Both women are engineers and business owners. Both are daughters of teachers. One is a mother of four, the other a stepmother of four. And they’re locked in a primary race for one of the country’s most closely watched and competitive seats in Congress.
Jamie McLeod-Skinner, 56, and Janelle Bynum, 49, are vying for the Democratic nomination in Oregon’s 5th Congressional District. The district, redrawn in 2021, stretches from Milwaukie, Lake Oswego and Oregon City south and west across rural Clackamas and Marion counties, then tacks on an extended tail that takes in Redmond and Bend.
The winner of the May primary will face off in November against Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a first-term lawmaker running for reelection with no primary challenger. In 2022, Chavez-DeRemer snatched the redrawn seat from Democrats in a narrow win, helping to establish Republican control in the U.S. House.
The nonpartisan Center for Politics at the University of Virginia ranks the race for the seat as a “toss up” come November.
“At least at the federal level, it’s going to be the hottest race in Oregon,” said the center’s J. Miles Coleman.
McLeod-Skinner, who lost to Chavez-DeRemer 49% to 51% in 2022, hopes to stage a comeback, as national Democrats plan to spend big this fall to try to defeat the Republican. Bynum, a four-term state lawmaker mounting her first congressional campaign, argues she’s the better fit for the job.
Bynum touts her experience securing passage of state laws and casts herself as a practical progressive who understands the need to marry idealism with voters’ kitchen table priorities. McLeod-Skinner paints herself as a much needed rural Democrat who is in-the-know about perspectives in red and purple areas and can work across the aisle to get things done.
If elected, Bynum would be the first Black person to represent Oregon in Congress. McLeod-Skinner, a lesbian, could also make history as Oregon’s first out LGBTQ member of Congress. Eddy Morales, a gay man and Gresham city councilor running in Oregon’s 3rd Congressional District, would also notch that distinction if he wins.
McLeod-Skinner and Bynum have sniped at one another in news and endorsement interviews, taking aim at each other’s claims and voting records. A poll released by the Bynum campaign this week showed the pair in a statistical tie, with nearly 30% of Democratic voters still undecided.
Bynum has an edge in fundraising and the backing of Oregon’s top Democrats. The national Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which backed McLeod-Skinner in her last race against Chavez-DeRemer, has also thrown its support behind Bynum. The committee spent $1.85 million opposing Chavez-DeRemer in 2022 but only $95,000 to promote McLeod-Skinner, according to Open Secrets, a nonprofit group that tracks money in politics. It has yet to report serious spending on this year’s race, federal filings show.
McLeod-Skinner makes a point of rejecting corporate funds and boasts that her campaign is fueled by grassroots Oregonians.
Roughly 95% of McLeod-Skinner’s fundraising has come from individual donors, compared with about 81% for Bynum, according to the most recent filings from the end of March.
In total, Bynum had raised more than $942,000, roughly $290,000 more than McLeod-Skinner’s nearly $652,000.
The 314 Action Fund, a national group that backs liberal scientists and doctors, has also spent about $220,000 to support Bynum’s campaign, filings as of Friday show.
Both tout victories
Bynum frequently reminds voters that she beat Chavez-DeRemer in two Oregon House races, besting the Republican in House District 51 in 2016 when the seat was open and again as the incumbent in 2018.
“I am the candidate - the only candidate - that has beaten Lori Chavez-DeRemer not once, but twice and I’m ready to do it a third time,” Bynum said in an editorial board interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive last month.
McLeod-Skinner points out that in her 2022 campaign against Chavez-DeRemer, she beat the Republican in Clackamas County by a wider margin than Bynum did in 2016 or 2018. She also won big in Deschutes County, where she lives.
Both candidates are correct. But the bigger picture is more complex.
Bynum’s wins over Chavez-DeRemer were largely driven by the support of Multnomah County voters, whose relatively small numbers in Congressional District 5 won’t carry her to victory.
In 2016, Bynum beat Chavez-DeRemer by just 546 votes, outperforming Chavez-DeRemer in Multnomah County but losing to the Republican in Clackamas County. In 2018, Bynum won the election by a handier margin of more than 2,000 votes. Again Bynum dominated Multnomah and, on her second attempt, managed to barely edge Chavez-DeRemer in Clackamas, winning that county 50.0% to 49.8%, a margin of just 26 votes.
Performing well in Clackamas County, which contains 41% of 5th District voters, will be key to victory this fall.
And McLeod-Skinner beat Chavez-DeRemer in Clackamas County in fall 2022 by a slightly wider margin than Bynum did in 2016 or 2018. McLeod-Skinner won 50.7% of the county’s vote to Chavez-DeRemer’s 49.0%.
The Deschutes County resident also carried that county, winning about 53% of the vote. Ultimately, Chavez-DeRemer’s dominance in Linn and Marion Counties drove her to victory. The Republican picked up over 66% of votes in both areas.
McLeod-Skinner argues her history of living and working in rural Oregon better position her than Bynum to win votes across the district.
“Winning Oregon’s 5th Congressional District involves being able to win both in the metro area but also outside the metro area,” McLeod-Skinner said in the editorial board interview. “My track record of success in all of Clackamas County, also in central Oregon and Deschutes County is going to be key to being able to not just win this district but also serve Oregonians well.”
The makeup of voters in the 5th District this spring is largely unchanged from the first time Chavez-DeRemer won the district. About 27% of voters are registered Republicans while about 31% are Democrats.
Chavez De-Remer now has the advantage of being an incumbent. She also had $1.87 million in her war chest at the end of March – more than twice the cash available to Bynum and McLeod-Skinner combined.
Despite those advantages, McLeod-Skinner argues that running against the Republican lawmaker will be easier this time around. Chavez-DeRemer now has a congressional voting history that Democrats believe they can play up to turn moderate voters away from her.
Mother, business owner, lawmaker
Bynum frequently draws on her experience as a mother.
She first ran for state office in 2016, when she had four school-aged children, because of her desire to improve the state’s education system, she has said. Ask her about policies, and she’ll recount a recent conversation with one of her kids, who include an aspiring dentist soon to graduate from college, a running back on the University of Oregon football team and two teenagers.
“At the end of the day, to me, it is about our children,” Bynum said during a City Club of Portland forum last month. “Are they safe? Are they nourished? Do they have access to a high quality education? Will they have better opportunities than their parents?”
Bynum has spent eight years in the Legislature. In 2019 she sponsored legislation that cracked down on racist jeers or ridicule at high school sports competitions. And in 2021 she emerged as a leading figure in police reform and helped shepherd through a slate of law enforcement accountability bills.
Raised in Washington D.C., Bynum earned a degree in electrical engineering at Florida A&M University and later received an MBA from the University of Michigan. She worked at General Motors before moving to Oregon with her husband in the early aughts to work for her mother-in-law, the first Black owner of a McDonald’s franchise in Oregon. Bynum and her husband now run four McDonald’s locations and live in Happy Valley.
Bynum argues that her focus on job creation and the economics of local communities sets her apart from McLeod-Skinner. She co-chaired a legislative committee on semiconductors in 2023 and sponsored the Oregon CHIPS Act that set aside more than $200 million for grants and loans to semiconductor companies and funded research and land development. Oregon officials expect the efforts could help create more than 6,000 new jobs, according to a report by economics firm ECONorthwest. Bynum also sponsored an $80 million effort in 2021 to recruit and retain more mental health workers from diverse backgrounds.
“My focus is on quality of life,” she said. “If you have a very strong employer in an area, with that comes very good health care, with that comes very good schools, with that comes a demand for good parks.”
If elected, Bynum said a top priority would be winning federal dollars to build Oregon infrastructure – including roads, water and broadband – which would in turn help build housing and grow businesses. She would work in Congress to bolster the availability of mental health supports, deliver special education funding and find “solutions to stamp out student debt,” she said.
McLeod-Skinner has criticized Bynum for her 2019 vote against extending the time frame for sexual assault victims to file civil lawsuits over their injuries from two years to seven years. Bynum was the sole House member who voted no. She said her vote was designed to flag potential ramifications.
The legal system needs to do more to support sexual abuse survivors, Bynum said at the time. But she argued that extending the statute of limitations that far didn’t encourage “efficient and expeditious” justice. She also raised questions about how far back a potential defendant should be expected to remember their and others’ precise conduct. Potential impacts on falsely accused individuals are an important consideration, she said, particularly for African Americans.
“This body is not only charged with the task of protecting victims, it is also charged with the responsibility of protecting justice and the accused,” she said in a speech on the House floor. “It’s not popular to protect the accused, but it is our job.”
Senators ultimately amended the extended timeline from seven years to five to match the statute of limitations for other offenses. Bynum supported that version of the bill.
Top individual donors to Bynum’s campaign all herald from out of state. A physician in Massachusetts, a bank executive in Austin and an investor in Florida are among those who have given the maximum $6,600 toward her primary and general campaigns.
Her top committee donors include the House Majority PAC, a Democratic super PAC that has given Bynum $10,000, and the Jobs, Education & Families First PAC affiliated with New York Democrat Hakeem Jeffries, which also gave her $10,000. More than $170,000 of Bynum’s funding has come from committee contributions.
The 314 Action Fund, which picked engineering degree-holder Bynum over engineering degree-holder McLeod-Skinner, called Bynum the “strongest candidate in the race.”
“The path to a Democratic majority runs through Oregon’s 5th Congressional District,” press secretary Adelaide Bullock said in a statement. “(Bynum) has already beaten Chavez-DeRemer twice, and we’re looking forward to a hat-trick this November.”
Manager of international aid, cities, water districts
McLeod-Skinner has a resume that spans careers and continents.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering and a master’s in regional planning, then two decades later went to law school. She helped repair schools and hospitals for the International Rescue Committee in post-war Bosnia and Kosovo, then managed refugee resettlement for that organization in California. She worked as an environmental planner for the Santa Clara Valley Water District and briefly as city manager of Phoenix, with a population of about 3,800, before being fired on a 3-2 City Council vote. She was later hired as interim city manager in nearby Talent, population 5,400, to help with recovery after wildfires devastated that community in 2020.
“The core underlying thing for me has truly been service: showing up and doing the hard work that’s needed,” she told The Oregonian/OregonLive in an interview.
McLeod-Skinner, who lives with her wife in rural Terrebonne near Redmond, has been a serial political candidate. She served on the Santa Clara City Council for eight years until 2012, ran credibly but unsuccessfully for Congress in Oregon’s 2nd District against then U.S Rep. Greg Walden in 2018 and lost a bid for the Democratic nomination for secretary of state to Shemia Fagan in 2020. She then defeated seven-term incumbent U.S. Rep. Kurt Schrader for the Democratic nomination in a redrawn 5th District in 2022 before losing to Chavez-DeRemer.
She argues that she’s Democrats’ best pick for the district because she has built relationships across its 5,000 square miles and can bridge partisan and geographic divides. McLeod-Skinner says she has brought Democrats and Republicans together over racial justice and equity policies as a member of the Jefferson County Education Service District and convened bipartisan meetings on drought issues.
“People are exhausted with the bickering match and the political divisiveness. People are hungry for working together for solutions,” McLeod-Skinner said. “That’s the work I’ve done.”
McLeod-Skinner says her formative career experiences involved environmental issues and emergency response. She’s a member of the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board, a state agency that works to conserve the state’s rivers, wetlands and natural areas. She also works on a limited basis for the state’s Department of Human Services’ Office of Resilience and Emergency Management to help establish resilience networks for communities in case of disaster.
If elected to Congress, McLeod-Skinner says she’d push to include heat domes in the categories of natural disasters that merit a federal disaster response. She’d work to reauthorize the farm bill, which she says is being held hostage by Republican lawmakers, threatening access to food stamps for needy Oregonians and access to loan programs and subsidies that Oregon’s small farmers rely on. McLeod-Skinner also hopes to push for a renewable energy grid that could be a financial boon for Oregon if it can harness solar and wind technology to sell energy to other states.
“In Congress, I’ll focus both on the kitchen table issues but also the big picture,” McLeod-Skinner said at a forum hosted by the City Club of Portland last month.
McLeod-Skinner has been dogged by complaints, many of them from unnamed individuals, that she bullied some campaign staffers. The Oregon Capitol Chronicle reported last year that several staffers accused McLeod-Skinner of berating and yelling at them, and former campaign staffers say they removed a driver from McLeod-Skinner’s campaign because he feared physical violence from her, as first reported by Willamette Week.
Reporting by The Oregonian/OregonLive found a complicated picture of mutual distrust between McLeod-Skinner and the former driver. She denies being violent toward him and said he made false claims against her to distract from his own poor performance on the campaign trail. Witnesses said they saw only cordial behavior between the two. In response to criticism from former staff members who spoke to the Capitol Chronicle, McLeod-Skinner referred that news outlet to several former employees who spoke highly of her as a leader.
“I always make an effort to learn and grow and be a better leader,” McLeod-Skinner said in an interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive. “We’re doing a lot of incredible work. It’s hard work. It’s not for everyone. I can apologize profusely to anyone who has not felt supported or respected.”
Top individual donors to McLeod-Skinner’s campaign include a Lake-Oswego based professor at Simon Fraser University, a Hillsboro engineer and a tax practitioner from California who have each given the maximum allowed. Of the $31,500 she’s received from political action committees, $10,000 came from the Equality PAC, one of several groups backing LGBTQ candidates for Congress that are supporting McLeod-Skinner.
Sami Edge covers higher education and politics for The Oregonian. You can reach her at sedge@oregonian.com or (503) 260-3430.
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