Peter Buckley of Ashland will announce Tuesday he plans to run for the state representative seat held by Rep. Alan Bates, D-Ashland, who is expected to file for the Senate seat being vacated by Lenn Hannon, R-Ashland.

Buckley, 46, ran in 2002 for Congress, gaining 26 percent of the vote in Rep. Greg Walden’s heavily Republican district. It was his first bid for public office.

Buckley will announce his run at 10 a.m. Tuesday in front of the Ashland library. "If it is raining, I promise that it will be a very short speech," he wrote in an e-mail to supporters.

Beyond saying he wanted to "get the state headed in the right direction," Buckley declined any comment until his announcement.

With his ’02 campaign, Buckley established himself as a backer of campaign finance reform, a strong environmentalist, an opponent of the Iraq war and a critic of Bush policies, charging the president with making tax cuts for the rich and "siding with money interests."

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Buckley is executive director of Democracy’s Edge, a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing participation in local, state and federal political processes through voter education projects. He is also a consultant for student recruitment with Dell A’rte, an independent actors’ training school which offers master’s degrees in fine arts.

A former theater administrator and Jefferson Public Radio commentator, Buckley moved from Humboldt County in California to Ashland seven years ago. Before that, he worked as an actor, director and playwright on the regional theater circuit.

Buckley and his wife, Joan Langley, education director at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, have three children age 17, 13 and 5. His campaign manager is Ashland School Board member Amy Amrhein.

Buckley is the only prominent Democrat to express interest in the District 5 house seat, which includes heavily Democratic Ashland.

John Darling is a free-lance writer living in Ashland. E-mail him at jdarling@jeffnet.org.