Historic recall election for a Lincoln County commissioner is a culmination of two years of chaos and conflict

By SHAYLA ESCUDERO/Lincoln Chronicle 

This week, for the first time in Lincoln County’s 132-year history, voters will be asked if a county commissioner should be recalled from office.

The subject of the recall is Claire Hall, who has served as commissioner for 21 years building a reputation as an advocate for unhoused people and affordable housing, and is popular with progressives.

But over the past 15 months her leadership as commission chair have been fraught with division with increasingly chaotic meetings and clashes between commissioners, the county counsel and some department heads.

The division is so deep that Hall doesn’t have an answer of how to move forward and mend what has been broken.

Hall has had a key role in the conflict but she isn’t the sole player. An organized group of opponents believe removing her from office is the first step to addressing the county’s deep-rooted issues.

This past summer, signs bearing the words “Claire Doesn’t Care” and “Recall Hall” materialized throughout Lincoln County as recall petitioners gathered signatures at tables set up near post offices, parking lots and grocery stores.

In response, groups like Lincoln County Democrats are rising to Hall’s defense, carrying signs that read “Claire Cares” and making calls in support of the commissioner.

The issue has been politically divisive and loud voices in the county’s left- and right-leaning groups are polarizing the issue. But petitioners assert their movement has attracted different ends of the political spectrum and that the motivations behind the recall are more nuanced and piggyback on months of instability and conflict between county leaders.

On Monday, 39,720 ballots were mailed to voters asking a sole question – should Claire Hall be removed from the Lincoln County Board of Commissioners.

Voters who want to see the commissioner recalled need to mark a “yes” vote while those who would like her to stay in office would mark “no”. Ballots must be returned by 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 9 in an election estimated to cost $50,000.

If voters remove Hall from office, then commissioners Casey Miller and Walter Chuck would use the county’s process for filing a vacancy — soliciting candidates, selecting finalists, conducting interviews and then agreeing on someone to fill the remainder of Hall’s term.

Who is Claire Hall? 

Before becoming a commissioner, Hall had a career in journalism. She holds a bachelor’s degree in communications from Pacific University and a masters degree in journalism from Northwestern University. She worked as a producer for the Portland school district’s radio station then a reporter for Newport News Times, followed by 15 years for Newport radio stations.

Hall left journalism in 2004 when she won a seat on the county commission. Over the last 21 years she has been an advocate for people facing homelessness, affordable housing issues, reining in short-term rentals, and healthcare. She has served on local, state and national boards for homeless and housing issues, on the Governor’s Council on Alcohol and Drug Programs and the Oregon Ending Homelessness Advisory Council.

Hall is in her sixth, four-year term in office. In 2020, she campaigned for re-election for the first time after coming out as transgender and won that election by more than 2,800 votes.

When she ran for re-election in 2024 she faced four challengers in the May primary and defeated Rick Beasley, a controversial newsman and registered Republican from Depoe Bay by just 115 votes, It was the closest commissioner race in decades.

Hall has not attended meetings in person since suffering a fall in September that fractured her hip, shoulder and several ribs and then hospitalized with further health issues. She now assures constituents that despite her health she is ready to fight the recall and has the strength to attend to county business.

A recall effort

The recall effort has been highly organized as opponents of Hall collected the 3,945 verified signatures needed to get the issue on the ballot. Their reasonings for recalling Hall as written on the petition were:

• Her handling of public meetings;
• Supporting the exclusion of Commissioner Casey Miller from “daily governance”;
• How she conducts herself on social media;
• Her role and communication of budgeting decisions; and
• Creating a toxic work environment.

At the helm of the recall effort is petitioner Christine Jamison, a registered Independent who says she never had much of a taste for politics before her recent efforts to recall Hall. Jamison, who also uses the surname Hutchins, is a former realtor and board member of a homeowner’s association in Otter Rock.

She fervently denies being a Trump supporter despite Hall’s claims that the movement against her is deeply rooted in MAGA politics. She’s been sympathetic with some of Hall’s opponents, but told the Lincoln Chronicle her motivations are not just about political differences with the commissioner but an emphasis on her conduct.

“These are pure reasons for wanting change,” she said.

Although many loud right-leaning voices have rallied in support of the recall and many loud-left leaning voices have denounced it, there is something deeper underlying the polarization – months of dysfunction among county leaders.

Deep conflict 

The recall comes on the heels of more than a year of division between commissioners, District Attorney Jenna Wallace and county counsel Kristin Yuille, the resignation of commissioner Kaety Jacobson, the appointment of her replacement, and a so-far unsuccessful search to replace the county’s first full-time administrator who resigned 11 months ago.

Since then, meetings have been tense and public comment periods have been chaotic when county staff and others have tried to air grievances. The commission chairs – first Hall and then Walter Chuck after her illnesses – have cut meetings short, prevented people from speaking, and caused heated exchanges between the public and commissioners, and in some cases yelling or tears.

Most of the publicly perceived deep divisions could be traced to Sept.18, 2024, when Miller, serving his first term after 14 years as the county’s public information officer, spent 30 minutes citing issues he felt were not addressing and topics he had been unable to get placed on meeting agendas.

His gripes included:

• Unsuccessful attempts to evaluate Tim Johnson after 2½ years as the county’s first full-time administrator and mentioning his potential departure;
• Concerns about setting up a state-required drug deflection program;
• Possible open meetings law violations; and
• Yuille’s role in administrative procedures during Johnson’s absences that summer.

Miller was investigated for releasing confidential personnel information, bullying and creating a toxic work environment, then cleared of the workplace issues but told he couldn’t work in the courthouse until he apologized and went through mediation. Jacobsen resigned mid-term in frustration in February and Johnson departed shortly after.

With the absence of a county administrator, Johnson’s duties were divided between Hall and Yuille.

Miller issued a public apology but has not been allowed back into the office despite the investigation’s findings. Instead, he was given a separate, $325-a-month office four blocks from the courthouse.

Hall says Miller’s apology was not sufficient and should have specifically named who was hurt by his words instead of a blanket statement, she told the Chronicle.

Miller says he doesn’t know what he needs to do to get back into the office while Hall claims if he were allowed back, they would lose employees. There have been attempts at mediation but Miller felt they were insufficient and efforts on that end have since stalled – a move leading to more criticism of Hall and her supporters.

Miller has also grown more vocal about his frustrations with ignored agenda requests by Hall and Yuille and his continued exclusion from commission offices.

Then in October, the Oregon Ethics Commission voted to investigate commissioners after a preliminary investigation determined they may have broken several public meeting laws when deciding what positions to exempt from their budget-triggered hiring freeze. The action was the first time an objective third party agency seemed to affirm that not all of the county’s processes may be above board.

Hall is quick to point out that the ethics commission investigation is not just against her but all three commissioners and that Miller was the one to file the complaint. Hall says Miller’s agenda requests are not placed on the agenda because they are often beyond the scope of county business. She traces the root of the conflict to that September 2024 meeting and sees Miller’s actions and calls for transparency as political grandstanding.

“This situation feels utterly unique,” Hall said. “Up until now I feel like there was always a willingness and ability to communicate.”

But Hall’s own communication and handling of the conflict has also been criticized, as her response has been to avoid attempts to discuss conflict during regular meetings or use rarely-used workshops and instead to propose new rules restricting public comment.

Response to public comment rules

Public comment periods during commission meetings grew increasingly intense the past eight months as Wallace and other county staff tried to use the time to air grievances about hiring, communication and what some people saw as retaliatory behavior.

Wallace’s complaints included:

• Accusing the county of not following its personnel rules;
• Ignoring her requests to have an outside investigation of her complaints against Yuille and human resources director David Collier; and
• Refusing Miller’s repeated requests for the commission to schedule an executive (closed) session to discuss those issues.

At the time, Hall issued a statement that Wallace’s actions were retaliatory after the commissioner said she reported the district attorney’s behavior to two state agencies.

But underlying much of Hall, Yuille and Collier’s issues with Wallace has been her continued advocacy for positions in her office that her husband could fill. Orrin Wallace and two other county employees filed a $3.3 million wrongful dismissal lawsuit in May against the county.

After the county chose to balance a newly-discovered budget deficit in May with a hiring freeze, Wallace continued to advocate for positions to be unfrozen in her department during meeting public comment periods, but could not get clarity how exceptions were decided.

Hall told the Chronicle the exceptions are decided on a case-by-case basis based on requests from department heads and voted on by all three commissioners. Hall said she did not have a staff number she saw as the minimum amount needed to perform basic functions in the district attorney’s office, but said that when making decisions about the hiring and the budget, commissioners have to make forecasts and that next year’s budget would likely be even tighter.

Hall stands by her suggestion – never implemented – of the rules for public comments at meetings as a way to curb the chaos and that they should be used only to discuss county business and not other topics. But some constituents are still critical of another change to the comment period in which people have to sign up at noon the day before a meeting to make a virtual or in-person comment.

Repeatedly, Miller, Wallace and others have made calls for more transparency and open dialogue so that the county can work through its myriad issues. Hall considers these political grandstanding and an effort to curry public favor when individuals are otherwise not getting their way.

When asked why she would not entertain a meeting to air out the concerns brought by Miller and others when it seems like the current approach does not seem to be working, Hall answered that to do so would be the antithesis of how the county has historically done things and what she believes is best practice.

“It would be a pretty radical shift in how the county handles personnel issues,” she said.

Hall denies any claims that she has contributed to a toxic workplace environment and feels that those accusations against her are baseless.

The county has reached a point of such deep division that Hall said she does not know how to mend relationships. But she also doesn’t believe the responsibility should solely fall on her when she doesn’t believe she is the one who created the conflict – a blame she is not afraid to place on Miller.

“I’ll admit I’m stymied on how to resolve it. I wish more than anything to have an answer,” she told the Chronicle. “I’d love to fix it, but I didn’t break it.”

Leading up to the recall

Jamison sees another way to resolve the conflict – removing Hall from office. And it may not end there.

Jamison, a registered Independent, never felt very politically active until the summer of 2024 when she broke her leg and suddenly found herself with a lot of time. So she started digging into the county’s financial audits.

It’s common practice for these financial documents to list weaknesses and improvements the agency they are reviewing should make to improve. With an education in finance, she was alarmed that when looking over the years, the audits seemed to point out the same weaknesses and need for improvements year after year, she said. To her this signified a lack of oversight to improve and make corrections.

Hall asserts that she is not solely responsible for the decisions related to the county’s finances as they are approved by the three-member board as well as a responsibility shared by staff.

Then, Jamison said she started paying more attention to county business and connected with Wallace. The two shared in their concerns over their perception of rising crime rates and Jamison was sympathetic to Wallace’s pleas to fill positions the county had denied and how that may be affecting her office.

After she made public comments in June – the first time she had been to a county meeting – Jamison and another member of the public were pulled aside by Yuille, who made disparaging comments against county employees, Miller and others. When Jamison attempted to relay what she had been told by Yuille during another commission meeting, she was temporarily banned without a warning by Hall, who said Jamison had violated rules against slander.

For Jamison that was the straw that broke the camel’s back and influenced her decision to start the recall campaign. Then, she said, people started coming out of the woodwork with concerns.

She has spent a lot of time evaluating the litany of claims people have made about Hall – some of which she has spread on social media and veered into the personal including looking into the pasts of people Hall has associated with.

She takes issue with being labeled “disgruntled” when it comes to her recall efforts.

“I don’t want to be doing this forever, I’m not on a crusade,” she said.

Jamison believes Hall deserves the blame for the commission’s dysfunction because she is the chair and has assumed more roles in the absence of the county administrator. While she believes recalling Hall will help the county address its conflicts, she knows it may not be the sole solution. She has also filed a complaint with the Oregon State Bar against Yuille.

Beyond that, she isn’t sure what would need to happen because she also knows it would largely depend on who ends up taking Hall’s place if she gets recalled and how willing they would be to work with Wallace, Miller and others.

Polarization takes hold

Jamison may be a registered Independent with some centrist ideals but the movement around her is polarized.

Lincoln County Republicans and conservative members from Hilltop Patriots have championed the recall. On the other side of the aisle, Lincoln County Democrats have been loud in their support of Hall, organized letter-writing campaigns, and initiated robo calls to Democrats.

“This coalition that wants me out of the office is the same that I defeated in May 2024 and November before that, and now they are trying a third time,” Hall said.

Hall has ramped up her social media activity to campaign against her recall and to highlight other issues roiling the community. One of the reasons for the recall was the commissioner’s conduct on social media, but Hall sees her quips and criticisms as reactionary rather than the first blow. For a long time, Hall said, she was silent but at some point needed to fight back.

“I don’t see it as retaliatory, I see it as defense,” she said.

To Hall, the recall effort represents larger Trump Administration politics infiltrating the local level and believes her gender identity plays a role. Through the recall, she has been misgendered by some recall supporters. In one public meeting, a commenter called her by her pre-transition name.

Jamison doesn’t deny that there are some people with transphobic beliefs who are supporting the recall, but she doesn’t believe that is the sole reason for their support.

Jamison said she has never supported transphobia or made that a tenent of the recall. She has seen transphobic comments on the recall campaign’s Facebook page but she said she is careful not to “like” those comments. But that trying to moderate or delete them would take too much time, Jamison said, and she is not the moderator of the group’s social media.

“I believe this whole bashing of the drum of transphobia or MAGA turning the county red is deflecting and not addressing the true issues of what is needed to get this county healthy,” Jamison said.

She feels like the recall has been hijacked by seeing it as a red or blue issue when instead it’s about how Hall is doing her job.

The majority of signatures on recall petitions are from registered Republicans, but the effort did sway people of various political backgrounds. Jamison previously told the Chronicle that volunteers ran recall signatures through the county’s registration database and found 45 percent of them were Republicans, about 20 percent were nonaffiliated, 13 percent were Democrats, 5 percent were independent and the remainder were from smaller political parties or were not able to be categorized.

In Lincoln County, there are 12,978 registered Democrats, 8,586 registered Republicans, 2,402 Independents and 15,498 nonaffiliated voters.

Although there are some right-wing voices behind the recall, Jamison says she feels good about receiving their support because there are many left-leaning people who have also been instrumental in the cause.

“I want people to understand that it shouldn’t be a party issue,” Hutchins said.

• Shayla Escudero covers Lincoln County government, education, Newport, housing and social services for Lincoln Chronicle and can be reached at [email protected]