 million people — followed by Democrats at 31% and Republicans at 24%, according to the state’s latest voter registration data.
Oregon’s 6th Congressional District, which spans across the Willamette Valley from Monmouth to Tigard and stretches west into Polk and Yamhill counties, follows that trend. And yet, the process to try to represent those voters on the ballot is extremely difficult, Faler said.
Oregon is one of 17 states that requires nonaffiliated candidates to file a nomination petition instead of paying a filing fee, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Despite pioneering the vote-by-mail system, Oregon’s infrastructure for unaffiliated candidates is “archaic,” Faler said. Carrying a pen, paper and paperclips, he must knock on doors and approach strangers at community events.
Oregon law provides electronic templates for ballot initiatives, referenda and recall petitions, but the law does not have the same provisions for candidate nominating petitions, secretary of state spokesperson Connor Radnovich told the Capital Chronicle.
“It would be a lot easier if I weren’t running, but I’m doing it because I believe in service,” Faler said. “I am not anti-party. I am anti-any party that demands loyalty to that party over country and over people.”
The cost of running outside of the two-party system
Despite the hurdles, Faler said his goal is to give power to the nonaffiliated voters who feel obligated to vote for the “lesser of two evils.”
“The conventional wisdom has been that a vote for an independent candidate, or a minor party, or a third-party candidate, is a throwaway vote and that that candidate cannot win,” he said. “And historically the math has supported that, but that’s no longer the case.”
Yet, for Independent Party of Oregon candidate Charlie Conrad, the math proved insurmountable.
Like Faler, Conrad launched a campaign outside of a major party. But on Tuesday, the former Dexter lawmaker withdrew his bid to represent Oregon’s 12th House District in the Oregon Legislature. Conrad was a one-term Republican representative from the district who switched his party affiliation after losing the 2024 primary over his vote with Democrats on a 2023 law intended to guarantee access to abortion and gender-affirming care.
Conrad ran as a write-in candidate against Democratic candidate Amber Smith in the May primary and secured nearly 1,300 votes. But it wasn’t enough. He fell roughly 3,000 votes behind Smith, a candidate who doesn’t have a campaign website or social media presence and did not appear in the Voters’ Pamphlet. Smith did not respond to the Oregon Capital Chronicle’s request for comment.
“There are 4,000 plus registered Democrats that just colored in the bubble next to the name on the ballot without recognizing that she was just a straw candidate,” he told the Capital Chronicle. “She did absolutely nothing, and she really has zero interest in being a state representative.”
Conrad said his team performed regular outreach to teach his constituents how to cast a write-in vote, but he said his campaign couldn’t survive without the help and resources from a major party.
“In good conscience, I can’t ask people to donate money, time and energy to a cause I believe has slightly more than a zero chance of success,” he wrote in an email to his supporters announcing his withdrawal.
Faler, however, remains optimistic. As of Tuesday, Faler had almost a third of required signatures, but his personal goal is to collect 5,000 to ensure a safety net in case the secretary of state disqualifies any signatures.
Operating with limited financial resources and volunteers, Faler said he raised almost $7,000 to his campaign — mostly through donations — but that amount isn’t even half of what it would cost to hire circulators to help him collect signatures.
Challenging the status quo
This year is Faler’s first time running for an elected position, but he believes he’s more qualified than the candidates slated to appear on the ballot.
A fourth-generation Oregonian, Faler grew up moving irrigation pipes, milking cows and feeding chickens at his family’s farm. He graduated from South Salem High School and received a bachelor’s degree in political science from Oregon State University. He also has master’s degrees in healthcare administration and jurisprudence from Seton Hall University.
He spent 27 years in the U.S. Army Reserve and is awaiting U.S. Senate confirmation for a promotion to colonel. When he’s not on military duty, he teaches healthcare law at Oregon Health and Science University-Portland State University School of Public Health. Last year, he stepped down from his job as the chief executive of an oral surgery practice to spend more time with his family and focus on his campaign.
If he qualifies for the ballot, Faler would be up against Republican David Russ and incumbent U.S. Rep. Andrea Salinas, a Democrat from Tigard. Neither had a primary opponent, automatically advancing to the general election.
Salinas is the clear frontrunner, winning by nearly seven percentage points in November 2024 and backed by more than half a million dollars sitting in her campaign account. But her platform, Faler said, relies heavily on the things her father did, pointing to her official congressional biography which highlights her father’s background as a farmworker and police officer.
“She clearly values hard work in the farmfields and military service, and that’s great, but there is a candidate in this race who’s done both,” Faler said. “I am not a career politician, and I think that that, frankly, makes me a little bit more qualified in terms of understanding where the people are and what they need.”
In response to Faler’s critiques, a spokesperson for Salinas’ campaign said she has never claimed her family’s history is a substitute for experience.
“It is part of what shaped her values and why she fights so hard for working families,” said Brandon Jordan, the campaign’s political director. “Her record speaks for itself. She has worked for members of Congress, served as an advocate for healthcare access, reproductive freedom, and environmental protection, and, in the Oregon Legislature, chaired the House Health Care Committee.”
Voters trust her and have elected her twice into Congress, he said, noting that she has the endorsement of the Independent Party of Oregon.
As for Faler, his priorities include government reform, or implementing congressional term limits and placing limits on corporate spending in elections. He said he detests the billionaires and corporations contributing to the country’s wealth gap and believes they should pay their fair share to help people struggling with the cost of healthcare and living. And he’s frustrated about education.
“We keep fighting over education because we’ve made it a culture war, and we have done such a disservice to our kids and we have done such a disservice to our nation, and frankly, to our national security, as the rest of the world passes us by in math and science,” he said.
Faler said he believes in maintaining U.S. military supremacy — but using it sparingly. Congress has been lazy, he said, for ceding its authority to declare war to the president.
“We just need integrity,” Faler said. “We need people that are willing to be practical, that are pragmatic. Some decorum would be great to have in politics, instead of vitriol and name calling. That’s what the American people deserve.”
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