Third party-candidate, massive campaign donations fuel Southern Oregon Senate race toss-up

More than $1 million in just the last month has poured into two candidates’ campaigns for a southern Oregon state Senate seat being vacated by a Democrat who narrowly won it in 2022.

Oregon Capital Chronicle
By Alex Baumhardt
October 18, 2026

Major corporate donors have bet on Republican business consultant and former Medford Chamber of Commerce president Brad Hicks to win Oregon’s 3rd Senate District, while the majority in Oregon’s Legislature and the state’s major labor unions have put their money on Democrat and healthcare worker Denise Krause. The area encompasses southern Jackson County and part of the Rogue Valley, including the cities of Medford and Ashland.

Retiring incumbent Jeff Golden, D-Ashland, has represented it since 2019, and it has become more competitive since redistricting in 2021. Golden won in 2022 by fewer than 3,000 votes, and has so far not endorsed a candidate currently running, though he endorsed one of Krause’s challengers in the May Democratic Primary.

Upping the stakes, a third-party candidate, bar-owner and former Medford City Councilor Clay Bearnson, backed by the Independent and Pacific Green parties, entered the race in late July. Although he’s drawn far fewer campaign dollars than his major-party peers, his name on the ballot could ultimately draw enough votes from either Hicks or Krause to determine their fates.

All three of the candidates, like nearly every person running for election in Oregon’s Nov. 3 midterms, said tackling voters’ affordability concerns would be their priority if elected.

For Krause, jumping into the race had a lot to do with concerns about the impact of federal policies passed by the Republican majority in Washington, D.C., particularly cuts to health insurance for low-income Oregonians.

“We have such crises going on everywhere, and I’m very well equipped to deal with the challenges in healthcare and education,” she said. “People are losing their insurance, or their premiums are too high, and our services have been cut here,” she said.

Asante, the region’s largest healthcare provider, has said it’s facing a $50 million budget deficit that could lead to 300 job cuts within the year.

For Hicks, it was about seeing people and businesses he grew up with leave the area or the state due to rising costs, he said, and to take on a supermajority in the Oregon Legislature that he believes few voters want.

“What we’ve been hearing on the doorstep from Democrats, Independents, NAVs (nonaffiliated voters) and Republicans is they are tired of one-party rule and supermajorities,” he said. “And they feel that way about both parties, right? I mean if the Republicans had decades-long supermajorities, they’d be just as frustrated by that.”

For Bearnson, running as a third-party candidate with less than one-half of 1% of the campaign money his competitors have, frustration with the current system compelled him to join and stay in the race. He said many voters he talks with are tired of the two-party system and tired of big money in politics.

“My race right now absolutely 100% demonstrates the problems in our politics, the two cancers in our government: money in politics and this mythical two-party system,” he said.