Republicans have flipped Oregon’s pivotal 5th District seat in Congress, with Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer defeating Democrat Jamie McLeod-Skinner in a race flooded with out-of-state GOP spending.
That means Republicans will at least double their number of Oregon’s seats in the U.S. House, with Chavez-DeRemer, the former mayor of Happy Valley, joining Republican Cliff Bentz, who represents the heavily Republican 2nd District that covers most of eastern Oregon.
Near-final results tallied as of 9:30 a.m. Friday showed Chavez-DeRemer ahead 50.9% to 48.8%. That put her margin of victory at just over 4,000 votes out of nearly 240,000 cast.
Although McLeod-Skinner appears to have won by a slim margin in both her own base of Deschutes County and in Clackamas County, where Chavez-DeRemer lives, the Republican dramatically outperformed her in Marion and Linn counties, cementing her win.
Chavez-DeRemer will replace Democratic Rep. Kurt Schrader, a seven-term incumbent ousted by McLeod-Skinner in the May primary. Chavez-DeRemer’s victory is a boon for Oregon Republicans and could boost House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s still-uncertain bid to take control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
“As mayor of Happy Valley, I was proud of my bipartisan track record, and it was critical to approach every issue through a non-partisan lens,” Chavez-DeRemer said in a statement Friday. “That is exactly what I promise to do as your next Congresswoman. This is a historic victory for Oregon, but the work starts now. I vow to work for all Oregonians toward a better future for our children.”
According to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, 24 U.S. House races remain undecided nationally, including the 5th District.
Chavez-DeRemer will be Oregon’s first Latina in Congress or share the history-making title with Democrat Andrea Salinas, who is narrowly leading the race for Oregon’s new 6th District that is still too close to call. More Hispanic women than ever ran for the U.S. House this year, including a record-breaking 42 Latina Republicans.
McLeod-Skinner, who identifies as lesbian, would have been Oregon’s first openly LGBTQ+ member of Congress.
The race was once considered one of the closest in the country this year before Chavez-DeRemer appeared to break ahead last month. The influential political outlet FiveThirtyEight, which is nonpartisan, considered the district one of ten nationally that could decide control of the U.S. House.
McLeod-Skinner spent $2.8 million to Chavez-DeRemer’s $1.9 million through mid-October, according to the most recent campaign finance records. But national Republicans poured out-of-state money into the race while national Democrats took a hands-off approach this fall.
By November, outside groups had spent $7.1 million attacking McLeod-Skinner, while such groups had only spent $2 million attacking Chavez-DeRemer, according to the nonpartisan election watchdog Open Secrets.
The House Majority PAC, a major Democratic funder linked to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, didn’t spend at all in the race, instead pouring resources in the 6th District.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spent $1.85 million to push McLeod-Skinner but didn’t keep pace with national Republicans. Schrader did not endorse McLeod-Skinner.
The University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, a nonpartisan observer, said the spending imbalance boosted Chavez-DeRemer when it changed its rating of the race from a “tossup” to “leans Republican” late last month.
The outside GOP funding fueled a wave of attack ads painting McLeod-Skinner as anti-police, politically out-of-touch and supportive of progressive policies including the Green New Deal, claims which McLeod-Skinner denies. She fired back with ads highlighting Chavez-DeRemer’s past support for abortion restrictions and called her an “extremist.”
The 5th District was open after McLeod-Skinner ousted Schrader by running to his left, capturing support from local Democrats disillusioned with Schrader’s record in Congress. State lawmakers redrew his district last year to stretch from Southeast Portland to Bend and Deschutes County, where McLeod-Skinner, who lives outside of Redmond, saw a groundswell of support in the primary.
Schrader had bucked his party on key priorities including pharmaceutical regulation and pandemic assistance. He is Oregon’s first sitting member of Congress to lose a primary challenge since 1980.
National politics watchers zeroed in on the race, which was widely viewed as a test of McLeod-Skinner’s progressive politics in a swing district.
Chavez-DeRemer faced an uphill battle in the race because of the way Salinas and Oregon Democrats redrew the district’s boundaries last year. Democrats hold a slim voter registration edge in the district, with 170,300 registered Democrats, 145,500 registered Republicans and 209,900 other voters.
Chavez-DeRemer, 54, won the quieter GOP primary and ran on her experience in business and government.
She leads marketing for Anesthesia Associates Northwest, a network of medical clinics employing about 150 people she co-founded with her husband in 2005. Chavez-DeRemer was mayor of Happy Valley from 2011 to 2018, where her supporters say she managed growth and transportation issues with a bipartisan tack.
In her race for Congress, she pledged to cut inflation, crime and homelessness, which she blamed on Democrats. She also vowed to “secure” the U.S.-Mexico border and push a “parental bill of rights,” while ensuring critical race theory isn’t taught in classrooms.
Chavez-DeRemer opposes new gun regulations, a topic that was pushed to the forefront in the district after a 20-year-old man armed with a legally purchased AR-15 killed two people at a Bend Safeway in August. A member of the National Rifle Association, she views gun violence as a product of mental health disorders and supports expanding access to mental health care.
She defeated McLeod-Skinner, 55, who manages responses to disasters and wildfires for the Oregon Department of Human Services. McLeod-Skinner cast herself as an independent thinker who prioritized affordability, reproductive rights, climate action and some “common-sense” gun regulations.
Both candidates recast themselves as political moderates after they won their primaries, in attempts to appeal to more undecided voters. McLeod-Skinner refused to call herself a progressive despite touting the support of progressive officeholders and groups, including the Congressional Progressive Caucus that includes Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Chavez-DeRemer skirted questions about the integrity of the 2020 election and softened her stance on abortion. She repeatedly said she would oppose any federal law restricting abortion rights, but Chavez-DeRemer applauded the U.S. Supreme Court decision in May removing the constitutional right to abortion.
The last Republican to hold the 5th District seat was Jim Bunn, a one-term member of Congress who was elected in 1996 and defeated in 1998 by Democrat Darlene Hooley. This district has been redrawn three times since then.
In response to The Oregonian/OregonLive calling the race, McLeod-Skinner said it was too soon to make a determination on the race.
“Most media outlets have not called this race.” McLeod-Skinner said in a statement. “We’re going to continue to monitor the process to ensure every vote is counted.”
As of Friday morning, Clackamas County still had approximately 65,000 ballots to tabulate, and county officials said Thursday that election workers would work through the weekend to finish the count. About 70% of Clackamas County voters live in the 5th District. However, votes in Clackamas County do not heavily favor McLeod-Skinner enough for the remaning ones to tip the results in her favor.
— Grant Stringer; gstringer@oregonian.com; 503-307-3591; @Stringerjourno
To sign up to receive our newsroom’s weekly newsletter recapping our most important election coverage, simply click here.
Our journalism needs your support. Please become a subscriber today at OregonLive.com/subscribe