Don Crawford (Oregon)

This page was current at the end of the individual's last campaign covered by Ballotpedia. Please contact us with any updates.

Don Crawford

Libertarian Party

Elections and appointments

Last election

November 3, 2020

Education

Bachelor's

Occidental College, 1972

Ph.D

University of Oregon, 1994

Personal

Birthplace

Newport News, Va.

Religion

Buddhist

Profession

Educational publishing executive

Contact

Campaign website

Personal Facebook

Personal X

Personal LinkedIn

Don Crawford (Libertarian Party) ran for election to the Oregon House of Representatives to represent District 51. He lost in the general election on November 3, 2020.

Crawford completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2020. Click here to read the survey answers.

Biography

Don Crawford was born in Newport News, Virginia. He received a bachelor's degree from Occidental College in 1972 and a Ph.D. from the University of Oregon in 1994. Crawford's professional experience includes running his educational publishing business, Rocket Math.

Elections

2020

See also: Oregon House of Representatives elections, 2020

General election

General election for Oregon House of Representatives District 51

Incumbent Janelle Bynum defeated Jane Hays and Don Crawford in the general election for Oregon House of Representatives District 51 on November 3, 2020.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Janelle Bynum (D / Independent / Working Families Party)	52.8	18,939
	Submit photo	Jane Hays (R)	43.1	15,466
		Don Crawford (L)	3.9	1,393
		Other/Write-in votes	0.1	48

---

	Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 35,846
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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Democratic primary election

Democratic primary for Oregon House of Representatives District 51

Incumbent Janelle Bynum advanced from the Democratic primary for Oregon House of Representatives District 51 on May 19, 2020.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Janelle Bynum	98.7	6,607
		Other/Write-in votes	1.3	84

---

	Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 6,691
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

Republican primary election

Republican primary for Oregon House of Representatives District 51

Jane Hays advanced from the Republican primary for Oregon House of Representatives District 51 on May 19, 2020.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔	Submit photo	Jane Hays	98.4	3,809
		Other/Write-in votes	1.6	60

---

	There were no incumbents in this race. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 3,869
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

Libertarian convention

Libertarian convention for Oregon House of Representatives District 51

Don Crawford advanced from the Libertarian convention for Oregon House of Representatives District 51 on July 6, 2020.

		Candidate
✔		Don Crawford (L)

---

	There were no incumbents in this race. The results have been certified. Source
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

Campaign themes

2020

Ballotpedia survey responses

See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection

Don Crawford completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2020. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Crawford's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.

Expand all | Collapse all

Who are you? Tell us about yourself.

I have been an educator for most of my life, both as a K-12 teacher and as a University professor. I have been an administrator for charter schools in Ohio, Baltimore, and Oregon. I have been asked to serve in in leadership positions and on boards wherever I go. I have done so for teachers' unions, churches, recovery groups, political parties, student government, and homeowners' associations. I have run my own educational publishing business here in Oregon for the past ten years. I have not been in government service before. I will not seek re-election. I believe citizens should run our government rather than career politicians.

Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?

• I will support repealing laws, reducing taxes, and deregulating government overreach.
• I support school choice for K-12 education.
• We need more freedom and less government controls at all levels.

What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?

School choice is desperately needed. It will provide huge benefits to our children, to parents and to our society as a whole. Teachers are great people mired in a terribly burdensome and bureaucratic system. We need schools that are more innovative, more humane, more effective, more diverse and more responsive to the needs of children. All of these will be possible if we can allow educators out from under the yoke of government edicts, mandates, and stultifying policies. We could love our schools as much as we love our restaurants, if only schools had the freedom to innovate and be different that restauranteurs have.

Is there a book, essay, film, or something else you would recommend to someone who wants to understand your political philosophy?

Ayn Rand or any libertarian writings.

What characteristics or principles are most important for an elected official?

Honesty, the ability to listen, integrity to principles.

What qualities do you possess that you believe would make you a successful officeholder?

Thoughtful, articulate, consistent, reasonable.

What do you believe are the core responsibilities for someone elected to this office?

Do what you said you would do, follow through on how you represent yourself.

What legacy would you like to leave?

Balance budget and more school choice.

What was your very first job? How long did you have it?

My first career was teaching special education which I did for over a decade. I then got a doctorate from the University of Oregon and spent another decade training pre-service and in-service teachers. I then spent a decade administering charter schools. I know we can do much better than we are now doing in K-12 schools.

What is your favorite book? Why?

Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life. He's correct and he articulates what is important in life.

What was the last song that got stuck in your head?

Send in the Clowns.

What is something that has been a struggle in your life?

Finding an opportunity to freely implement my ideals in education.

Every state besides Nebraska has two legislative chambers. What do you consider the most important differences between the legislative chambers in your state?

In our state, the differences are minimal, but the point of the two chambers is to represent rural areas more strongly in one chamber and the population centers in the other.

Do you believe that it’s beneficial for state legislators to have previous experience in government or politics?

No.

What do you perceive to be your state’s greatest challenges over the next decade?

Putting the public employee retirement system into a fiscally sound and fair basis, so that new, young teachers are not forced to support millionaires.

What do you believe is the ideal relationship between the governor and the state legislature?

They should be independent from each other, and provide a check on the power of the other.

Do you believe it’s beneficial to build relationships with other legislators? Please explain your answer.

Yes. You need to work with other people and build coalitions to get things passed.

What process do you favor for redistricting?

I believe it should be possible to create a computer program that re-districts without regard to creating safe districts for either party. It should prioritize sensible districts with boundaries consistent with other political boundaries as much as possible. A truly non-partisan program. The coding of the program should be overseen by a multi-party committee and the results should be transparent. Then the coding parameters should be put into the law, so that re-districting remains forever non-partisan. Districts need to be more representative of the mix of our values, not skewed one way or the other.

If you are not a current legislator, are there certain committees that you would want to be a part of?

Education and PERS.

If you are not currently a member of your party’s leadership in the legislature, would you be interested in joining the leadership? If so, in what role?

No.

Is there a particular legislator, past or present, whom you want to model yourself after?

Justin Amash.

Are you interested in running for a different political office (for example, the U.S. Congress or governor) in the future?

If I do run for another office after serving in this one, it would again be only for one term.

Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.

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Footnotes

[show]

Current members of the Oregon House of Representatives

Leadership

Speaker of the House:Julie Fahey

Majority Leader:Ben Bowman

Minority Leader:Lucetta Elmer

Representatives

District 1

Court Boice (R)

District 2

Virgle Osborne (R)

District 3

Dwayne Yunker (R)

District 4

Alek Skarlatos (R)

District 5

Pam Marsh (D)

District 6

Kim Wallan (R)

District 7

John Lively (D)

District 8

Lisa Fragala (D)

District 9

Boomer Wright (R)

District 10

David Gomberg (D)

District 11

Jami Cate (R)

District 12

Darin Harbick (R)

District 13

Nancy Nathanson (D)

District 14

Julie Fahey (D)

District 15

Shelly Boshart Davis (R)

District 16

Sarah McDonald (D)

District 17

Ed Diehl (R)

District 18

Rick Lewis (R)

District 19

Tom Andersen (D)

District 20

Paul Evans (D)

District 21

Kevin Mannix (R)

District 22

Lesly Muñoz (D)

District 23

Anna Scharf (R)

District 24

Lucetta Elmer (R)

District 25

Ben Bowman (D)

District 26

Sue Rieke Smith (D)

District 27

Ken Helm (D)

District 28

Dacia Grayber (D)

District 29

Susan McLain (D)

District 30

Nathan Sosa (D)

District 31

Darcey Edwards (R)

District 32

Cyrus Javadi (D)

District 33

Shannon Isadore (D)

District 34

Mari Watanabe (D)

District 35

Farrah Chaichi (D)

District 36

Hai Pham (D)

District 37

Jules Walters (D)

District 38

Daniel Nguyen (D)

District 39

April Dobson (D)

District 40

Annessa Hartman (D)

District 41

Mark Gamba (D)

District 42

Rob Nosse (D)

District 43

Tawna Sanchez (D)

District 44

Travis Nelson (D)

District 45

Thuy Tran (D)

District 46

Willy Chotzen (D)

District 47

Andrea Valderrama (D)

District 48

Vacant

District 49

Zach Hudson (D)

District 50

Ricki Ruiz (D)

District 51

Vacant

District 52

Jeffrey Helfrich (R)

District 53

Emerson Levy (D)

District 54

Jason Kropf (D)

District 55

E. Reschke (R)

District 56

Emily McIntire (R)

District 57

Greg Smith (R)

District 58

Bobby Levy (R)

District 59

Vikki Breese-Iverson (R)

District 60

Mark Owens (R)

Democratic Party (36)

Republican Party (22)

Vacancies (2)