As promised, here’s Oregon, which has an open but sleepy gubernatorial race and three very hotly contested congressional races to lead us off. Idaho also has primaries today, but we failed to find any municipal or state legislative races that were both competitive and located in locales blue enough for us to cover. Sorry, Idaho.
Oregon
Governor
Tina Kotek vs. Tobias Read vs. assorted
Tina Kotek, the state House speaker, is a clear favorite and the progressive choice. After New York Times columnist Nick Kristof was booted from the ballot for not actually living in Oregon long enough to meet the state’s residency requirements, state Treasurer Tobias Read was the center’s only real option left. As speaker, Kotek made some moves that angered the left and organized labor, but she’s generally decent while Read isn’t.
OR-04
Eugene, Corvallis, rural coastal Oregon
Sami Al-Abdrabbuh vs. Doyle Canning vs. Val Hoyle vs. Andrew Kalloch (vs. assorted)
This is essentially a two-person race between Val Hoyle, the state’s Labor Commissioner (an elected but nonpartisan statewide position), and Doyle Canning, a progressive activist who ran for this seat in 2020, but Dr. Sami Al-Abdrabbuh, a Corvallis school board official, and Andrew Kalloch, an Airbnb executive who serves on nonprofit boards, are running campaigns which also merit mention. Hoyle is running as the vague idea of a Democrat, Al-Abdrabbuh is running as a progressive, Canning is running even further to the left, and Kalloch is running as…well…an Airbnb executive who serves on nonprofit boards.
Hoyle, as a statewide elected official with near-unanimous support from elected officials and organized labor, should have this locked up. It doesn’t seem like she does—the sole publicly-available poll, released by an organization supporting Canning, had Hoyle at just 24% of primary voters, with Canning at 8% and Kalloch at 4%. Canning—a staunch progressive with a long history in progressive and environmental organizing—has raised a credible amount of money, landed noteworthy endorsements, and prompted a more-than-nominal amount of spending on Hoyle’s behalf from Protect Our Future, the bizarre cryptocurrency PAC that has lately taken to swooping into competitive House primaries to drop staggering sums on bland positive ads for moderate candidates. Hoyle is a clear favorite, but she’s not out of the woods, and this district is, well…quirky, connecting the college towns of Eugene and Corvallis to logging towns and coastal villages.
Most of the votes will be cast in Eugene, home to Hoyle, Canning, and Kalloch, so we’re not sure what geographic breakdown to expect—except for Corvallis, where Al-Abdrabbuh is running as the local favorite with the support of a bunch of local elected officials.
OR-05
Suburban Portland, Albany, Bend
Kurt Schrader (i) vs. Jamie McLeod-Skinner
Kurt Schrader has been an insufferable conservative ever since entering Congress in 2009—but as the ranks of House Democrats as conservative as Schrader dwindled to just a handful, Schrader didn’t shift left or soften his attitude. If anything, he got worse and more inclined to pick fights with the left, with unions, even with the Democratic establishment if they happened to be doing something good for once. After years of skating and a 2020 primary that was sadly ignored by national progressives, Schrader entered the next act of his career: a headline-chasing Democratic saboteur, happy to provide a scathing or eyebrow-raising quote whenever the party actually tried to do anything and more than willing to work with other members of the caucus’s small but decisive conservative bloc to worsen or defeat good legislation. He got in the way of prescription drug price caps. He helped water down and ultimately kill Build Back Better. He called the second impeachment of Donald Trump a “lynching.” Kurt Schrader is truly terrible.
Naturally, House leadership is standing by him publicly, and Schrader even managed to call in a Biden endorsement. (Again, Schrader played a key role in the slow death of Biden’s biggest legislative agenda item.) But aside from high-profile Democratic elected officials and mercenary centrist super PACs, Schrader doesn’t have many friends he can count on. Progressives can’t stand him for very obvious reasons; organized labor can’t stand him because he’s fiscally conservative and generally opposed to union rights; pro-choice groups can’t stand him because he’s one of relatively few Democrats to still support the Hyde Amendment, a legislative provision which prohibits federal funding of abortion care; the environmental movement can’t stand him because he’s in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry; local Democrats in Oregon can’t stand him because he’s just sort of a dick. Enter Jamie McLeod-Skinner.
Jamie McLeod-Skinner ran for OR-02 in 2018 and Oregon Secretary of State in 2020. McLeod-Skinner lost both of her previous campaigns, but the first one earned her the loyalty of Democrats in eastern Oregon for bringing a serious campaign to the state’s Republican bastion and the second one earned her the respect of Democrats in the rest of Oregon for running a clean, competent, fairly progressive campaign. These would both become quite helpful when Oregon Democrats, in order to keep Schrader’s district blue while adding another Democratic district thanks to strong Census numbers, made major changes that included adding the bluish resort city of Bend, eastern Oregon’s largest source of Democratic votes, and shedding lots of Schrader’s current constituents in and around the state capital of Salem. McLeod-Skinner’s Bend-area base was now in Schrader’s district, so she began a campaign against him and quickly consolidated the support of progressives, organized labor, pro-choice groups, the environmental movement, and the county Democratic Party committees in four of the district’s counties, between them home to the vast majority of voters. McLeod-Skinner had Schrader on the ropes fairly quickly; as early as February, McLeod-Skinner’s internal polling had her within five points of the congressman. Then came an utter avalanche of money—both from Schrader’s own well-financed campaign and from outside sources like the Blue Dog/pharmaceutical lobbyist front group Center Forward and billionaire Reid Hoffman’s Mainstream Democrats PAC—which kept Schrader basically afloat until early May. That was when rumors started circulating, and then being confirmed on the record in the press, that Schrader had fallen behind McLeod-Skinner in the home stretch. Maybe Democratic voters were in an angry mood after a draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked; maybe Schrader’s ads hit saturation; maybe voters just tuned in. Whatever it was, the tone of coverage of Schrader’s campaign has taken a turn based on those polls; it’s pretty clear Schrader has a good chance of being the first Democratic member of Congress to lose a primary in 2022.
OR-06
Salem, McMinnville, Portland suburbs
Teresa Alonso Leon vs. Carrick Flynn vs. Kathleen Harder vs. Cody Reynolds vs. Andrea Salinas vs. Loretta Smith vs. Matt West (vs. Ricky Barajas vs. Greg Goodwin)
Eleven million, three hundred and ninety-one thousand, six hundred and twenty dollars and ninety-six cents.
That’s how much money cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried has spent attempting to elect AI researcher Carrick Flynn to Congress through just one PAC. On top of that $11.4M from Protect Our Future, Flynn raised $910,000 himself and received additional help: from the newly and mysteriously formed Justice Unites Us PAC to the tune of $847,000, and from House Majority PAC, the semi-official super PAC of Nancy Pelosi and the DCCC, to the tune of $939,000. All in all, about $14.1 million has been spent just for Flynn, likely over $100 per ballot sent out. It is nearly impossible to fathom, and yet here we are. Carrick Flynn, who claims not to have asked for this help, and claims to not even know Bankman-Fried, has sucked the oxygen out of the room—or, more accurately, bought it all up.
That’s a shame too, we were all set with a wacky cast of characters, but now everything is about Flynn, the crypto money bankrolling him, and whether anything can overcome it. While state Rep. Teresa Alonso Leon, Oregon Medical Board member Kathleen Harder, Multnomah County Commissioner Loretta Smith, and self-funding cryptocurrency guys Cody Reynolds and Matt West all put up serious campaigns, it’s been evident for the last few weeks that if anyone can beat Flynn, it’s state Rep. Andrea Salinas. Salinas, yes, may be an establishment pick who literally drew the district, but she does hold progressive views on the issues, and is backed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Oregon progressive groups like the Working Families Party and Our Revolution Oregon have come together with organized labor and party leaders like Governor Kate Brown with the understanding that Salinas was everyone’s best bet. Flynn’s side understands this too, which is why Protect Our Future dropped close to a million on negative ads against her in the final days of the race. The limited polling of the race available, from Salinas’s campaign, shows her leading Flynn 18% to 14%. There’s not much certain here, except that the winner isn’t getting a majority of the vote.
SD-13 (southern Portland suburbs)
Chelsea King vs. Aaron Woods
West Linn-Wilsonville School Board member Chelsea King seems favored over Wilsonville planning commissioner Aaron Woods, if her much longer list of union endorsements and prominent supporters is any indication—but no ideological or personal divide is readily apparent between the two candidates.
SD-18 (western Portland suburbs)
Wlnsvey Campos vs. Alisa Blum
This race is a rematch of a 2020 race for state House, minus a third candidate. Back then, we liked Wlnsvey Campos’s commitments to big, bold policies, and we were skeptical of Alisa Blum’s platitude-heavy campaign. Campos won that race and voted like the progressive she promised to be, so there’s even more reason to support her over Blum than there was the first time around.
HD-19 (Salem)
Brad Witt (i*) vs. Tom Andersen (vs. Jackie Leung)
Brad Witt is technically an incumbent, but this is not his district. Witt, who had already been stripped of his committee assignments by Democratic leadership after sending inappropriate texts to a fellow legislator, originally opted to retire when redistricting handed him a redder district. Then, just days before filing closed, he made the totally rational decision to move from rural northwest Oregon eighty miles south to an open state House seat in Salem. Tom Andersen is a nice-seeming Salem city councilor with a fine platform and none of Witt’s weird baggage. Jackie Leung is a Salem city councilor who dropped out of the race several weeks ago but remains on the ballot. Witt has benefitted from thousands of dollars in outside spending from Oregonians are Ready, a new PAC designed to beat back progressives in Oregon state legislative primaries.
HD-27 (western Portland suburbs)
Ken Helm (i) vs. Tammy Carpenter
State Rep. Ken Helm is a quiet backbencher in the state House, but he’s a quiet backbencher with a progressive record in the state House, which presents a bit of a challenge for anesthesiologist Tammy Carpenter. Carpenter is running to Helm’s left as a movement-oriented Berniecrat, but Helm isn’t an easy target for that kind of campaign.
HD-35 (Beaverton, western Portland suburbs)
Farrah Chaichi vs. Zeloszelos Marchandt
Zeloszelos Marchandt seems cool, and there are plenty of races where he’d be the better choice, but Farrah Chaichi was picked by Wlnsvey Campos to succeed her, and the left in general is excited about her.
HD-38 (Portland and the suburb of Lake Oswego)
Neelam Gupta vs. Daniel Nguyen
This race is a simple tug of war between moderates and progressives: a business-backed city councilor (Daniel Nguyen), and a labor-backed school board member (Neelam Gupta), respectively.
HD-40 (southern Portland suburbs)
James Farley vs. Charles Gallia vs. Annessa Hartman
James Farley, a retired healthcare professional, won’t be factoring into this race, which is between universal healthcare advocate Charles Gallia, who chairs the Clackamas County Democratic Party, and Annessa Hartman, the first Indigenous member of the Gladstone City Council. It’s not clear who has the upper hand here—both candidates have support from labor and elected officials.
HD-41 (Portland and suburbs)
Kaliko Castille vs. Christopher Draus vs. Mark Gamba
Mark Gamba may be a familiar name to you—he’s the progressive Milwaukie mayor who challenged Kurt Schrader in 2020. That went poorly, and he abandoned thoughts of a rematch after Jamie McLeod-Skinner launched her campaign, but an opportunity dropped into his lap immediately after. HD-41, where Milwaukie makes up roughly ¼ of the primary electorate with most of the rest being in progressive Portland, opened up. Gamba, who is well-liked by local politicians, became something of the establishment favorite for the seat. His main (and only real) opposition comes from fellow Milwaukie resident Kaliko Castille, a political strategist who is backed by the building trades unions, which are still reticent about progressive politicians.
HD-45 (Portland)
Catherine Thomasson vs. Thuy Tran
Optometrist Thuy Tran is a huge favorite over environmental advocate Catherine Thomasson. Realistically, this isn’t much of a race. That’s not the worst thing in the world—Tran seems fully competent and will easily fit into the Democratic caucus’s mainstream. But she’s taking a more moderate line on policing, and it’s a shame progressives couldn’t fight hard for this seat.
Washington County District Attorney
Kevin Barton (i) vs. Brian Decker
Kevin Barton, a standard tough-on-crime prosecutor, is being challenged by former public defender and assistant DA Brian Decker, whose reform platform is nothing you haven’t heard before. Unfortunately, neither is Barton’s over the top response. Barton constantly fearmongers about defunded police, and has even run ads about the county “turning into Portland”. Barton, who has received hundreds of thousands from business interests, including a $100,000 check from the founder of Nike, has attacked Decker for a $20,000 contribution from a group tied to George Soros. The race, which is technically nonpartisan, as Barton eschew party affiliation in favor of promoting himself as the pick of law enforcement, while Decker carries the banner not only of grassroots criminal justice groups, but of the Washington County Democrats and most labor unions. Though Washington County isn’t as Democratic as Portland, it’s still a solid 66% to 31% for Biden, and voted 64% to 36% for Oregon’s 2020 drug decriminalization ballot measure, something Barton opposes.
Portland City Council Position 2
Dan Ryan (i) vs Alanna “AJ” McCreary vs. Sandeep Bali vs. assorted
Dan Ryan, one of the more conservative members of the city council, was always going to be challenged by progressives this year. The initial hope was for state Rep. Akasha Lawrence Spence to do it, but she said no, leaving progressives scrambling for an acceptable alternative, eventually settling on Alanna “AJ” McCreary, a community activist. She’ll need to hold Ryan under 50% to make the runoff, which won’t be easy, since few of the other challengers are mounting much of a campaign. One of the ones who is is Sandeep Bali, running on a platform of turning the homeless into a fine, nutritious paste.
Portland City Council Position 3
Jo Ann Hardesty (i) vs. Chad Leisey vs. Kimbra Kasch vs. Ed Baker vs. Vadim Mozyrsky vs. Rene Gonzalez vs. Dale Hardt vs. Joseph Whitcomb
Jo Ann Hardesty is the most outspoken progressive on the City Council, something that infuriates the business community in the city. They’re hoping to turn her polarizing stand for defunding the police into an opportunity for either Vadim Mozyrsky or Rene Gonzalez. Gonzalez is a bit more conservative—he has the police union and the Oregonian endorsement—but Mozyrsky being so openly a conduit for business interests may not make him much of a stronger opponent.