A Note From Jason Faler

The campaign is ending.
The commitment isn’t.

Friends,

Despite tremendous effort, and support that moved me more than I can say, we fell short of the petition signatures required to put an independent on the November ballot. This campaign is coming to a close. I want to thank everyone who signed, gave, volunteered, and believed that our representatives should answer to the People, and not to corporations, billionaires, special interests, or party machinery. You reminded me that this conviction is far from mine alone.

I still believe every word of why I started. That a government meant to be of, by, and for the People should be exactly that. That both major parties have grown too beholden to the money flooding our politics. And that the work of holding government accountable to ordinary citizens matters as much now as it did the day I entered this race.

That work doesn’t require a title, and it doesn’t require a campaign. There are many ways to serve an idea, through advocacy, through community, through showing up wherever you can be useful, and I intend to keep serving this one however I can. My commitment was never to a candidacy. It was to a cause, and a community, and neither of those ended when the ballot did.

One example is already in front of me. Oregon’s ballot access process is archaic, built like a moat that keeps ordinary citizens out while insiders stay comfortably inside. I saw it firsthand, and I’ve begun raising it with state legislators, because a democracy that makes it this hard for regular people to participate is one worth working to fix. That’s the kind of work that goes on regardless of any race.

To everyone who was part of this, thank you. The disappointment is real, but so is the resolve. People over party isn’t a campaign slogan to me. It’s a way of seeing what our country could be, and I’m as committed to it today as I have ever been.

With deep gratitude,