State Rep. Jami Cate plans to run for Senate. (Courtesy of Jami Cate)

Republican state Rep. Jami Cate, a farmer from Linn County, announced Wednesday that she plans to run for the Oregon Senate.

Cate, R-Lebanon, seeks to fill the 6th Senate District seat now held by Sen. Cedric Hayden, R-Fall Creek. Hayden is one of four Republican senators barred from running for reelection in 2026 because of their participation in the longest quorum-denying walkout in state history, a 2023 Republican protest over Democratic bills on abortion, transgender health care and guns.

“Rural Oregon deserves a voice that fights for our farms, forests, and freedoms,” Cate said in a statement. “As your state representative, I’ve stood firm against overregulation and Portland-driven agendas, advocating for wildfire recovery, agriculture and accountable governance.”

Cate, 38, is a lifelong Lebanon resident, Oregon State University graduate and fifth-generation seed farmer from rural Linn County, which touts itself as the grass seed capital of the world. Voters first elected her to the House in 2020.

Linn County was one of the regions devastated by the 2020 wildfires, which burned more than 1 million acres and destroyed thousands of homes. Much of Cate’s focus over the past few years has been on wildfire recovery, including passing bills to exempt from income taxes legal damages for the 2020 Labor Day fires and reset property taxes for survivors who rebuilt their homes.

Cate has early endorsements from former Senate Republican Leader Fred Girod, R-Stayton, and former House Republican Leader Vikki Breese-Iverson, R-Prineville, as well as several other rural lawmakers and local leaders.

Nonaffiliated voters are the largest group in the Senate district, as they are in Oregon, with more than 39,000 nonaffiliated voters. It also has nearly 38,000 registered Republicans and just more than 25,000 Democrats, and Hayden cruised to victory with 65% of the vote in the 2022 election.

Candidates can’t officially file to run for legislative races until September, but they can announce their campaigns and start raising money earlier. Cate now has a campaign balance of about $29,000.

So far, eleven people have indicated through state campaign finance filings that they’ll run for the Senate, which elects half of its 30 members to four-year terms every two years.

That includes two of Cate’s Republican peers from the House — state Rep. Jeff Helfrich, R-Hood River, plans to run for the 26th Senate District in the Columbia River Gorge now represented by Senate Republican Leader Daniel Bonham, and Tracy Cramer, who narrowly lost reelection to a Woodburn-based House seat in 2024, updated paperwork last week to indicate a run for the 11th Senate District now represented by Sen. Kim Thatcher, R-Keizer. Bonham and Thatcher, like Hayden, cannot run for reelection because of their participation in the 2023 walkout.