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Lane County Commissioner Heather Buch has filed to run for re-election and faces a political newcomer in the race. The seats of commissioners Ryan Ceniga and David Loveall are also up for election.
Three seats on the Lane County Board of Commissioners are up for election in 2026, giving voters the opportunity to weigh in on races for the majority of the five-seat body.
Lane County Commissioner Heather Buch has filed to run for re-election to another four-year term. Buch announced on Monday, Sept. 15, that she had decided to seek a third term. Bob Zybach, a former reforestation contractor, is running against Buch.
District 5 covers mostly eastern Lane County communities, including Cottage Grove, Creswell, Oakridge, Lowell, Westfir and the McKenzie River valley, as well as Coburg and parts of southwest Eugene.
Buch, elected to her first term in 2018 and re-elected in 2022, pointed to her record, which includes public-private partnerships to increase affordable housing and work to bring in state and federal aid after the 2020 Holiday Farm Fire, which destroyed hundreds of rural homes in her district.
She supported the county’s mobile crisis response program and its efforts to build a new stabilization center for people facing mental and addiction crises.
“With so much chaos coming out of Washington, D.C., we must ensure our local government is listening to local communities and protecting funding for the basics: accessible housing, dependable law enforcement, and affordable health care,” Buch said in a statement.
Zybach said he wants to “restore active management” of public lands and bring back jobs that once dominated Lane County’s timber-rich era, including those in mills and the forestry industry.
He said he wants to preserve old-growth forests, with an approach that includes year-round crews that stop small fires quickly, thinning forests and prescribed burns near towns.
The other two seats up for election in 2026 are those of Commissioner Ryan Ceniga and Commissioner David Loveall.
Ceniga said he’s planning to run for re-election but hasn’t yet made an official announcement. He represents District 1, which covers western Lane County.
Loveall, asked whether he’ll run for re-election, said he has nothing to share at this time. He represents District 2, which covers Springfield.
The filing period opened on Sept. 11 and lasts until March 3 for elected incumbents. The deadline is March 10 for candidates who are not incumbents.
Candidates will face off first in the May 19 primaries. The winner could be decided then if a candidate gets one more vote than 50% of the votes cast. Even then, the winner would appear on the November ballot and could technically still face a write-in candidate.
If no candidate gets a majority of the votes, then the top two vote-getters will face off in the November election.
County commissioners are nonpartisan elected officials. They are paid an annual salary of $114,026.
