Roseburg woman running against Peter DeFazio for 4th District

Jaynee Germond is campaigning for Congress on a novel platform: Obey the U.S. Constitution.

The 51-year-old Roseburg resident is on the general election ballot as one of two candidates so far for the House seat representing Oregon's 4th District, including Albany and Linn County.

The other name is Peter DeFazio, the Democrat from Springfield going for his 12th two-year term.

No Republican filed for the office. DeFazio got enough write-in votes to make him the GOP candidate too, but people can appear on the ballot only once.

Without the GOP in the race, Germond says she is being supported by Republicans, at whose state convention she spoke in June.

According to her, the Constitution Party is the fastest-growing in the state with 3,000 to 4,000 members, and its platform is neatly identical to that of the Republicans, she says.

What does her party stand for?

"Going back to the Constitution the way it was written," she replies. "It was to secure individual rights and put constraints on the government."

In practice what would that mean today?

"For one thing, not going to war unless Congress declares it," she says. "And being against searches and seizures without a warrant."

Also, she believes, taxes are not intended to be sent to other countries. She objects, for instance, to the U.S. spending billions to control HIV and AIDS in other countries while Americans can't afford health care and gas.

"Leave taxes in our own pockets," she says.

She maintains that the timber industry has been "vilified" by the federal government.

"Take our timberland back," she says. "It needs to be logged. That's what it's there for."

In her eyes, stopping federal county payments in lieu of timber receipts on federal land was the same as somebody taking out a loan and then refusing to make the payments.

"It's time for the counties to repossess that land."

Active timber management on those lands would improve the economy, make for a better life in Oregon and decrease the fire hazard, too, she believes.

Germond is a homemaker who spent 25 years working as a nurse's aide and related nursing jobs in Michigan. Before that she taught middle school, two years in a private school and one in a "government school."

Widowed in 2003, she met her current husband, Richard, a disabled Vietnam veteran, and moved to Oregon in 2004.

Donations for her campaign have been slow. Her website showed a few hundred dollars last week. But she scraped up the $1,000 fee for an entry in the state Voters' Pamphlet.

She has been attending county fairs, though she missed Linn County. On Wednesday, she attended a Republican fundraiser in Benton County.

Asked about her election chances, she points to polls showing Congress' approval rating to be very low.

"My chances are good this year," she says.