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John Selker
John Selker (Democratic Party) ran for election to the U.S. House to represent Oregon's 4th Congressional District. He lost in the Democratic primary on May 17, 2022.
Selker completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
John Selker was born in Seattle, Washington. He earned a bachelor's degree from Reed College in 1981. His career experience includes working as a university professor.[1]
Elections
2022
See also: Oregon's 4th Congressional District election, 2022
General election
General election for U.S. House Oregon District 4
Val Hoyle defeated Alek Skarlatos, Levi Leatherberry, Jim Howard, and Michael Beilstein in the general election for U.S. House Oregon District 4 on November 8, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Val Hoyle (D / Working Families Party) | 50.5 | 171,372 |
 | Alek Skarlatos (R) | 43.1 | 146,055 | |
 | Levi Leatherberry (Independent Party / L)  | 2.7 | 9,052 | |
| Jim Howard (Constitution Party) | 1.8 | 6,075 | ||
 | Michael Beilstein (Pacific Green Party / Progressive Party) | 1.8 | 6,033 | |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.1 | 490 | ||
| Total votes: 339,077 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for U.S. House Oregon District 4
The following candidates ran in the Democratic primary for U.S. House Oregon District 4 on May 17, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Val Hoyle | 63.5 | 56,153 |
 | Doyle Canning | 16.1 | 14,245 | |
 | Sami Al-Abdrabbuh | 6.9 | 6,080 | |
 | John Selker | 5.4 | 4,738 | |
 | Andrew Kalloch | 4.9 | 4,322 | |
| G. Tommy Smith | 1.4 | 1,278 | ||
| Jake Matthews | 0.7 | 607 | ||
 | Steve William Laible | 0.3 | 292 | |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.8 | 663 | ||
| Total votes: 88,378 | |||
| = 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. | ||||
Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Zachary Mulholland (D)
- Joshua Welch (D)
Republican primary election
Republican primary for U.S. House Oregon District 4
Alek Skarlatos advanced from the Republican primary for U.S. House Oregon District 4 on May 17, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Alek Skarlatos | 98.3 | 58,655 |
| Other/Write-in votes | 1.7 | 1,021 | ||
| Total votes: 59,676 | |||
| = 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. | ||||
Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Garrett Hoppe (R)
- Jeremy Van Tress (R)
Campaign themes
2022
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
John Selker completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Selker's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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- You can't fix things you don't understand
- John understands critical economic, social, scientific, and engineering framework of today's society
- John is independent - he solves problems working across all lines to deliver practical real-world solutions.
Roosevelt - pulled our country out of the depression and saved the world from despotic rule. I believe that leadership and faith in our community will deliver.
Democracy is founded on the goal to provide citizens the ability to effectively advocate for their desired social outcomes. To achieve this requires that information upon which they act is true, so that their decisions match their goals. From this we conclude:
1. Lying in order to influence citizens democratic engagement is objectively wrong (immoral and unethical), as it directly steals a citizen’s will in order that the liar gains the weight of those citizens to achieve the liar’s goals.
2. Misleading citizens so that they do not have accurate understanding of an issue, and causing them to change their position, is unethical and antithetical to a well-functioning democracy.
3. Vilifying others. Disagreement reflects differing perspectives and experiences, but does not indicate moral status. By attacking the person instead of their arguments, the ability to hear alternative perspectives is compromised, and so the ability to achieve a democratic compromise that balances diverse positions is lost. Ad Hominem attacks are intrinsically un-democratic.
4. Misrepresenting objectives. In a democracy people must understand the objectives of community members, they cannot develop a fair compromise solution that shares costs and benefits justly. For example, if I am to gain $1M from a decision, but only talk of some $10 rationale, this is unethical political discourse.
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.
Campaign website
Selker’s campaign website stated the following:
| “ |
Women's Right to Choose Based on Their Lives and Beliefs John Selker, May 3, 2022 Today’s news that the supreme court is poised to reverse Roe V Wade reaffirms why we must be committed to enacting legislation that established the right of reproductive choice into law. The Women’s Reproductive Rights Act passed the House in 2021 and would have achieved this goal. If passed by the Senate this matter would have been resolved today. But the struggle goes on, and we must be resolute. The opposition seeks to impose their religious beliefs on the nation’s women, most profoundly impacting the poor and people of color. With one third of the court picked by Trump using this issue as the litmus test, the Supreme Court is no longer a fair arbiter. Two years before Roe V Wade my mother used her nursing training to found Planned Parenthood of Southwest Washington. She gave women access to birth control, medical checkups, and counseling. When my mother died, just weeks after the Roe V Wade decision, I met the hundreds of women who were served by her in this conservative corner of the Pacific Northwest. They admired her bravery, but most of all, they were forever indebted to her for the control they gained over their lives. Let there be no mistake: we will not let American women be controlled by the religious beliefs of others. This is not a minority position: 151 Americans support a woman’s right to choose for every 100 who seek to impose their beliefs. Every child deserves to be born into a family that wants them and can support them. The hypocrisy of people who oppose the country’s public health measures to limit the spread of COVID while wishing to interfere with the lives of others is stunning. When in office I will vigorously support the passage of The Woman’s Health Act (HR 3755) which will enshrine a woman’s right to choose into law. We can no longer look to the Supreme Court to protect our freedoms, thus it is time to take this work back to the Legislature. With your support that is just what I will do.
Climate Change The impending shift in global weather threatens the finely-tuned ecosystem humanity depends on. It is for the sake of our people that I believe we must stop increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Melting ice sheets, thermally expanding and acidifying ocean water, raging wildfires, and weather extremes are far too dangerous and costly to simply accept. The great news is that we have so many options! Solar, wind, and wave power could all make huge, immediate impacts. We know how to scrub CO2 from smokestacks before it gets to the atmosphere. We need to turn climate change around through both new engineering and social commitment. These problems require globally coordinated action – together we can tackle this. Oregon and the USA should be a source of solutions, deployed collaboratively around the world. Please look at my policy briefs to see detailed plans for establishing a national electric grid and implementation of carbon-free electrical generation that will lead to a electrical-energy system based on renewables.
Education What distinguishes us from folks on earth 3000 years ago? Knowledge, tools, and skills. Active engagement in today’s society requires understanding history, ecology, economics, and technology. Any trade, from electrician to programmer, requires training. We have the tools to make education more accessible than ever! When I put my lectures online, I went from reaching 50 students to reaching 50,000. Let’s re-envision education, make educational resources available to all, and build an accreditation process that gives credit for people’s lifetime learning achievements. There will still be teachers and students in our future, but we need to shoot for the stars in educating Oregonians and Americans so that we are leaders in the coming century. One principle I have come to, after on 20 years as a student and 30 years as a professor, is to move away from one-size-fits-all theories of education, and instead treat school as facilitating a personalized path. Students should have the opportunity to grow at their own pace, and their time in the classroom should synthesize their knowledge and build their social skills.
Addiction, Mental Health, and Homelessness We can only rest when we have done all we can to help those in need. I have seen the costs of mental health issues first-hand among friends and family, in the form of suicide, addiction, and mental health challenges. We need the door to be wide open for support for all who suffer from addiction. Everyone deserves food and shelter, work from which they can gain a sense of purpose, and access to mental health care. I am not interested in helping people who won’t lift what they can, but I am committed to help those who are incapable of caring for themselves. We will be proud of our society when we show love and care for those who fall through the cracks.
Budgets We are leaking money like a sieve because the folks in charge are not able to understand the numbers to find the culprits. I am very conservative with spending: I’ve balanced the books at my own business for decades. Having degrees in physics and engineering helps. I grew up the seventh child in a family of modest resources, on powdered skim milk, picking blackberries for jam, and I have saved my whole life to be prepared for whatever might come down the pike. I want to bring the spending of our government in line with its income. A few examples: We can’t have the world’s most expensive healthcare, while patients receive second-class service and health problems are still our largest source of personal bankruptcy. We need to work from the bottom up to get drug prices, medical equipment, and spending on health-care bureaucracy to a sensible place. I got to know these “systems” when my wife broke her back, and will make sure we change not only the look and feel, but fix the underlying structures that are costing us our health and economy. This further means that we will not buy every new weapon system that comes out of the military-industrial complex. We are spending over a trillion dollars on the F-35 program alone: these decisions need to be evaluated not on the basis of a flashy PowerPoint slide set, but from the numbers. Again, having degrees in physics and engineering will help. This means we will wrestle down the costs of education, rather than letting them climb sky-high. Are some investments needed? Absolutely, but only if they bring more returns than their costs, their benefits are for future generations, and their costs are paid today.
I am a maker who loves to fix things. My grandfathers were both industrialists in metals. My father took me to countless factories when I was growing up, and I believe in the power of enterprise in solving many of our problems. I have run a company with my brother for over a decade, and personally love to make things (I have a full machine shop at my home). The core of satisfaction is creating: things, ideas, music, relationships. I have worked as a carpenter, a cookstove designer, an agriculture extension agent, an electronics designer, a professor, and a businessman. I will work to make our forests healthy and productive, as safe as possible from fires. I will work to make sure our agriculture is sustainable both economically and environmentally. I will support high-tech industry to secure our supply-lines, deliver high-paying jobs, and provide the solutions for our energy, environment, and technological leadership. I will make sure that trade is fair and prioritizes our workers, while also allowing us to benefit from world trade with partners who respect workers and the environment.
To be human is to advocate and uplift victims of injustice. We have come a long way in our nation’s 250 years, but we have yet to complete the work of providing a land of equal opportunity for all, be you female, Native American, of African descent, of non-conforming gender identity, or of any faith. My Jewish ancestors suffered and died in Germany and Poland, and it is heartbreaking to still see antisemitic marches in the USA. Many families have suffered more than mine; people deserving to be uplifted are diverse. Profound historical injustices have fallen on our Native American, African American, and gender non-conforming communities. We find ourselves with a historic opportunity to make ours a stronger, fairer community, and I will take every opportunity to uplift and address the injustices that have been felt across our young country.
Ethics in Democracy I feel it is important to take a stand on my ethical perspective on governance. This grows out of decades of experience in the USA, but also across Africa, Asia, and Europe. Our experience under Donald Trump requires us to remind ourselves of and recommit to these basic principles. The “do’s” of democracy can be summed up: Honestly represent your community, and make the best decisions possible to provide for their most promising future. But it is most important to be clear about the red-line “don’t’s,” which I address in more detail and absolutely commit to respect. Democracy is founded on the goal to provide citizens the ability to effectively advocate for their desired social outcomes. To achieve this requires that information upon which they act is true, so that their decisions match their goals. From this we conclude The big DON'Ts include:
2. Misleading citizens so that they do not have accurate understanding of an issue, and causing them to change their position, is unethical and antithetical to a well-functioning democracy. 3. Vilifying others. Disagreement reflects differing perspectives and experiences, but does not indicate moral status. By attacking the person instead of their arguments, the ability to hear alternative perspectives is compromised, and so the ability to achieve a democratic compromise that balances diverse positions is lost. Ad Hominem attacks are intrinsically un-democratic. 4. Misrepresenting objectives. In a democracy people must understand the objectives of community members, they cannot develop a fair compromise solution that shares costs and benefits justly. For example, if I am to gain $1M from a decision, but only talk of some $10 rationale, this is unethical political discourse. 5. Hiding impacts of decisions. If a decision will impact a person of the community, it is unethical to hide this fact since doing so would deprive citizens from making decisions that balanced the communities diverse interests.[2] |
” |
| —John Selker’s campaign website (2022)[3] | ||
See also
2022 Elections
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on January 21, 2022
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ John Selker’s campaign website, Issues, accessed May 13, 2022
