Courtney Bangs (left) and state Sen. Suzanne Weber (Right) at the 2025 Warrenton Fourth of July parade where Bangs announced she’d seek the Republican nomination for state Senate District 16. (Campaign photo)

State Sen. Suzanne Weber endorses Courtney Bangs ahead of the November 2026 primary

 

Barred from running for the Oregon Senate again in 2026, state Sen. Suzanne Weber, R-Tillamook, is endorsing Clatsop County Commissioner Courtney Bangs to take her seat.

Bangs, vice chair of the county commission and a teacher and director at a private performing arts school in Warrenton, launched her campaign and announced Weber’s endorsement for the May 2026 Republican primary alongside the senator Friday at a Fourth of July parade in Warrenton.

“In the Senate, I will build on the steadfast and bold leadership of Senator Weber, who has been a champion for our rural way of life in Northwest Oregon,” Bangs wrote in a Monday news release.

Weber is one of 10 Senate Republicans who participated in a walkout of the 2023 legislative session who were barred from running for reelection in 2024 and 2026. Under Measure 113, a voter-approved 2022 law meant to dissuade lawmakers from shutting down the legislative process, any lawmaker with 10 or more unexcused absences cannot run for reelection at the end of their term. Weber and her Republican colleagues in the state Senate refused to work for six weeks in 2023 — the longest walkout in state history — to stall bills enacting stricter gun policies, and protecting access to abortion and transgender health care.

Bangs will seek the Republican nomination for Senate District 16 — spanning much of the state’s northwest coast from Astoria to Lincoln City. If successful, she’ll run as a Republican for the seat in the November 2026 election.

The district is home to roughly 143,000 Oregonians in six counties. There are slightly more registered Democrats than Republicans, but like most Oregon districts, the bulk of voters are unaffiliated with any party. No other Republican or Democrat has yet publicly entered the district primary races.

Following in Weber’s footsteps

Bangs, who has served on the Clatsop County Commission for about five years, is perhaps most well known locally for being outspoken against a Habitat Conservation Plan passed in 2024 by the Oregon Board of Forestry that reduces logging on western state forests to protect threatened and endangered species. Clatsop County, which receives a portion of the revenue from logging in state forests within its boundaries, stands to lose up to $7 million a year.

Bangs has also been outspoken on her own Facebook page, and that of the right-leaning advocacy group Oregon Natural Resource Industries, about her distrust of the Oregon Board of Forestry that oversees the state Forestry Department. Bangs’ husband, Derek Bangs, is a forester in the Department of Forestry’s Astoria District office.

“Every legislative session we stand at risk that the Legislature will increase taxes and shut down more of our natural resource jobs. I am running for the state senate to stand in the breach and protect our communities,” she said in her news release.

Bangs, who lives in the unincorporated town of Knappa in Clatsop County with her husband and three kids, holds an undergraduate degree in animal science and a master’s degree in agriculture education from Oregon State University. She was first elected to the Clatsop County Commission in 2020 and again in 2024. Her term ends in 2028. She’s worked as a teacher for 25 years, according to her news release, and as academic director at the private Encore Academy in Warrenton since 2021. She has also taught math and science, and coached gymnastics at the school, which started as a dance studio in the mid-1990s and became an accredited K-12 school in 2022.

Weber said several other potential Republican candidates have reached out to her for an endorsement, but that she felt Bangs was the best possible person to run.

“I’ve known her for a long time, and I have seen how she is really dedicated, especially to this part of the state, and we really need someone who is going to know the issues that we have in this area,” Weber said.

She and Bangs first began talking when Bangs was running for the Clatsop County Commission in 2020 and Weber was running for a seat in the Oregon House, Weber said. Both were vocally opposed to Democratic calls to create a statewide cap-and-trade greenhouse gas emissions reduction program.

“Like her, I will always fight to protect parental rights in education, support our natural resource industries, and push back against government overreach,” Bangs said in her news release.

Weber told the Capital Chronicle that despite being barred from running for a seat in the state Legislature for the next few years, she is preparing to announce a run for an unspecified state office down the line. She would not say which office, but suggested something like a run for state treasurer or secretary of state.

“I’m not willing to give up yet,” she said.