It’s a Rilling vs. Riley rematch

GOP fails to nominate a candidate, leaving Terry Rilling, an Independent, to challenge incumbent in House District 29

By Christian Gaston

The Forest Grove News-Times, Aug 27, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

Alison Gene Smith / News-Times

Forest Grove School Board Chairman Ralph Brown, left, talked with Rep. Chuck Riley at a recent event in Hillsboro.

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Democratic state Rep. Chuck Riley is heading into a rematch against Terry Rilling this fall, thanks to the inability of Washington County Republicans to field a candidate for House District 29.

Riley and Rilling, the former mayor of Cornelius, faced off two years ago. But in that race Rilling was running as a Republican.

This year, he’s running as an Independent Party candidate.

Republicans didn’t intend to let Rilling and Riley duke it out alone, but the GOP candidate in the May primary, Jeff Duyck, was invalidated by the secretary of state’s office in July.

That left party leaders scrambling to find a replacement before the Aug. 26 filing deadline. Party leaders thought they found a candidate in Michael Raichart, of Forest Grove, but a deadlocked 5-5 vote of county-level party leaders at a Monday night nominating convention kept the party from endorsing a candidate to replace Duyck.

According to those at the nominating convention, party officials were worried that throwing another name into the mix late in the game would lead to a three-way race that would ensure Riley a win.

Rilling, the former mayor of Cornelius, ran against Riley two years ago as a Republican. He filed as an Independent this year after a falling out with the GOP.

“There was a concern that [nominating Raichart] would lead to a split among conservatives and an easy race for Chuck Riley,” said Tom Cox, who acted as secretary at Monday night’s nominating convention.

The move turns Rilling’s role from being a third-party spoiler, running against the wishes of the GOP, to something of a standard-bearer for fiscal conservatives in the district.

“It looks like the Republicans, to my mind, are going to rally around Rilling as their de facto candidate,” Cox said.

Rilling fell out with party leadership earlier this year when he caught wind of an effort to recruit Duyck, a Forest Grove businessman, to run in the May primary. Rilling dropped out of the Republican Party and filed to run in the race as an Independent.

After that split, he said, party officials stopped returning his calls.

But without a Republican in the race, that enmity seems to be fading.

Rilling said he’s already received one phone call offering monetary support for his campaign since the nominating convention, and he expects more.

“I’m sure in the next few days I’ll be in contact with more people than I want,” Rilling said.

The state Republican Party targeted Riley early in the year as one of the most vulnerable incumbent Democrats in the state. But that effort was upended when a Forest Grove woman noticed that Duyck’s house was 125 feet outside the District 29 boundary.

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