BEND, OR -- Oregon attorney general candidate Dan Rayfield kicked off his campaign in Bend Sunday.

The Corvallis State Representative, and current speaker of the House spoke to a gathered crowd of supporters at Worthy Brewing, “We're running to make sure that we keep our communities and our families safe. And more importantly, we want to make sure that every Oregonian has the same opportunities to succeed and thrive here in Oregon. …We think into the future, what we want the state to look like 10, 15, 20 years down the road with the values that we have, we have to be on the offensive.”
Rayfield tells KBND News he feels all parts of the state are equally important for his election chances, “So, the way that I've approached my job as Speaker of the Oregon House is like serving all four corners and everything in between. I don't look at any specific counties as necessarily a battleground. What I look at is opportunities to get out there and connect with people and share what my vision for Oregon is.”

He mentioned focusing on a variety of issues including employee protections, “When we think about family wage jobs, we think about making sure that working families are supported. The Attorney General's office is a place where we can focus on wage theft. We can focus on labor violations to make the world that we have here in Oregon. The place that we want to live, the place we know it can be.”
He says he’ll tackle issues affecting the entire country, “You think about the attorney general role, there have been a lot of natural attacks on the national level to some of the values that we hold dear here in this state, whether it's your environmental laws where it's marriage equality, part of the role of the attorney general is to make sure that those values of the state are being upheld and being pursued.”

Rayfield performed with his Polka band, the Polkaticians, and was joined at the fundraiser by Bend’s mayor and city councilors, along with state elected representatives and officials.