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State Senate Candidate Todd Nash · 6 Ranch Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I will advocate for us in Eastern Oregon, do what's best for the entirety of the state of Oregon.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: I think this is one of the most brilliant states there is as far as landscape, the diversity of landscape.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: It is a wonderful state.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: It is a political train wreck a lot of times and it's really disappointing the disconnect that we have between the metropolitan areas and what we are out here these are stories of outdoor adventure and expert advice from folks with calloused hands.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: I'm James Nash and this is the Six Ranch Podcast.
• 0:53
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• 1:08
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• 1:35
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• 2:01
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• 2:07
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• 2:22
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• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Tell me about your Senate District.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Well, Senate District 29 is in the northeast part of Oregon.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: It runs down to central Oregon, Takes in seven whole counties and four partial counties.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: So it runs from Wallowa County over to Union County, Umatilla County, Morrill County, Gillom County, Sherman County, the south part of Wasco County, the north part of Jefferson County, all of Wheeler County and then a small part of Clackamas and Marion County.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: So really, it runs almost across the whole northern end of the state.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it takes in a big portion of it.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: And how many Senate districts are in Oregon?
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: 30.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: 30.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: In a big portion of it, yes, yeah.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: And how many senate districts are in oregon?
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: 30 30?
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: And those districts move, uh, based on population.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: If populations shift very much right, yeah, and so each senate district takes in about 140 000 people approximately, and so when you get out here to Eastern Oregon between Senate District 30 and Senate District 29, it takes in 60% of the landmass of Oregon.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: So if those Senate districts were a state, can you tell me a little bit about like how that would compare to other states, just to help people wrap their minds around it?
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Well, I don't know the full analysis on that, but I can tell you we did an analysis on the three forest area that make up this portion of the world.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: What?
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: does that mean three forest?
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so the national forest in our area.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: So you have the Malheur that's to the south of us, the Umatilla that is to the west of us and then the Walla Whitman that is mostly around us here.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: And so we did a study and we took that three-forest area and we pretended as if that was a state, those 15 counties that are part of that and one.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: We looked at the population density and if so, if we were a state, there would be three states that had a lower population density.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: So that would be Alaska, first Wyoming, second Montana and then this portion of Eastern Oregon.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Okay, so not very many people per square mile is what we're saying.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Not very many people per square mile.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: The other thing that we looked at in that area was we looked at how we were doing economically and the same way, if you put it into a statehood, we would be right behind Mississippi and West Virginia as the third poorest state in the Union.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: Wow, that's.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: That's a bit bleak, it is.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Okay, what else did you find out?
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Well, that our lack of using natural resources has had a big role in that.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: So you look at Harney County, to the south of us.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: it was one of the most prosperous counties in the state at one time not very long ago and you fast forward today and it's one of the poorest so when you're talking about using natural resources, are we talking mining mineral extraction?
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: Are we talking about timber grazing?
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: all of the above, yeah, and the farming components that go with that.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: You know water is a natural resource.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Putting it on as irrigation is certainly a part of that component.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: So what has led to the declined use of natural resources that's affected the economy in such a drastic way?
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: Well, timber was a big part of it.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: And so if you go back to the early 90s and people remember the listing of the spotted owl, that happened in the early 90s what happened out here in Eastern Oregon?
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: We actually thought that we would get a little bit of a boon because there would be a higher demand for timber be less available on the west side of the state, but what we ended up doing was it was such a shuffle that we ended up relying on other portions of the world to supply our lumber needs other portions of the world to supply our lumber needs and so we brought in timber to make up that difference and we lost our market share in the world.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: The other thing that happened out here was we saw the listing of Chinook salmon at the same time, and when that took place, there were so many restrictions on what the forest could utilize.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: The process known as consultation between the Forest Service and National Marine Fisheries that is in charge of anadromous fish.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: Those sort of things ended up having a devastating impact on us devastating impact on us, and that basically meant that the US Forest Service of Region 6, being Oregon and Washington, were no longer allowing timber harvest or were reducing it in a significant way?
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, reduced it in a very significant way, yeah, can you put any numbers on that?
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: yeah, we were taking about 80 million board feet a year off the wallowa whitman um just here in this district in in the wallowa valley district, so so not even the whole forest, just not even the portion of the forest.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and so you fast forward to today and it averages out to more like 5 million.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: And so to give you I mean those are numbers that seem irrelevant the mill that I worked at in 1994, the Boise Cascade Mill, we went through 30 million board feet a year there.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: The Little Joseph Mill, same way, 30 million board feet.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: The Rogie Mill in Wallowa, 30 million board feet.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: So 90 million board feet.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: 80 million of it was coming off the forest and that was.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: You know, that was sustainable.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: I mean that was a significant cut but it was sustainable.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: We grow that much and more.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: I can't think of a single dropout.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: But when I was in kindergarten, all three of those mills were functioning and it was not only employing the mill workers but it was, you know, it was all the loggers, it was all the truck drivers is, you know, a huge part of the economy of the county and a lot of those people just moved.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: You know, they they had to leave in order to find work and keep doing what their skill set allowed them to do and it was really really crippling to see that happen.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: And it happened really quickly after those mills closed.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: Now we do have Chinook salmon here in limited numbers.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: Um, now we do have Chinook salmon here in limited numbers.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: It's been many years since we had a Chinook salmon season open because the numbers are so low, but uh, we've still got a lot of timber.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: So the natural mortality meaning the number of trees that are dying of, of illness or old age or whatever uh, that's over over 100 million board feet a year in this forest.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: It is, yeah, and actually the last forest plan that was scrapped in 2018, the Forest Service recognized that they had a flawed plan, but it called for 65 million board feet to be taken off the Willow Whitman, and that included all sorts of salvage and firewood and the whole thing.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: So, but the attrition, like you said, what is actually dying out there is well over 100 million board feet, and the thing that scares me even more than that is that the amount of timber that's dying is greater than the amount of timber that's growing, and it doesn't take a genius to look at that and think of it like it's your checkbook, and we are spending more than we're making.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: And where does that end up With our forest?
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it ends up in a bad situation.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, um, yeah, it ends up in a bad situation.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: And then you know we, we've done a number of things to ourselves.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Um, we probably cut too many mature trees years ago and and left a lot of understory to come up.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: But we have a jackpotted mess out there and we have these large fires that are hard to control and we've done a good job but putting fires out, and so we have a massive fuel load.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: But you know, I we could do some management practices right now that would be really beneficial to the landscape, and there's a lot of good forest managers that want to do that, yeah, that work for the forest service right now.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: There's some activists that just want to do nothing.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: There's some of the fisheries people that are just a royal pain.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: Their only focus is recovery of a species and they don't have to look at the greater scheme of trying to provide the socioeconomics of a community.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: They don't have to look at the forest health.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: All they have to look at is the fish, and so have to look at the forest health.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: All they have to look at is the fish, and so they can say hands off of everything.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: But sometimes they inadvertently cause these bad situations which end up making these giant fuel loads.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: And then when a canyon burns up that has, um, an adequate place to spawn, for example, and it just becomes a big chimney and burns the entire thing up.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: You know that's not helpful either.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: Now, it's not a leap to say that a healthy forest benefits from a healthy river or that a healthy river requires a healthy forest benefits from a healthy river, or the healthy river requires a healthy forest.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: And you know, I, I, I would love to see, I would love to see more of an ecological approach, rather than a species specific, biological approach to some of these problems.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: Because if you have a really unhealthy forest because it's overgrown or because it's been burned too hot or you know a multitude of things, and that's going to affect your fishery, so managing a forest through timber and grazing timber, harvesting, grazing is is going to be helpful for those fish, uh, but a lot, of, a lot of the litigation that occurs really prevents much progress there.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: Tell me a little bit about NEPA.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: I think that that that hamstrings a lot of these agencies and it's something that, uh, that most folks blissfully have never heard of.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, nepa, the National Environmental Protection Act, and I might have that P wrong.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: So the NEPA process is a process that is open to communities, it's open for everybody to weigh in on, but those processes are taking five years to accomplish what's an?
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: example of something that would require someone to go through a NEPA process.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so if you had a timber sale that you want to put up, you want to do some forest health management, you have to go through the NEPA process, and so that process starts with scoping, and so the Forest Service would put out that they intend to do some work in this area.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: And so you have some public input there to do some work in this area.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: And so you have some public input there.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: I've even seen where and they're not required to they have input with pre-scoping and anyway, once you get through the scoping process, then you develop a plan of what you're going to do there.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: Then you end up going through and and you have to have, you know, archeologists come out to see if there's any archeological uh, impacts, um, you would probably invite the tribes in to see if, if they have any values there that might be impacted, and and then you have commissioners that have a status, that they have cooperating agency status, and so they have the ability to to have greater input on that within their own area.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: And then, lastly, you have consultation, and consultation happens between the Forest Service and anything that is an endangered species, and so in this case, whether it be bull, trout, chinook, salmon, it could be steelhead, some kind of plant, maybe, yeah, spalding's catch, fly pine, needle grass, I mean, the list goes on and on.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: It could be a little bug, it could be you bug, it could be, you know, a fungus.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: There's any number of things that will require consultation, either with US Fish and Wildlife or with National Marine Fisheries, the tribes, some of the state agencies.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: Anyway, it becomes quite burdensome.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: And then, after that consultation takes place, then these agencies will give a determination of what is going to take place and it'll be not likely to adversely affect or likely to adversely affect.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: And if it's likely to adversely affect, then you need to show more management in order to move forward, or you're subject to litigation.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: And it opens the door up for these environmental groups to come in and sue.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: Now they don't actually need the likely to adversely affect to go ahead and sue and they do on a regular basis without that but it sure lends toward the ability for them to win.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: So recently there was a timber project in one of our communities in the Lost Steen River Corridor where the people that lived there didn't feel safe because if fire caught in that drainage then chances are every home in that community is lost and there's only one way out.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: It's a pretty dangerous spot and the and the timber was definitely in a condition where, if something like that happened, it would be very, very difficult to fight fire.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: And um, and this went through the NEPA process and it had to go to what level of the court system, through lawsuits, before we were able to go in there and have a local outfit selectively harvest some trees.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that actually didn't go through full blown NEPA.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: There were it's.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: There's a next step below that, called the categorical exclusion, but within the 2018 farm bill and I think I have that right, it was 2018, there was an allowance for up to 3,000 acres if you could identify an area that was vulnerable to fire, and so this particular one was even put on a higher alert because the governor of Oregon and a task force had identified this as a safety corridor that needed to be addressed, and so the lost in safety corridor was the name of of the project, and I actually weighed in on that, I commented on it before I was ever a commissioner and so 2016.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: But, at any rate, that particular place and you know it well, but there's one way in, one way out.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: In many places it's a one-way road and uh so it's a single lane, yeah, and so, um, you know we have a tremendous amount of campers that that go up there, um, and so it sought to put a few things in there, one of them, which was kind of in the middle of that 11-mile stretch, having a meadow form, that a helicopter could land in there and maybe help evacuate people out or maybe refuel or any number of things that would be needed that would be needed.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: But uh, and then uh really was just looking at thinning it out, Uh, so that uh and and and making some escape, uh, places there where where people could could seek refuge, but uh, at any rate, yeah, that was.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: That was an interesting case there where I got Wallowa County in as an intervener.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: Western Resources Legal Center helped us take the case on and so we went first to court federal court over in Pendleton, Then it got sent on to Portland for further review and eventually it went clear to the Ninth Circuit, which is up and down the West Coast.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: But there's two different places the Ninth Circuit's heard, one's in San Francisco, one's in Seattle, and so the case ended up in Seattle.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: I drove up there and listened to the last of it and uh, the you know, the environmental community, they were adamant, you know, not to touch this Um and Not to touch it, as in they didn't want any trees taken out of there.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: No, they didn't want any trees taken out of there.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: No, they didn't want any trees taken out, they had.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: You know, there were some of the things that they were throwing out to make concessions and saying, well, you can cut trees eight inches and under, which wouldn't have got us where we needed to be.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: And so the forest service, they kept reducing the, the amount of volume that was going to be taken out of there, and kept reducing and reducing, and it was.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: It was kind of disappointing in the end, um, what actually got taken out?
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: But it's better, it's much better than it was.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: But anyway, yeah, the ninth circuit, which traditionally is not a great place for the natural resource community to have a win, we won there and uh, and so that was processed here locally and, you know, went out for bid and that whole thing.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: One of our local loggers did the work there and they did an excellent job logging it.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: And then the remaining mill that mostly processes firewood was able to process it.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which you know might have employed 40 or 50 people in the community throughout that project.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it supplied them with lumber or timber for a long time.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but it's just, it's so dumb, it's straight up dumb, that we have to take something to the Ninth Circuit Court of the United States in order to selectively harvest some trees in order to make a community safer.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: You know, that's just crazy to me.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: Well, it is crazy, james, and one of the things that's disappointing is that you go through that whole process.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: You have that status as representing your community as a commissioner or as a citizen.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: You get to weigh in on that process and then the Forest Service can evaluate all of those comments and try to measure up what is best for the community, what is best for the landscape, and then we should just let them be the managers.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: They're the silviculturist, they're the biologist, they're the ones that we have hired and we pay for with our own government money.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: And the process is thorough.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: Even a counterculture exclusion is usually taking two to three years to go through that process.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: So it's thorough, everybody gets a shot at it and uh, um, but it's, yeah, it's disappointing.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: Um, I was just in a meeting board of commissioner meeting this morning and uh, for the first time the Forest Service here is able to fly a helicopter over some of the land and put chemical down to control some of the really bad weeds that are out there that are encroaching on our canyon lands.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: Anyway, I asked about another site that has been kind of near and dear to my heart.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: Site that has been kind of near and dear to my heart and, uh, big sheep and and the encroachment of yellow star thistle up there, and the young lady that had been working on that says, well, yeah, not yet we have to go through consultation on that.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: And so they're legitimately three years away from doing that.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: And then we've had that before, where those got challenges, those decisions got challenged, and in the meanwhile, the people that are wanting to do good and we're watching this explosion of an invasive species that we can't control on foot, we just can't do it, and so it, uh, it's turning our canyon land, where that is seeded in, into a monoculture of thistle that we don't have an animal here that likes that habitat and that that's on everybody, like that's, that's our, that's our public land.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: Um, so this is the process.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: The reason that I bring some of this stuff up is because I don't know as um, you know as a young man, as a you know, in your twenties, when you were cowboying and logging here, did you see yourself becoming a county commissioner and running for state senate.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: Absolutely not no.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: But I find it interesting that while you're doing that, you're facing all of these problems, you're facing all of these regulations and trying to facing all of these regulations, and you know, trying to do good, trying to, you know, provide for your family, provide for your community, take care of the land, and you're running into all these roadblocks, and most people do that live in this area that we're discussing.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: So the thing that changed, I guess, is, rather than just complain about it or take it, you advocated not only for yourself, but for other people along the way, and that's what moved you into the position where you're representing people, and not just on natural resource issues, but on all issues.
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: So what are the top three biggest issues that people are concerned about inside the Senate district that you're running for?
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: Well, I think public safety is one of the biggest issues that always comes up.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: People want to be safe and I think that that's a major function of our government to make sure that people can feel safe In these large expanses of land.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: It isn't always recognized that we have sheriffs, we have state police, we have city police and they all do a great job.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: But one of the things that there's kind of a disconnect with is firearms and why they're important to us, and so you know, kind of doubling down on, you know, maybe the first two issues, um, those are certainly kind of go hand in hand a little bit.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: And so public safety and and second amendment, rights to keep ourselves, uh, safe, uh, when legitimately, a sheriff or an officer may be 45 minutes an hour away from you, um, those are big deals.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: There is a myriad of things that face what we're doing here Beyond public safety.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: You know some of the natural resource things that we've touched on a little bit, and mostly what we've talked about thus far have been federal land issues and within a state Senate district, you're going to have a little bit of way in on that, but that's not going to be directly in your wheelhouse, but certainly those are big issues.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: Water is another gigantic issue and how we use water, what's left in stream for habitat, how we manage going forward how we manage going forward.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: Water is going to be a huge issue.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: Um, we we see where do people fall on.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: Whenever there's an issue, there's like opposing sides and usually it's not binary opposition.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: But you know what are the sides around water when we talk about water as an issue.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: Well, there's a don't drill, don't take anything out of the you know, groundwater aquifers.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: Don't take anything out of the streams, don't dam anything.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: So you have that side of it that just wants to let everything be natural as can be, and and and don't withdraw any of it.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: The other side of it is that you know there's a desire to try to utilize as much water for the benefit of agriculture as possible.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: So those are kind of the two opposing sides.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: And then you know, more recently and it hasn't even been all that recently but contamination of groundwater has become a giant issue too.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: And how do we keep that from happening?
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: How do we clean up what is existing?
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: How do we keep that from happening?
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: How do we clean up what is existing and how do we make sure people have potable water for their benefit, which should be a given?
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: People should have access to potable water.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it feels like it should be a right.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: It feels like it should be a right, but it isn't one, and it is something that largely distinguishes the first world from the third is access to clean water.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think you're exactly right.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we have taken that for granted, and we've taken it for granted that it's not only going to be clean, it's going to be contaminant free, and we need to do a good job about making sure that we don't contaminate a precious resource like that.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, roads, you know, are another thing that when we talk about down-to-the-ground issues transportation we have some struggles in this state.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: There was a transportation bill that was done back in 2018, and we thought at that time it raised our taxes quite a little bit at the gas pump, thought at that time it raised our taxes quite a little bit at the gas pump.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: It didn't address electric vehicles.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: It didn't address the fact that vehicles were becoming so much more efficient.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: So we have a larger component of people that are driving on the highway that aren't paying in at the same rate as others, and so that bill that we thought was going to be the panacea, we are seeing a struggling ODOT right now in Oregon Department of Transportation.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: We're seeing the county struggle, the city struggle and, at the same time, we saw inflation go up to where the oil that we're using for asphalt and all of the mechanisms, wages, everything else went up with it, and so roads have become a huge issue and will continue to be, and it's going to be one of the things that is is going to have to be addressed into the future how we maintain our, our infrastructure.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: The other thing that that we need to address is some of the federal funding that comes.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: A lot of the federal funding can be used for new projects, new bridges, but very little of it can be used for maintenance, and so you know that's something that needs to be addressed.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: We don't necessarily need a whole bunch of new stuff.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: We need to be able to maintain what we have.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: So what's your plan for roads?
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: Well, at this point we need to be able to have more revenue.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: That's all there is to it.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: Where that comes from, I don't know.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: You know what are people's thresholds.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: You know the example I give here in Wallowa County is going back to the 1970s when we had big timber rece.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: Big timber receipts, I should say we were able to have a crew of over 20 people 24 people I think, at the kind of the apex of that.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: So you fast forward to today and we still have the same number of roads and we have eight people, um, and that's what we can afford yeah, so the the budget in the 70s was two and a half million bucks for those 24 yeah, that was coming off of the federal forest, yeah, and then we get srs payments, now that we're supposed to replace that and and with all the inflation and everything that's taken place.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: You know, we get SRS payments now that we're supposed to replace that and with all the inflation and everything that's taken place, we get $600,000 a year from SRS payments, and SRS isn't necessarily something that we know we're going to get every year.
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: In these communities in eastern Oregon, in your Senate district.
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: A lot of them are a long ways away from the interstate right.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: So where we are here, we're, you know, a little over 60 miles away from the interstate.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: If that interstate closes, which it often does in the wintertime, just about every single storm that'll close.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: Sometimes it's closed for a while and it might be for a section that's a couple hundred miles long.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: Our grocery stores run out of food in about 36 hours and if people don't have food stored, food stored, they're kind of in a in a bad situation there.
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: So when we're talking about this is like a statewide issue, with the Oregon Department of Transportation not having enough money to function this is one of the ways that it can be affected is that they can't keep those roads open, they can't get them cleared off when there are accidents and then you get some really bad situations that occur within communities and that's kind of like an emergency situation.
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: But then just on the daily, when you've got really rough roads, these really expensive vehicles are wearing out quickly.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: You know it's harder to get around.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: There's just transportation is a big part of our life.
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: Out quickly, you know it's harder to harder to get around there's just transportation is a big part of our life.
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: Out here I see stuff come up at the state occasionally that you know they talk about wanting to put in a mileage tax and we're so spread out, we've got to drive a lot more miles to do the same thing that somebody could do in that sort of 15 minute city thing that we're starting to see more and more of.
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: It really feels like attacks on the poor and, as you said, if we were a state, we would be a very, very poor state.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: You know, right there with West Virginia and Mississippi, so it's potentially going to hurt people in this area at a disproportionate amount.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: So yeah, as far as trying to find a new source for that revenue to be able to maintain our roads, to fix what we have and then replace the things that are worn out, that's a massive challenge.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: That's a massive challenge.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: It is, and I won't pretend that I have the answers to it.
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: The guys that worked on it last time and it caused a lot of strife Cliff Benz, who's endorsed me in my campaign really grateful for that.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: He spearheaded a lot of what the transportation package was and it looked good.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: It looked financially sound.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: At the time, like I said, just didn't anticipate as many vehicles that were going to use way less fuel than what we're using today, and so we may have to look at a different mechanism because the electric vehicles are getting a free ride right now on the highway, and so hybrids those ones that are very efficient.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: So it's a tough deal.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure exactly where we go or what people's thresholds are for, you know, taxation or having something in their vehicle that identifies how many miles they traveled, and you know some of these things are really challenging for what people think are their own personal security and privacy.
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: The electric vehicle owners, you know, could get a little salty about that and be like well, I'm not using the oil, why should I have to pay for the other people that are?
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: But they also might not be realizing that the polymers that make up their vehicle, the tires that they're on the road, that they're on those, are all petroleum products.
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: So they are very much using them and uh and very rel reliant on them.
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: I think energy is going to be a question that comes up in the future as well.
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: There is a big push to remove the lower snake river dams.
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: Those do produce hydropower and, as we, there's some inefficiencies and we've talked through some of that stuff before on previous podcasts.
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: There's also a major issue with how they're affecting anatomous fish runs.
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: But the reality is hydropower is some of the cleanest energy that we can produce today, especially for the amount of power that comes from it.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: The other thing is that, even though we are rich in dams in this area and we're producing a lot of energy from the river because it's a steep area, rivers have a lot of grade, there's a lot of water we're able to produce a lot of energy from the river.
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: Because it's a steep area, rivers have a lot of gray.
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of water.
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: We're able to produce a lot of energy from it.
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: The energy that we're actually using is mostly from coal, and we're exporting our hydropower to places that don't have hydro dams.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems perverse in a way.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: But yeah, a coal-fired plant in Wyoming is where we're getting our power from here in Wallowa County and there's an assumption that it's coming from the dams.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: But most of the dams that you talked about, that power is being shipped to California.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: California.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: You know the macro grids and the people that figure out those sophisticated systems.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: You know more power to them.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: It's wonderful that we are able to go over to our wall, flip a switch and a light comes on.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: We take that for granted.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but if you take out the lower Snake River dams, people say, well, that's going to California anyway.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: I guarantee you it creates a vacuum and we are going to be sucked up in that vacuum.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: And so where do we replace that with?
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: What do we replace it with?
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: We haven't caught up to that technology.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: We just we haven't caught up to where we can replace it with green energy and we've taken out some of our own coal flare plants here in Oregon.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: We had one over in Boardman and it's no longer there.
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: So the wind energy, like it or not, it's been a boon for some people that have put it in.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: I hear that it doesn't pay for itself, that it is highly subsidized Solar kind of similarly, and we don't necessarily always see everything that's involved with that.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: We don't see the mines that it takes to extract those rare earth metals that are required in those solar panels, and and it's.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: It's an interesting thing when you start digging into what it costs to be green.
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: How much energy does a single cell phone use?
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: Well, that is interesting because people would look at their cell phone and the little tiny light wire charger that they have and think, well, that doesn't take very much.
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: But the smartphones we have, take the equivalent of running a regular-sized refrigerator.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: How is that possible?
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't seem to comport.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: But that phone, all the data that's stored in there, those data centers, all of that takes energy.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: It takes energy to build the data center.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: It takes energy to cool those data centers with water, millions of gallons.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: All that storage of information that you have in your phone.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: It isn't contained in your phone, it's going out and it's being stored somewhere else.
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: And that storage of that information is a regular size refrigerator.
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: Wow that's amazing.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: It is amazing.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know that's something that we learned here when we did our energy plan in Wallowa County and that was brought up and I had to scratch my head on that for quite a little bit, but it is fascinating.
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: Have you made any campaign promises?
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: No, you know the only thing that I can promise, james.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: I have a long history of advocating for a lot of different things.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: As you know, I have a lot of experience going to Salem and having some success in places that we didn't think we'd have success and some major losses where we should have had wins should have had wins.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: I don't give up.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: I don't have it in me to do that and I'm persistent.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: I will show up.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: I will advocate for us in Eastern Oregon, do what's best for the entirety of the state of oregon.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: I think this is one of the most brilliant states there is as far as landscape, the diversity of landscape.
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: It is a wonderful state.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: It is a political train wreck a lot of times and it's really disappointing the disconnect that we have between the metropolitan areas and what we are out here.
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: I'll tell the story straight up and I won't sugarcoat it and I'll try to speak like people from eastern Oregon speak and that's where we've had success.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: I'll be authentic, I'll show up, I'll do the work, I'll dedicate what I have to it and this will be my full-time job.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: It's a very part-time pay, but this will be what I do.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: do it.
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: It's a matter of, for me, kind of an organic process, if you will.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: Like you said earlier, did you see yourself being a commissioner?
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: I didn't see myself being president of Oregon Cattlemen's.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: People mentioned that a long time ago and I thought what in the heck are you talking about?
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: I'm not doing that.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden, there you are and you have people ask you to do it.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: You're capable of doing it.
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: You're placed in where you can actually win or you have support from those that that you love and respect.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: And, uh, and somebody needs to do it.
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: Um, I think I'm well equipped at this point in my life to do it.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: And so when you get asked to do it, I think I'm well equipped at this point in my life to do it.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: And so when you get asked to do something, you know you go through some processes of either I can't do it, I can do it or I won't do it.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: And I can do it and I will do it and I'm.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: There was a time a few years ago when our good friend, greg Barreto, stepped down after serving six years as State Representative, house District 58.
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: And he asked me.
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: He said, todd, I want you to run for my position when I step down.
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: And there was a lot of moving parts with the ranch I was on at the time.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: There were a lot of things going on that I just didn't feel like I could do it at the time.
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: And, uh, but I vetted it.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: Um, you know, I asked my wife and and a few others, and you know I knew what the answer was going to be.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: I just couldn't do it.
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: And so I went back to Greg and I said, greg, humbled, that you ask I can't do it now, and he said it's okay, todd, he said there's going to come a time when you can and you do it then.
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: And so Senator Hansel has been the Senate District Senator since 2013.
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: And I knew he was going to step down here for a while.
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: I've worked with Senator Hansel a lot over the years.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: We've partnered on a lot of bills and, and, uh, he's, uh, he's packed a lot of bills for oregon cattlemen's and for, uh, for different things that I brought forward and really appreciate that.
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: Um, but, um, I just considered, you know, okay, is, is this the time?
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: And, in the same way, um, you know, I asked my wife and got the thumbs up, and I had other representatives and senators that were asking me to step into the ring.
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: Greg Barreto and his wife, chris, have been big supporters and I so appreciate and respect them and I so appreciate and respect them.
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: And so here I am I'm running for a state senate position that I would have never dreamed that I would be running for, but I am, and it's just where the Lord put me for right now, and I feel like that's what I need to be doing.
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: Two remaining questions what's the best job you ever had?
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: Being a father is the best job I ever had, james.
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: It's a giant responsibility and it probably isn't the answer that you were looking for, but, um, it is a job and you know you talked about.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: You know working hard for your family and that sort of thing.
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: Um, that was a.
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: That's a real source of pride to be able to go do a job for your family.
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: And then there were a lot of challenging jobs out there.
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: There was some of those jobs that required doing a lot of really hard physical work and there was some fun stuff too, of course, but that was probably the biggest one.
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: Um, being a county commissioner, uh, um has been extremely rewarding as a, as a job that I actually get paid for.
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: Um, I, I've loved being able to have that position to where I walk in a room and I'm not necessarily Todd Nash, I'm Wallowa County Commissioner and you respect the people of my county and and taking that mantle on um and being able to represent the people of wallowa county has been just a tremendous, uh, tremendous opportunity and, uh, I I've never taken it lightly.
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: The first time I got elected, uh, I just couldn't hardly believe it.
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: You know, I won by 65 percent the three-way race.
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: In the primary, the second time I didn't have a challenger, and, uh, and I think getting re-elected was probably a greater honor than the first time because people had a trust in me enough to continue on.
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: So those right there, some of the volunteer work you know through Oregon Cattlemen's Association, kind of.
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: Similarly, though, when you know you're president of an association like that and the top food commodity in the state of Oregon that you get to represent, and you know, as you indicated earlier, there's so many things that surround that, from the processors to the guys that actually raise the cattle, to the retailers, to the people that have steakhouses, you know it's, uh, they're, they're all interconnected and to to be able to advocate for an organization and a people that you, that you love and respect, that's a big deal.
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: And and uh, those, those, those are the things that I love the most.
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: Okay, all right.
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: So if folks have liked what they've heard so far, there's two ways that they can support you that I can think of.
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: One is to vote for you and the other is man.
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: You put 1,500 miles on a flatbed pickup last week cruising around the Senate district listening and talking to folks.
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, 1,500 miles just in the Senate district, and then I also went to Salem as well.
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: On top of that.
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: That's not free, so campaigns are expensive.
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: If people want to contribute to your campaign, how do they do that?
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: yeah, and just a side note on that, I haven't used any campaign money for my own vehicle mileage for fuel.
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: I haven't used any campaign money for lodging.
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: That's come out of my own pocket and so campaigns are very expensive.
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: But, yeah, I would love to have support.
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: I have a website you can go to votetoddnashcom and on that website you'll find a place where you can donate, and I would love to have a donation.
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: There's a place there where you can check endorsement.
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: I would love to have your endorsement.
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: I would love to have more endorsements than anybody else out there, and we've gotten a lot of them A lot of individuals, a lot of great big notables as well notables as well.
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: Okay, well, I feel pretty comfortable in saying that the Six Ranch Podcast endorses your campaign and I think you're going to win.
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: I'm hopeful for you.
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: I'm also nervous.
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: I think it's going to be a tough job.
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: I think it's going to take a lot out of you, but I also think that you're more than up to the task and you've fought, fought harder fights before and won.
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: Um, I'm also nervous that I'm gonna end up getting dragged into a bunch of stuff too that, uh, that I don't necessarily want to do.
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: But it's not always about what you want to do, it's about what needs done, and I think that that that is the general direction of everything.
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: Like that's the dominating force that we're talking about here.
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: It's not necessarily what you want to do, it's what needs done.
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you're not the only one that's going to get drug into it.
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: I have members of this community, members of this Senate district, that are experts at things, members of this Senate district that are experts at things.
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: And I was told a long time ago, even as a county commissioner, you can never be an expert on everything.
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: You're never going to be an expert on roads, you're never going to be an expert on recycle or landfill, or you know, you're not going to be the expert on the fairgrounds or any number of other functions that we have within our county, and the list goes on and on and on within a county government, but you can access those people that are experts.
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: And when we get to Salem and there is 3,000 bills that are stacked up there at the first session, I can be a little bit of an expert on each one of them.
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: But there are bona fide experts within our district that are going to be either adversely affected or it's going to be a positive thing for them and I need them to show up.
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: I'm glad to represent the very best I can, but we need to have those people show up before those committees and talking to their other legislators across the state.
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true, it makes a difference, and you've been showing up for a long time and, yep, I'll do it.
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: Won't do it all the time, I'll do it some of the time.
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: For now, you know, yep, yeah, okay, well, thanks, dad, I appreciate it.
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: I think you're going to do a great job and look forward to you absolutely crushing the primary.
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: When is the primary, by the way?
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: May 21st, may 21st, okay, last week of bear season.
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: Well, hopefully I have my bears wrapped up by then, but I'll be voting for you.
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: I'll be voting for you and, I hope, the people that really care about their communities, about their natural resources, about just making sure that they've got somebody who's in their corner, a blue collar guy that understands them and is willing to step up for them and isn't going to get corrupted.
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: I hope that those people recognize that you're the right choice.
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah well, thank you, James, I appreciate your support.
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: Okay, thanks, ted.
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: Bye.
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: I just want to take a second and thank everyone who's written a review, who has sent mail, who's sent emails, who's sent messages.
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: Your support is incredible and I also love running into you at trade shows and events and just out on the hillside when we're hunting.
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: I think that that's fantastic.
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: I hope you guys keep adventuring as hard and as often as you can.
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: Art for the Six Ranch Podcast was created by John Chatelain and was digitized by Celia Harlander.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: Original music was written and performed by Justin Hay, and the Six Ranch Podcast is now produced by Six Ranch Media.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: Thank you all so much for your continued support of the show and I look forward to next week when we can bring you a brand new episode.