Hank Sanders

Hank Sanders earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago in 2023. His career experience includes working in journalism.[1]

Who are you? Tell us about yourself.

I grew up in rural Oregon. I left home for college and to work as a reporter for The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. But I missed Oregon, so I moved back home and got involved in politics. And although The Gorge is the best place in the world, it is also incredibly expensive and our future is unstable. Home insurance and childcare are either unaffordable or just flat out unavailable. And our rural healthcare system is in peril because HR1 is threatening to kick 200,000 people off of Medicaid.

But the good news is that we can fix these issues. By building Oregon’s first Home Hardening Strike Team, passing tax credits for rural childcare workers, and creating the Agency of Medicaid Paperwork Support, we can keep The Gorge affordable and amazing.

I’m running for State Representative because, as a 25 year old, the prospects of owning a home and raising a family here in The Gorge seem bleak. Home insurance, childcare, and healthcare cannot become unaffordable luxuries in Gresham, Sandy, Mount Hood, The Gorge, Hood River, or The Dalles. As a journalist, I am used to listening to people’s problems and figuring out solutions. Working for Congresswoman Dexter and working in the Oregon State Senate, I know how to fight back against Trump and pass policy in Salem. I will listen at home and fight for you in Salem.

Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?

We can lower home insurance by creating a Home Hardening Strike Team like Colorado and California have. If you know how to protect your home from fires, insurance companies will be forced to lower your rates and keep money in your pockets. The days of 30 percent insurance increases every year must be over.Childcare is incredibly expensive or unavailable in The Gorge. That’s why we need to pass tax credits for rural childcare workers. These $3,000 to $5,000 tax credits will work the same as the Rural Practitioner Tax Credits which allowed for rural Oregon to have such a robust healthcare system. Now, we need there to be more employees working in childcare and we can make that happen through our tax credits.With Medicaid cuts coming in 2027, we need to ensure that as few people as possible are kicked off of coverage. We do this by making sure that everyone knows how to fill out their eligibility requirements which are increasing in frequency from once every two years to once every six months. This paperwork is intended to be hard to follow. We need to create the Agency of Medicaid Paperwork Support (AMPS) to ensure that as few people as possible lose coverage because of paperwork mistakes. If we don’t then there will be severe cuts to services and hospital closures.

What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?

I studied economics and I covered business as a reporter. I am really interested in how we can bring forward tax policy that incentives businesses to grow while also allowing room for less exploitation of the workforce. That means more union jobs, more growing employers, and more revenue in our state. Our middle class has shrunk and will continue to shrink until Oregon adopts policies that attract growing businesses and the brightest employees. We have so much going for us but we need to grow our revenue to pay for incredible services. And we need to reduce tax loopholes so that this revenue is really coming back into our hands.

What organizations or individuals have endorsed your campaign?

Gladys Rivera, Hood River City Council President

Emerson Levy, State Representative

Leti Moretti, Hood River County Commissioner

Omar Perez, President of Latinos Unidos The Dalles

Kristen Dillon, Chief Medical Officer of Federal Office of Rural Health Policy

Alex Johnson, Columbia River Gorge Commissioner

Vicky Stifter, Pastor at Riverside Community Church

Seth Tibbott, Founder of Tofurky and Turtle Island Foods

Bill Lennox, Former Wasco County Commissioner

Marcus Swift, Community leader