CANYON CITY — Grant County voters have some decisions to make.

Ballots in the election that ends Nov. 5 will feature contested races for three key positions in Grant County government: sheriff, treasurer and county judge.

(County clerk will also be on the ballot, but incumbent Laurie Cates is running unopposed for that post.)

Here’s a quick look at the candidates in the contested Grant County races.

Sheriff

Todd McKinley has been Grant County’s sheriff since 2021.

McKinley joined the Grant County Sheriff’s Office as a deputy in 2001 and took the helm of the Parole and Probation Department in 2015.

In the 2020 election he unseated incumbent Glenn Palmer to become sheriff and is now seeking his second four-year term.

This time around, Scott Moore is challenging McKinley for the job.

Moore is a former Grant County sheriff’s deputy and a former sergeant in the John Day Police Department who has more than 14 years of experience in law enforcement.

He is currently a public works foreman for the city of John Day.

The Grant County Sheriff’s Office has an annual budget of $2.76 million. The office has a patrol division, a corrections division (which runs the county jail) and a civil deputy, whose job involves serving subpoenas and other court orders. The sheriff’s office also oversees the county’s volunteer search and rescue team.

The base salary for the sheriff’s position is $87,540 annually.

Treasurer

Incumbent Julie Ellison is seeking her third four-year term in office. A former bookkeeper and deputy county clerk, she was first elected to the office in 2016.

Her opponent is Danielle Kimball, who works as a bookkeeper in her husband’s construction business and as an agent for a John Day insurance agency. 

Kimball and Ellison were the top two vote-getters in a four-way race during the May primary, which moved them into a runoff on the November ballot.

The treasurer acts as budget officer for the county, manages revenue and investments and pays the county’s bills as directed by the county court.

The county’s budget for the 2024-25 fiscal year is $101.54 million. The base salary for county treasurer is $74,016 per year, plus $7,200 for the role of budget officer.

County judge

The contest for Grant County judge pits a sitting county commissioner against a former county judge.

With current County Judge Scott Myers stepping down at the end of this year, a four-way race developed for the county’s top administrative position. Jim Hamsher and Mark Webb outpolled the other contenders for the post in the May primary to qualify for the November runoff.

Hamsher was first elected as a Grant County commissioner in 2016 and is wrapping up his second four-year term. He did not seek a third term in the post and will step down at the end of the year, whether he wins to race for county judge or not. (His Position 2 seat on the court will be filled by Mitch Wilson, who won the job outright in the May election.)

Hamsher previously served for more than a decade as a councilor, mayor and city administrator in Prairie City, and ran unsuccessfully for county judge in 2018.

Webb is running for a second six-year term as county judge, having previously held the post from 2007-2013.

Webb is the executive director of the Blue Mountains Forest Partners forestry collaborative. He also sits on the state’s Environmental Quality Commission, the rulemaking and policy board for Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality, and has served on the Oregon Sustainability Board. 

Grant County judge is the top administrative position in county government. The judge presides over meetings of the county court, voting on legislative matters with the two county commissioners. The judge also has some limited judicial responsibilities involving conservatorship, estate administration, guardianship and marriage. 

The base salary for county judge is $92,784 a year.