Chelsea King is running to represent District 13 in the Oregon State Senate, and Ben Bowman is running to represent District 25 in the Oregon House of Representatives. 

Senate District 13 is made up of 152,162 residents and includes Tigard, Sherwood, Wilsonville, King City, Durham and Metzger. House District 25 is Tigard, Metzger and Durham and is made up of 70,620 residents. The primary elections will take place on May 17, and the general election will be on Nov. 8. 

Both Bowman and King are part of the Democratic Party. Bowman is the chair of the Tigard-Tualatin School District (TTSD), and King is the chair of the West Linn-Wilsonville School District. 

Bowman graduated from Tualatin High School and went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from the University of Oregon and a master’s degree in education policy from Stanford University. He currently works in education policy and does equity-focused work at the state level. Bowman was elected to the Tigard-Tualatin School Board in 2019 and has worked diligently to ensure change in our district. He passed TTSD’s first “Education Equity and Racial Justice” policy and the model “Hate Speech and Bias Incident” policy, along with a period product access policy that requires menstrual hygiene products to be available for free to students. 

Additionally, Bowman helped eliminate the $225 “pay to play” fee, which now allows students to participate in athletics regardless of economic barriers, as well as secured a $200,000 investment to make extracurriculars more accessible. At the start of the pandemic, he co-founded Packed with Pride, which has become one of the largest food distribution programs in the region. 

Chelsea King studied intercultural communication and political sciences at Portland State University and is a small business owner. King has 12 years of experience in education policy, budgeting and community advocacy and has been on the West Linn-Wilsonville School Board since 2015. As a member of the school board, she has led the effort to develop a career and technical high school that will open in 2023 and a K-12 Spanish-Immersion program that is on track to graduate the first cohort in the state with the bi-literacy seal. King co-founded the Wilsonville Alliance, which is a group that is dedicated to equity, diversity and inclusion.She also advocated for policy and curriculum updates that focus on disrupting systems on racism. 

Some of Bowman’s focuses for legislation include World-Class Public Education, racial justice and equity, affordable housing and homelessness solutions, creating economic opportunity and lowering healthcare costs. King’s priorities include ensuring affordable health care, addressing the housing crisis, making college more affordable, quality public education for everyone,and prioritizing mental and behavioral health. 

Bowman is running against Gabriel Buehler, Bob Niemeyer and Art Witkowski. King is running against John Velez and Aaron Woods.