Senator Jeff Golden

Jeff Golden attended Harvard University as a National Scholar during the height of the Vietnam War and decided to swap the Ivy Halls for 20 acres in the backwoods of Oregon and a used chainsaw. He chronicled that journey in the book Watermelon Summer (Lippincott & Co, 1971). After a decade building homes, guiding whitewater river trips, and working in the forests of the Cascade Mountains, Jeff dropped back in to earn a Masters in Communications degree from Stanford University.

He has spent the last 35 years in politics, broadcasting and editorial journalism and organizational consulting. His political career includes service as a Jackson County Commissioner, Chief of Staff to the Oregon Senate President, and Environmental Policy aide to the City of Portland. During those years he wrote Forest Blood (Wellstone Books, 1998), the pre-eminent novel of the Northwest timber wars. His stand for responsible forest practices made him the target of an unsuccessful recall campaign financed by national timber corporations, and earned him the first nomination ever from the state of Oregon for the JFK Profile in Courage Award, which partly sparked his newest book, UNAFRAID: A Novel of the Possible.   He hosted The Jefferson Exchange, a popular daily NPR talk-show on a network of northwest stations, and created the public television series Immense Possibilities, now airing on some 25 PBS stations around the country. In November 2018, he was elected to the Oregon State Senate.

Jeff lives in Ashland, Oregon with his wife, Human and Social Services Administrator Sarah Collard. He makes a decent effort at staying balanced with cycling, rafting, music, acting and unpredictable adventures with his grown son and daughter. 

As Oregon’s U.S. Senator, Jeff’s goal is to make Washington work for working Americans. He is fighting to create good jobs for working Oregonians, protect consumers from predatory practices, and ensure that all Oregonians have access to high-quality, affordable education. 

Jeff is the son of a millwright and the first in his family to attend college. Born in the timber town of Myrtle Creek, Oregon, Jeff has spent his career fighting to increase opportunities for working families. 

After earning an undergraduate degree from Stanford and graduate degree in Public Policy at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Merkley worked as a national security analyst at the Pentagon and at the Congressional Budget Office. 

In 1991 Jeff returned to Oregon to lead Portland's Habitat for Humanity, a non-profit that empowers low-income families through homeownership. Jeff went on to serve as president of the World Affairs Council in Portland before entering the Oregon House of Representatives in 1998. He became Speaker of the House in 2007. 

As Oregon's House Speaker, Jeff led the most productive legislative session in decades. The legislature increased education funding, expanded access to affordable prescription drugs, passed landmark environmental and energy legislation, established domestic partnerships, cracked down on predatory payday and title lending, and created Oregon's first ever Rainy Day fund. 

In the U.S. Senate, Jeff continues to stand up for working families. He fights to create livingwage jobs and to push back on unfair trade policies that ship Oregon’s jobs overseas. He has worked to make college more affordable and make retirement more secure for seniors. A true reformer, he led an historic coalition to fix the broken Senate by breaking up the gridlock, making it more responsive to the concerns of working families. 

Jeff serves on the Senate Committees on Appropriations; Environment and Public Works; Budget; and Foreign Relations.