This includes a resolution declaring racism a public health crisis because he said it was virtue signaling, as well as the 2021 budget.Īt a June 22 meeting, Bozievich said the budget didn’t include money for the Association of O&C Counties (AOCC), a timber advocacy group. Bozievich isn’t committed to listening to the west Lane County community, she adds, and in fact takes a hardline stance that the government shouldn’t provide the people with services.įirst elected in 2010, Bozievich is sometimes the lone dissenter at county commissioner meetings under the current left-leaning board. If elected, she’d bring together the community to talk with each other in a solutions-oriented way, she says.

Lesley works as an environmental engineer, but she says she doesn’t have a solution for everything. “You don’t want someone in a leadership position who spends his free time on a radio show criticizing public employees up and down the list from Kate Brown all the way down, voting against a $15 minimum wage, voting against an affordable housing plan.” Bozievich has a weekly internet radio show called The Boze Knoze Show.

“We know the climate models are showing increased flooding, so Florence has a lot of issues potentially facing them,” Lesley says. The West Lane County district includes Florence, Veneta, Elmira and Junction City. As the county continues to grapple with issues such as the climate crisis and the rural-urban divide, she says Bozievich isn’t providing the needed leadership and is entrenched in partisan politics. “I showed a lot of people that I was credible because they told me, ‘It’s hard to beat an incumbent,’ and lo and behold, he was 17 votes over 50 percent, so it almost went to a fall runoff.”Įight years later, Lesley says she’s running for the west Lane County commissioner seat for the May 2022 primary election with the credibility she’s earned - likely again against the incumbent Bozievich, who is still in the seat and is the most seasoned commissioner on the Lane County Board of County Commissioners. “Elected officials were hesitant to endorse me, and people didn’t know if I was credible,” she says.

But she was preaching about the importance of democracy to her son and was unhappy with the leadership of her Lane County commissioner, Jay Bozievich. That was 2014, and she says she didn’t have any political experience before running. The first time Dawn Lesley ran against Lane County Commissioner Jay Bozievich, she lost by 74 votes.

A new dawn wow