State House of Representatives In 1992, he was elected to the Oregon House and served 2 two-year terms. In 1996, he lost to his 1994 opponent,
Richard Devlin. In 2002, he ran for the
Oregon State Senate to represent the 19th senate district, again facing Devlin, narrowly losing by a margin of 47% to 50%. He served as chief petitioners on several successful
statewide ballot measures, including
Measure 11 (mandatory minimum sentences),
Measure 8 (pension reform), and
Measure 17 (prison labor), all in 1994.
Oregon Republican Party chair In January 2009, he was elected as chair of the
Oregon Republican Party and served until 2011, when he was succeeded by
Allen Alley.
2022 gubernatorial campaign Tiernan ran for
governor of Oregon in the
2022 election; 19 candidates ran in the Republican primary, with Tiernan and
Christine Drazan being considered the top contenders. He loaned his campaign a half-million dollars. Shortly before his loss,
Willamette Week highlighted that Tiernan had failed to pay $8,700 in property taxes owed on his investment property in
Lake Oswego. Tiernan said that
Clackamas County had not notified him of the tax debt, and he paid the past-due amount after the publication brought it to his attention. In court papers filed in July 2020, as part of Tiernan's long-running feud with
San Francisco Bay Area cyclists, he asserted through his lawyers that he had lived in
Diablo, California, "from 1963 to 1980, and again from 2006 to present";
The Oregonian noted that this raised questions about whether Tiernan had lived in Oregon for the preceding three years, a requirement for candidates for governor under the
state Constitution. In a sworn deposition in the case, taken in July 2021, Tiernan estimated that he spent 60% of his time in California and 40% of his time in Oregon. ==Personal life==