PAMPLIN MEDIA GROUP - Jeff Kruse

There’s another new member of the Senate.

Dallas Heard, a Republican from Winston, will be replacing Sen. Jeff Kruse, R-Roseburg.

Kruse represented Senate District 1 until mid-March, when he resigned after an investigation found a pattern of inappropriately touching of female colleagues, lobbyists and interns.

Heard was elected to the House of Representatives in 2014 at age 29, according to the Roseburg News-Review, which also noted that Heard will be the youngest state senator.

Heard was recently in the news — specifically the Eugene Register-Guard — for comments he made on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show in 2009 about whether a woman could be president.

After that story broke, he told the News-Review that his thinking has evolved since then, and that the comments were “non-thinking,” “juvenile” and “boorish.”

Senate District 1 spans Douglas, Curry, Josephine and Coos counties.

(Kruse said in his final constituent newsletter March 9: “Basically, this was all part of the ‘me too’ movement that has swept the country. Interestingly I was not actually accused of things of a sexual nature, just inappropriate things like hugs, which have gone on in the Legislature for the whole twenty plus years I have served. The whole thing was scripted and designed to a specific end, in my opinion for the potential political gain of a few. “)