Bill Bradbury is Oregon's Secretary of State. He was appointed by Governor John Kitzhaber in November, 1999, and elected to a 4-year term in November, 2000.

Bradbury served 14 years in the Oregon Legislature. He was elected to the House from a district on the south coast for two 2-year terms beginning in 1981. He then served as a state senator from 1985 to 1995. In 1986, Bradbury was elected as Senate Majority Leader, and, in 1993, he served as Senate President.

In 1995 Bradbury resigned from the Legislature to head For the Sake of the Salmon, a conservation group that works with public and private agencies in Oregon, California, and Washington. He served as director of that group until he was appointed as Secretary of State.

As Oregon's Secretary of State, he is responsible for overseeing elections, managing public records, conducting agency audits, supervising the corporation division and helping manage state lands.
During his legislative career, Bradbury led efforts to form the Salmon and Trout Enhancement Program (STEP), establish Small Business Development Centers at community resources, and enact the Oregon Watershed Health Program.

Before his political career, Bradbury worked as a TV news reporter, director, and producer in San Francisco, Coos Bay, Eugene, Bandon, and Portland.

He was born in Chicago, Illinois. When he was eight years old, he moved to a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to live with an aunt and uncle after a fatal car accident in which both his parents were killed. Bradbury graduated from the University of Chicago Laboratory High School in 1967 and attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. In 1971 he moved to Bandon, Oregon where he owned a restaurant. He was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1981, but says that the disease has largely stabilized.

Bradbury, who is 53 years old, is married and has two daughters.

Known as a moderate Democrat, Bradbury plans to make assisted suicide and the environment two of his key issues, claiming that incumbent Senator Gordon Smith is out of touch with Oregonians because of his stance on those issues. His priorities as Secretary of State have included protecting the vote-by-mail election process in Oregon, increasing voter participation, auditing to improve government performance, and ensuring responsible stewardship of state-owned lands. He he has supported vote-by-mail and public campaign financing initiatives as well as a ballot measure that would make it more difficult to amend the Oregon Constitution through the initiative process. He supports the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act, an accountability bill for companies after the bankruptcies of large companies like Enron and Worldcom.

--From Oregon Public Broadcasting