When Sierrah Williams graduated from Sweet Home High School, her valedictorian speech touched on how, while growing up, she heard stereotypes about the place she lived — stereotypes that she and her peers were less smart and less motivated than those from some of the surrounding, denser populated counties.
“If you actually spend time talking about it or joking about it, you start to believe it,” Williams says.
She, instead, opted to focus on what Sweet Home provided her. Along with Key Club, band, choir and theater at school, she says she was raised in a culture of love, support and neighborliness.
When she talks to families and workers in Marion County, she says she can relate to the struggles and values of people living in rural areas.
Williams, at age 29, is running as a Democrat for the state Legislature’s Senate District 6 against Republican Jack Tibbets and Libertarian Caleb Ticer. The district includes most of Linn County, Lane County and a portion of Marion County. The youngest senator in the Oregon Legislature is fellow Democrat Wlnsvey Campos, age 30.
Williams says she’s running because she “has to.”
Non-affiliated voters slightly outnumber Republicans and well outnumber Democrats and other parties in the rural district.
Williams grew up around Republicans, in her church and family, giving her an understanding of how to have productive dialogue, she says. Party lines, she adds, have proven less important, as she has had Republican neighbors promising to vote for her in the general election.
Williams says she has tailored her campaign to best support Oregonians living in rural areas. Her priorities include securing vote by mail, affordable housing, health care, childcare and public education.
The biggest complaint Williams has with the Democratic Party she represents is “it’s a bunch of old people, and they don’t get a lot of stuff done,” but she adds, “I’m neither of those. I’m pretty young, and I get stuff done every day.”
One of the biggest health care concerns Williams has is access to doctors, hospitals and emergency care the further away one gets from cities. She says that one of her priorities is going to be expanding universal health care.
After graduating from Brigham Young University with a bachelors and masters degree in dietetics, Williams moved home and currently works as a food and nutritional counselor with the Supplemental Program for Women, Infants, and Children.
Some of the demographic she works with at WIC was subject to intimidation due to ICE activity. “I was really upset when I was seeing people get murdered in Minnesota,” Williams says. She supports efforts to require ICE officers to wear identification, and restricting building detention centers on Oregon land. And supports secure pathways for citizenship.
Williams lives with her husband, Patrick, and their two kids.
As of Oct. 11, Williams’ campaign has raised $6,527.20 in cash contributions and in-kind donations and has spent $3,431.30. Tibbetts has raised $131,038.17 and Ticer has not fundraised.