Former Santa Rosa councilman running for Oregon Senate as a Republican
North Bay political circles were abuzz in early January as the link to an emerging Oregon Senate campaign made the rounds. Pictured in a beige cowboy hat and insulated black vest from western-wear maker Ariat, the smiling candidate summed up his campaign with a simple pitch: Commonsense leadership. Less taxes. Less regulation.
In a platform hewing closely to the GOP agenda, the candidate pledged to seek an end to Oregon’s sanctuary laws limiting coordination with federal immigration agents. He said he would oppose legislation supporting abortion access and gender-affirming care. He took several swipes at California.
To many political observers here, the campaign was a surprising ideological pivot for Jack Tibbetts, who began his work in politics as a UC Berkeley student advocating for a statewide tax on oil companies before later cruising to a seat on the Santa Rosa City Council.
For Tibbetts, however, it was the latest step in what he describes as a more gradual evolution — a metamorphosis that he said picked up momentum as he matured and took on more responsibilities as a first-time father, and later as a vineyard owner and cattle rancher in Lane County, on the southern end of Oregon’s Willamette Valley, where his family relocated in 2021.
“I think it’s fair to say that I have always had conservative leanings, even from a young age, but those conservative beliefs grew and intensified with age and life experience,” he told The Press Democrat. “Now, as a father of two boys, trying to make a living managing ag businesses, I am unabashedly a proud, conservative Republican.”
‘Rural voices are getting run over’
Tibbetts sidestepped a request for an interview but responded to questions in writing.
As a politician today, he said he wouldn’t support many of the stances he once held, giving a broad response to questions about his advocacy for an oil severance tax as a college student, his council vote for Santa Rosa’s 2017 indivisible city ordinance espousing support for immigrants and support for social safety net programs.
“Fresh out of Berkeley, I wanted to help people. I wanted to serve the greater good. I wanted to prop people up and contribute to making their lives better. Like most young people in their 20s … I came at this from a left-leaning viewpoint,” Tibbetts said. “However, after years on the council, and personal life events, like becoming a father and a business owner, I began to believe government creates more problems than it solves.”
He said his political journey is part of the personal story he’s sharing with voters as he’s hit the campaign trail across the sprawling 6th District, which takes in rural communities across Lane and Linn counties and parts of Marion County on the western side of the Cascades.
There, Tibbetts, who served five years on the Santa Rosa council before resigning in 2021, is casting himself as a tested leader and dogged worker with family ties to Oregon, tracing back to his paternal grandfather.
He threw his hat into the Senate race, he said, because rural communities need a voice at the state Capitol in Salem, where Democrats control the governor’s seat and both legislative chambers.
“I have learned many policy decisions are getting made by people who lack comprehensive life experience,” he said. “And by that I mean they haven’t lived in many different places, among people with different viewpoints or beliefs. It leads to fewer voices being brought to the table, and as people live in more urban environments, rural voices are getting run over.”
Tibbetts is one of three candidates seeking the GOP nomination in the May 19 primary. The field includes a state House of Representatives incumbent whose district spans the northern third of the 6th Senate District.
Opponents already have started raising doubts about his political record in Sonoma County, pointing to past endorsements by the Sonoma County Democratic Party and old campaign mailers encouraging voters to vote blue.
Assemblymember Chris Rogers, D-Santa Rosa, who served with Tibbetts on the Santa Rosa council, said Tibbetts will have to ably articulate how and why his positions have changed to make inroads with voters.
“There’s a full track record of service that seems to be contradictory to some of the positions he’s taking now, so he will have to figure out how to explain that in a way that he doesn’t lose the trust of voters,” he said.
Destined for politics
Tibbetts, 36, is the son of a well-known local political operative who worked closely with former Rep. Doug Bosco and Sonoma County Supervisor Eric Koenigshofer, friends who led a wave of young Democrats that came to power about five decades ago, eventually upending longstanding Republican rule on the North Coast.
Tibbetts was exposed to politics at an early age. As a junior at Berkeley in 2013, he carved a path to Sacramento where he sought to line up support for a statewide ballot measure he drafted that would’ve imposed a 9.5% tax on oil and natural gas extraction, potentially raising billions largely earmarked for public education.
He found a political ally in then-Sen. Noreen Evans, the Santa Rosa Democrat, who was championing a parallel campaign in the Legislature. Evans later sponsored a bill modeled after Tibbett’s measure, but it didn’t advance.
To Evans and others who aided him in his efforts, Tibbetts’ prospects as an emerging political star were clear. Some predicted at the time he’d be part of the next wave of young leaders in the county.
He turned his advocacy into a job as a community and government affairs director at a consulting firm that worked with local governments to establish so-called community choice power programs, allowing publicly governed startup agencies to step up as electricity suppliers to speed the transition to green energy.
And in 2015 he launched a bid for a seat on the Santa Rosa City Council, campaigning in part on addressing the cost of living and easing development regulations to help address the local housing crunch.
Tibbetts led the crowded field as the top fundraiser and vote-getter in November 2016, becoming the youngest person ever elected to the council at 26. By that time, he’d been hired as the executive director at St. Vincent de Paul of Sonoma County, a homeless services nonprofit that would transition into an emergency housing provider under his watch through the pandemic.
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Alvin Jornada / The Press Democrat
Jack Tibbetts, second from right, is congratulated by supporter Peter Rumble after they saw initial election results showing Tibbetts among the top four candidates during an election night party at Tibbetts’ home in Santa Rosa, California on Tuesday, November 8, 2016. (Alvin Jornada / The Press Democrat)
Alvin Jornada / The Press Democrat
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Jack Tibbetts, second from right, is congratulated by supporter Peter Rumble after they saw initial election results showing Tibbetts among the top four candidates during an election night party at Tibbetts’ home in Santa Rosa, California on Tuesday, November 8, 2016. (Alvin Jornada / The Press Democrat)
Describing himself as a moderate Democrat at the time, Tibbetts said he favored an incremental approach to public policy. On the seven-member council, he often found himself the swing vote between members who made up reliably conservative and progressive blocs.
Tibbetts’ five-year tenure was beset by immediate and historic challenges: recovery from the 2017 Tubbs Fire and 2020 Glass Fire, and response to the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic.
He was a consistent advocate for greater public spending on homelessness and housing, particularly the development of more affordable housing for low-income families. Tibbetts spearheaded the city’s 2018 campaign to pass an affordable housing bond, which lost at the ballot box.
His day job and its many commitments, however, opened him up to scrutiny after he missed a high number of votes due to absences or recusals on issues involving homelessness.
Tibbetts was reelected to a second term in 2020 and served one year before stepping down in December 2021.
‘Looking for a change’
His council resignation and move to Oregon came at a time of personal change. Tibbetts recently had become a father, leaving less time and energy to devote to public service. The demands of his role with St. Vincent, which he helped grow into one of the leading service providers in the county, also were a factor.
But privately, based on the accounts of a few people close to him at the time and what he wrote to The Press Democrat, he also appeared to have been wrestling with questions about his impact as a policymaker and an evolving political identity that would put him at odds with much of the community he represented.
Looking back now, Tibbetts said he doesn’t lament decisions he made while on the council because he feels his votes largely reflected the community he served.
“There are decisions I would have made differently then with what I know now, for sure, but I don’t live in regret,” he said. “I think those decisions represented the will of the voters of Santa Rosa, and the elected leader’s job is to represent.”
Still, Tibbetts said the work of first responders during the 2017 North Bay fires pushed him to consider new ways to serve.
He walked into the U.S. Coast Guard’s recruitment office on Santa Rosa Avenue in early 2019 to inquire about enlisting. He was on his way to completing his private pilot’s license around that time. Maybe he could fly for the service.
Tibbetts, who shared with The Press Democrat an email exchange and documents tied to his application, said his bid to join up was ultimately denied on medical grounds because of medication prescribed during a brief period in college.
“I was disappointed, but this was my first realization that I was looking for a change in life,” he wrote.
A visit to Fall Creek, Oregon for an annual family reunion shortly after cemented that feeling.
Tibbetts’ father, Nick, grew up in Tillamook County on Oregon’s northern coast, where Tibbetts’ grandfather served as superintendent of roads for nearly five decades. Tibbetts’ father got his political start as a student at Willamette University, where he met Bosco, forming a longtime political alliance that would carry them though the next few decades, including Bosco’s time in the California Legislature and Congress representing the North Coast.
Most of Tibbetts’ family remains in Oregon and his wife Ali’s family is from Medford.
The couple had begun discussing having kids and they were attracted to the idea of raising their children near family and in a community steeped in agricultural traditions. They purchased property with the idea of eventually making it their full-time home. Tibbetts’ mother, Penny, who raised him, resettled near them.
Before he stepped down in Santa Rosa, two moments in particular in his final year in office also appeared to shift his views further right, solidifying a new ideological direction. He said he disagreed with the city’s decision to settle with several protesters injured by Santa Rosa police during demonstrations following the death of George Floyd, an opinion he said he voiced in closed-session discussions with fellow council members and top administrators.
“I was appalled that the council spent millions settling with protesters when I felt our law enforcement was profesional and compassionate during the protests we experienced,” he said to The Press Democrat. The police department’s response was faulted at the time by City Hall and the police department’s outside auditor, including for firing unauthorized “barricade rounds” — used for punching through windows and walls — on demonstrators.
Tibbetts also criticized the city’s move to mandate COVID-19 vaccines for city employees early on in the pandemic.
“I no longer felt like Democrats were the party of Kennedy anymore. It had become something unfamiliar and unsettling to me,” he said.
After his oldest son, Casey, was born, Tibbetts described “a tectonic shift in my thinking on just about everything.”
“When the responsibility of fatherhood sets in, it changes you,” he said. “This event made me see the tremendous value of life.”
A Catholic, he said he found it increasingly difficult to reconcile his more conservative beliefs with Santa Rosa’s more prevailing liberal values.
Running own business ‘an awakening’
After relocating to Oregon, he continued leading St. Vincent, commuting at times in his four-seat Maule MX-7-160 plane.
He led the nonprofit’s long remodel of the former Gold Coin Motel on Mendocino Avenue into permanent supportive housing and its bid to build a similar project in Sebastopol. He was a leading voice in a wave of criticism from nonprofit directors aimed at county health officials driven by payment delays that put cash-strapped nonprofits on the brink. And he later helped secure contracts to take over operations at two county-run homeless housing sites after the collapse of for-profit operator DEMA.
He left the executive director job last year.
In Oregon, he and his wife took over Saginaw Vineyard, a 30-acre property with a tasting room barn that has grown into a popular community hangout. The couple also run a beef cattle operation.
But Tibbetts said public service continued to call him.
“I would like to find an outlet for my past life in public service,” he wrote in his application for a seat on the Lane County Planning Advisory Commission, where he’s served since October 2024.
He entered the 6th District Senate race in January, seeking to fill the seat being vacated by Sen. Cedric Hayden of Fall Creek, who is barred from running for reelection for excessive absences after participating in a six-week walkout by Republican legislators in 2023.
Tibbetts said his experience operating his grape-growing and cattle business is a driving force behind his run for office.
High taxes and government regulation have made it difficult for small businesses like his to continue, he said, citing the exodus from Oregon of several large employers who have left for lower-cost places to do business.
Tibbetts said he would support efforts to lower taxes, reduce permitting and other fees and roll back regulations that he said impede economic development and stifle business growth.
“As a farmer and business owner here, I feel and understand the burdens of endless taxes and regulations in a way I never have before,” he said. “It’s been an awakening for me.”
He supports efforts to expand legislation to legalize use of rural residential properties as tenant spaces for people living in recreational vehicles. Tibbetts would support efforts to fund home loans for working families and backs a cap on property tax rates for seniors to help keep them in their homes.
He wants to unleash more logging on state and federal lands, restore Oregon’s ailing commercial salmon industry — in part by hunting populations of seals that prey on the fish — and supports broadening access to public lands for a wider set of recreational users. He criticized what he called government encroachment on the right to bear firearms — needed, he said, for personal protection in rural places like Lane County.
In campaign material and in responses to The Press Democrat, Tibbetts expressed views closely aligned with the Trump administration on issues ranging from immigration and LGBTQ rights to how to best curb homelessness and crime.
“I am running for office to fight back against the radical leftwing agenda of the Democrat majority in Salem and bring common sense policies back to Oregon,” he wrote in a Facebook post following President Donald Trump’s Feb. 24 State of the Union address.
As a father now to two young boys, Tibbetts said he would support what he described as family freedom and parental choice, opposing efforts to facilitate gender-affirming care and uphold abortion access, both mainstays of today’s Democratic Party.
Tibbetts, who said he voted for Donald Trump in 2020 and 2024, also criticized the housing-first model that prioritizes providing permanent housing to people without barriers — programs that have increasingly come under fire during Trump’s second term. He first broached his own reevaluation of that model two years ago in an interview with The Press Democrat.
He also took aim at laws that have decriminalized use of certain controlled drugs and efforts to reduce sentences for more minor offenses.
Trust lies in transparency
His most conservative beliefs have stunned some who have followed his career.
“I’m not surprised that Jack is still interested in politics. I’m not shocked that he’s running as a Republican in a Republican district. But I am shocked at some of the language he’s using,” Sonoma County Supervisor Chris Coursey said.
Coursey is a former Press Democrat reporter and columnist who was elected to the Santa Rosa City Council in 2014 and went on to serve as mayor, with Tibbetts as his vice mayor. He said he learned of Tibbetts’ campaign after someone shared with him the link to his website. It grabbed his and many others’ attention, he said.
“There was a lot of like, ‘Did you know? Did you see? Can you believe?’” he said.
Coursey, said while Tibbetts drew support from some more conservative business interests in town, he never expressed with colleagues the views on immigrants, abortion rights or LGBTQ rights he’s now campaigning on.
Within his first few months in local office, Coursey recalled Tibbetts joined colleagues in unanimously supporting a resolution expressing support for undocumented immigrants and limiting some cooperation with federal authorities.
Tibbetts also joined colleagues in supporting efforts to extend the existing sales tax that funds city operations and regional efforts to raise tax revenue for mental health and homelessness programs and other services, Coursey said.
“He was pretty young when he started in politics. I certainly wasn’t the same person at 30 that I was at 25,” he said. “You go through different phases and people are entitled to that, but this is just such an extreme swing that it raises people’s eyebrows.”
Rogers, who also was elected in 2016 to the council alongside Tibbetts and went on to serve as the city’s youngest mayor, said as a young politician Tibbetts spent years having his values tested and perhaps didn’t like where he ended up on some issues.
“I always felt that Jack was a little bit more conservative than sometimes he allowed himself to be and so now if he’s allowed to have the political positions he wanted to have the whole time, then I’m happy for him,” he said. “It’s tough to be in politics when you don’t feel free to speak openly about your positions.”
Still, Rogers said he was surprised by how far right some of Tibbetts’ views have swung.
Terry Price, a retired longtime Santa Rosa political consultant who was still heavily involved in local campaigns when Tibbetts was coming up, said it’s not clear how Tibbetts’ story will sit with Oregon voters, especially in a rural community.
But he said Tibbetts is likely to face strong headwinds as he tries to explain his past positions.
“His history is going to follow him,” Price said. “I think it’s naïve to think that you can change your stripes in a new town and no one is going to explore your history and use that in a campaign.”
But Tibbetts said he is appealing to voters and donors in part through the lens of that political metamorphosis.
“Most people I encounter appreciate that I have grown more conservative with age and life experience, and many tell me they followed a similar political path,” he said.
“Every decision I’ve made in life is all part of my journey,” he said. “These experiences have shaped me into who I am today, and I am proud of who I am.”
His message has gained traction with a growing list of supporters in his community.
He’s lined up early endorsements from Oregon Rep. Darin Harbick, who represents eastern Lane County in the state House, as well as city and county officials in Lane County and local business owners.
He’s also ramped up fundraising in recent weeks, reporting $41,732 in cash and in-kind contributions, with about $24,400 on hand going into the final stretch of the race, according to campaign finance records.
The winning GOP candidate in the May primary will face off against Democrat Sierrah Williams in the November general election. Republicans, who outnumber registered Democrats in the district, are expected to retain the seat.
You can reach Staff Writer Paulina Pineda at 707-521-5268 or paulina.pineda@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter) @paulinapineda22.
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