Oregon › Lane County › Lane County Commissioner, District 5 (East Lane)
2 candidates are tracked for Lane County Commissioner, District 5 (East Lane), headed to a November 3, 2026 runoff: Jake Pelroy and Heather Buch. Candidate information follows official Lane County election filings; verify with the official election office linked below.
Nonpartisan runoff. In the May 19, 2026 primary neither candidate reached a majority; per Lookout Eugene-Springfield's final count, Jake Pelroy led with 48.29% (12,050 votes), incumbent Heather Buch had 46.71% (11,654 votes) and Bob Zybach had 4.79% (1,196 votes) and was eliminated. Pelroy and Buch advance to the November 3, 2026 general election.
Nonpartisan
Pelroy is a political consultant who founded Pelroy & Associates in 2012 and co-founded the Lane County Garbage and Recycling Association, per his campaign site. He grew up in Veneta, served in the U.S. Marine Corps as an intelligence analyst from 2005 to 2010 with three deployments to Iraq, and graduated from the University of Oregon in 2014, per his campaign site.
Nonpartisan · Incumbent
Buch, the incumbent, ran a real estate business specializing in affordable housing for 15 years before her 2019 election and served as special projects director for the St. Vincent DePaul Society of Lane County, per the county's official commissioner biography. As 2020 Commission Chair she directed the county's COVID-19 response and secured $27.5 million in state funding for McKenzie-area wildfire recovery, per the same source. No campaign website or questionnaire response was found as of September 9, 2026; the official roster and election filing is the only verifiable source for Heather Buch.