Danielle Bethell, a Marion County commissioner running for governor in 2026, faces a pair of state ethics investigations into whether she used her elected position to benefit her son and daughter.
Investigators at the Oregon Government Ethics Commission will pursue full-fledged inquiries into the cases, after the commission voted unanimously on Friday that initial findings justified digging deeper. The first case stems from Bethell’s intervention in a traffic stop involving her daughter last December. The other involves her level of disclosure during the county’s recent approval of a contract with a company that employed her son.
In a statement first provided to other news outlets, Bethell defended her actions, saying that when “navigating these events, I made the best decisions I could to be as transparent and ethical as possible.”…