A group of Grants Pass voters have dropped their lawsuit seeking to keep state Rep. Christine Goodwin off the May Republican primary ballot for Senate District 2.
The four voters and Josephine County Commissioner John West still contend that Goodwin is not eligible to represent the district because, they allege, she lives at a home just north of the district’s boundaries — a claim Goodwin rejects.
But it’s too late to keep Goodwin off the ballot, the plaintiffs said in a Friday filing to voluntarily dismiss the case, which was to have its first hearing in Josephine County Circuit Court on April 5. The group will pick up their legal challenge again if Goodwin wins the primary, attorney Steve Joncus wrote in his motion to dismiss the case.
Goodwin, in a press release Saturday, celebrated the development.
“I have said from the beginning that this lawsuit was a political stunt to help a candidate who doesn’t think he can beat me in a fair fight,” Goodwin said. “I’m glad Southern Oregon voters will be given the choice to elect me to represent them.”
Goodwin is running in the Republican state senate primary against Noah Robinson, the son of state Sen. Art Robinson, who represents District 2 but is barred from running for reelection because he was among the Republican senators who boycotted work in 2023.
On Friday morning, Joncus told The Oregonian/OregonLive that his clients had dropped the part of their lawsuit that sought to remove Goodwin from her House seat representing District 4 over their residency allegations. But attorneys from the Oregon Department of Justice argued in court filings that Oregon’s secretary of state can’t disqualify a sitting lawmaker.
Later on Friday, Joncus filed paperwork to drop the lawsuit entirely, court records show.
“Goodwin’s claim that she lives in the district is not credible,” the dismissal says. “However, now that the deadline for keeping her off the ballot has passed, Oregon statutes do not provide for a remedy until after the primary election.”
The group of Grants Pass voters allege that Goodwin lives at a house in Myrtle Creek just north of the district boundary shared by her current House district and the Senate district she hopes to represent. Goodwin says she lives at an address in Canyonville, which is within those district boundaries. She switched her voter registration from the Myrtle Creek home she has owned for decades to the Canyonville property just days before the January 2022 deadline to be eligible to run for Senate District 2.
Sami Edge covers higher education and politics for The Oregonian. You can reach her at sedge@oregonian.com or (503) 260-3430.