Past DPO Chairman Jim Edmunson (1999-2007)

Jim was born in Eugene and grew up on a farm near Springfield and later near Junction City. He worked in the fruit fields and joined the Teamsters when he was 16.He graduated from Oregon State University in 1974 and worked as a daily newspaper journalist/photographer in Albany, Corvallis, Pendleton and Astoria. He graduated from the University of Oregon School of Law in 1983 and has practiced since then in Eugene, representing injured and disabled workers. He is a partner in a small Eugene law firm with offices in Corvallis and Roseburg.

In 1987 he was appointed to the Oregon House of Representatives from north Eugene. He was elected three times and served in the 1989, 1991 and 1993 regular sessions, in the latter as Democratic whip and chair of the DPO campaign committee. In 1997, he was elected chair of the Democratic Party of Lane County. In 1999, he was elected DPO chair and has been reelected three times.

His family came to Oregon in 1844 and they always have been strong Democrats. One ancestor signed the Oregon Constitution (from Marion County) and another was among the first lawyers in Eugene in the 1850s. As a child, Jim attended Democratic political rallies in Goshen, where his family lived next to the farm of Gov. Bob Straub. One of his uncles decided to register Republican and the family forced him to move to California. You might call him a strong partisan. In the legislature, he advocated for civil rights for Native American religious practices and against gay and lesbian discrimination by the Oregon Citizens Alliance. Jim was the principle opponent of anti-labor laws that took away the rights of injured workers. He is proud to have been honored by the ACLU for his accomplishments.

Jim's political mentors include former House Speaker Grattan Kerans, who was his neighbor in Eugene's River Road area and served with him in the legislature, and Gov. Barbara Roberts who is a family friend since the late 1970s. He is proud to have helped the Democratic Party of Oregon rebuild in the past decade into a broader and more successful political organization. Jim has never forgotten growing up in the countryside -- "where we may not have had all the riches others enjoyed, but we worked hard, paid our bills and asked nothing from government but to be left in peace."

Jim's wife of 30 years is a school teacher. They have two daughters, one a librarian at Oregon State University and the younger a political communications professional in Salem. They have one grand daughter who is smarter than all of us.