Caleb Ticer has been walking up and down Oregon Highway 58 with a trash bag, cleaning over 21 miles along the roadway. Ticer says there’s still more work to be done, which is one of the reasons he’s running for Oregon Senate.
Ticer is the Libertarian candidate for Oregon Senate District 6, and says he is prioritizing improving education and increasing literacy rates and supporting community outreach programs. In an interview with Eugene Weekly, Ticer also highlights the need for practical solutions to address the ongoing threat of wildfires within Lane County. These solutions are often driven by community conversations or from addressing inefficiencies and waste within existing systems, he says.
“I’ve worked in retail stores all over, and I spent a lot of time speaking with a lot of different customers as they came in, and they all say, ‘You know what we gotta do,’ or ‘This is what we need,” Ticer says. “The community has solutions, but nobody wants to say them. Everybody’s kind of scared that they will get in trouble, but I don’t have that problem.”
A member of the Libertarian Party reached out to Ticer after noticing he was already heavily involved within the community and advocating for a government that “works for the community.”
“Those things just happened to fit into the values that I already had, which made it easy to fit it and I didn’t have to pretend to be something that I wasn’t,” Ticer says of his choice to run as a Libertarian. “And I think that’s a big part of ‘libertarianism’ that a lot of people forget about. It’s not just another political party that’s independent of others, it’s a party of independent individuals that have good ideas and want to work for their communities.”
Ticer is running for the open seat after Cedric Hayden, the incumbent senator, was ineligible for re-election in 2026 for having over 10 unexcused absences from the Legislature. “All I know is if my community needed me and I was representing them, Lane County as a whole, we don’t hide, we don’t not show up,” Ticer says.
His opponents are Republican Jack Tibbetts, who has raised more than $140,000 for his campaign, and Sierrah Williams, a Democrat who has raised about $12,000. According to the Oregon Secretary of State’s website, Ticer has not raised any money, and he lists his job status as unemployed.
Although not a career politician, Ticer says he has been a longtime “off-and-on” resident of Lane County and has been actively involved in community initiatives. One of those initiatives while he was working at Dollar General, was partnering with Food for Lane County to secure large corporate donations, and also helped set up funds for local schools and libraries.
Previously, he says, Dollar General’s corporate policy was to intentionally damage food that was unsellable and throw it away.
“I worked with several of our managers, and we worked with corporate to work with Food for Lane County to make it where we could donate that food instead. Everybody still got their tax donation, but now there’s less food in a dumpster and more on tables,” Ticer says. Between the two stores, Ticer says he was able to get 30,000 meals donated.
Ticer says he also would work to address the ongoing threat of wildfires in northern Douglas County, lower Lane County and most of eastern Lane County.
“I think one of our biggest problems is the fires, we have them every year and we know that they’re coming,” Ticer says. “Another huge problem that we have is our unhoused population. I feel that the two problems could be a solution that we could help try to get these people to work.”
Ticer proposes giving homeless people post office boxes, since many government assistance programs require a mailing address.
“I think one of the big things we need to do before we hand everybody a food stamp card is we should be handing them a PO box,” Ticer says. “These people don’t want hand outs, they want a hand out of the situation.”
Another tactic he puts forth is to address food insecurity by planting local fruit-bearing trees. Ticer says that this would make communities more resilient toward storms and wildfires, and also help address hunger.
Currently the schools across Oregon are facing a budget deficit, leading to reduction in staff, curriculum and other educational services. Ticer argues that better educational curriculums are possible, without cutting costs, but reevaluating expenditures.
The general election is Nov. 3. It is too late to mail ballots but you can drop them off at ballot boxes across Lane County.