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1st Congressional District
Suzanne Bonamici - Democrat
Bonamici, 69, has held this seat since 2012, when she won a special election after the meltdown of then-U.S. Rep. David Wu (D-Ore.). Her district, redrawn after the 2020 census, covers most of Washington County and a big chunk of Multnomah County, and extends west to pick up Columbia, Tillamook and Clatsop counties. She is a left-center Democrat, which fits this district well. (And she is half of one of Oregon’s true political power couples—her husband, Michael Simon, is a federal judge.)
A former lawyer and state legislator, Bonamici does her homework and is an unflashy congresswoman with a detailed knowledge of the bills she works and a reputation for good constituent service. She successfully sponsors unsexy bills—like the Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Research and Control Amendments Act of 2017, and another one to combat marine debris. But one of her most important constituents, Intel, likes her for a different reason: As a member of the House Education and Workforce and Science, Space and Technology committees, she advocated aggressively for Intel to get federal CHIPS Act money ($8.5 billion in grants and $11 billion in loans).
Bonamici faces token opposition from Jamil Ahmad, an Intel engineer whose platform is ending military aid to Israel, and Courtney Ellynn Casgraux, who did not submit a Voters’ Pamphlet statement but describes herself as “a self-made entrepreneur with no high school diploma or formal education. Stay in school, kids, the grind is real.” Indeed it is.
Who’d play Bonamici on film? Jodie Foster.
3rd Congressional District
Maxine Dexter - Democrat
Next January will mark the first time in 28 years that Portland’s eastside is represented in Congress by someone other than Earl Blumenauer. Few districts come bluer than this one—it follows the path of many Subarus on a Saturday, from the Willamette River out to Mount Hood—and Blumenauer spoke for those values. He will be remembered for championing legal weed, public transit, bikes and bow ties, as well as for a prickly intelligence that we will miss.
Vying to succeed him are six Democrats, three of whom have received most of the money and endorsements: state Rep. Maxine Dexter (D-Portland), former Multnomah County Commissioner Susheela Jayapal, and Gresham City Councilor Eddy Morales.
Given the overwhelmingly Democratic voter registration of the district, whoever wins the Democratic Party primary will win the seat.
It’s instructive, then, to consider what each candidate has been able to accomplish in their previous office.
Dexter, 51, a Kaiser pulmonologist, probably had the most opportunity. In the four years since she was appointed to a Northwest Portland House seat, she rose near the top of her caucus, chairing the Housing and Homelessness Committee in the most recent legislative session. That means she shares credit for passing the most substantive housing package in a decade—one that includes both state funding and a snipping of land use red tape to spur the development of new homes. The housing bill was the brainchild of Gov. Tina Kotek, but Dexter largely executed it. Her high grades in our biannual survey show that Salem insiders her consider her one of the state’s most effective lawmakers.
Jayapal, 62, is a former Adidas attorney elected to the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners in 2018. Voters might wonder where she’s been since then. So do we: The past six years have seen the county lose its bearings even as it enjoyed a windfall of taxpayer dollars earmarked to serve people sleeping outdoors. Jayapal did little to right the ship, or to spur Chairs Deborah Kafoury or Jessica Vega Pederson into action. She had little clout to change the course of the county, but—as noted above—that’s a similar situation to the one she’ll find on Capitol Hill. There’s nothing in her track record to suggest she can lead from behind.
The third significant candidate in this contest is Morales, 44, who has a wrenching personal history—a child of an immigrant mother, he lost two brothers to shootings and a sister to addiction—and a skill at connecting his experience to policy. Like Jayapal, his greatest achievements have been in constituent service, especially in siting low-income housing. We would like to see him run for the Legislature or county board as an intermediate step.
Of the other candidates, Michael Jonas runs a legal services company and offers useful insight into the plight of downtown small business owners; Rachel Rand is a jazz musician and software engineer who is running for Congress a third time; and Nolan Bylenga is a board member of the League of Minority Voters pursuing a master’s degree at Portland State University.
Among all the candidates, Dexter’s track record is by far the strongest. She will make a worthy successor to Blumenauer.
Who’d play Dexter in a movie? Uma Thurman. “Her resuscitation in Pulp Fiction, one of my all-time favorite movies, lets me articulate to people what it’s like to bring somebody back with Narcan.”
5th Congressional District
Janelle Bynum - Democrat
For 14 years, this rural district was represented by a gruff veterinarian named Kurt Schrader who sometimes pissed off the Democratic Party—his party—by voting alongside Republicans. But in 2022, Schrader lost to an outsider in the party’s primary: Jamie McLeod-Skinner. She in turn lost the general election to a former mayor of Happy Valley, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who now holds the seat.
Democrats hold a 5-point registration advantage in the district, which means the winner of the primary could ride into Congress on a wave of voters with abortion rights on their minds.
McLeod-Skinner, 57, wants another shot at Chavez-DeRemer. The Terrebonne lawyer, engineer and former city planner has run for major office in Oregon three times, with the primary defeat of Schrader her one partial victory. We endorsed her in that contest, and against DeRemer in the 2022 general election.
We acknowledge her consistency: She stands for organized labor, abortion access, environmental protections, and elevating rural concerns. She’s been steadfast in her commitment to accept no political contributions from big corporations and remains a consistently progressive Democrat, even as the political winds have shifted to favor moderates in recent election cycles.
But our reporting, and that of the Oregon Capital Chronicle, has given us reason to doubt McLeod-Skinner’s leadership skills.
WW reported in January that McLeod-Skinner’s driver during her 2022 campaign was separated from the candidate after he said he was physically afraid of her. The Chronicle reported in October that former campaign staffers alleged she had belittled and bullied them. (McLeod-Skinner denies all allegations.)
Her appearance at our endorsement interview did little to assuage our concerns about her temperament. She was defensive and self-pitying—poor form for someone seeking a seat in Congress. McLeod-Skinner is within her rights to dispute allegations by former staffers, but her posture in denying the allegations only reinforces them.
State Rep. Janelle Bynum (D-Happy Valley) is a better choice. The 49-year-old co-owner of four Portland-area McDonald’s franchises, and an electrical engineer by training, has served four terms in the Legislature, where she’s cemented a reputation as principled and effective and chairs the House Committee on Economic Development. She won bipartisan support for a package of bills in 2021 that increases police accountability, transparency and reporting. She’s aided low-income families with tax credits, capped the cost of insulin, and helped secure federal funding for Intel.
The endorsements so far in this contest have been a landslide: Bynum has secured the support of current and former legislators, three governors, labor unions, and national political action committees like Emily’s List.
Add us to the chorus. We urge you to vote for Bynum.
Who’d play Bynum onscreen? Kerry Washington.
6th Congressional District
Andrea Salinas - Democrat
Salinas, 54, won election two years ago to Oregon’s newest congressional seat, centered in Marion and Washington counties, and she appears to be settling in for a long congressional career. Salinas has a compelling backstory—the daughter of a Mexican immigrant, she grew up in California, went to Berkeley, and ended up in D.C. staffing for legendary U.S. Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) as well as U.S. Reps. Pete Stark (D-Calif.) and then Darlene Hooley (D-Ore.), which brought her to Oregon. Salinas served six years in the Oregon House before entering Congress.
A center-left Democrat who rarely votes against her caucus, Salinas co-sponsored with her Oregon GOP colleague, U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz, one of just 27 bills that passed both chambers last session, a bill that fixed a historical land claim for the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. First-term congresspeople rarely ever get anything done, and Salinas is a worthy match for Oregon’s most Hispanic district, so we see no reason not to support her over Cody Reynolds, a West Point grad-turned-crypto investor and perennial candidate. (This is his fourth run for the U.S. House. He’s also run for U.S. Senate and Multnomah County chair.). Reynolds is a nice guy, but his lack of civic engagement and policy chops make him no match for Salinas.
Who’d play Salinas in a movie? Eva Longoria.
6th Congressional District
Mike Erickson - Republican
Lake Oswego logistics company owner Mike Erickson lost to Andrea Salinas two years ago in the inaugural race for Oregon’s freshly added sixth seat in Congress. New seat, same result for Erickson, 61, who has wanted to be in politics for some time. He ran for the Oregon Legislature in 1988 and 1992 and made bids for the 5th Congressional District in 2006 and 2008. All were unsuccessful. This time, he says he wants to secure the border and fight inflation—how he would do so, we can’t say, since he declined our invitation for an interview.
His primary opponent, David Russ, 61, is the mayor of Dundee, a town in Yamhill County wine country. Russ’ campaign website describes him as “100% anti-communist” and contains strong theocratic overtones. Erickson offers the better opportunity to give Salinas a meaningfully contested race in November.