A Democrat who could make history — and help her party win back the House

Jul

2024

NEWS ARTICLE

A Democrat who could make history — and help her party win back the House

July 12, 2024

President Biden’s troubles, as well as a Senate map that has put his party on defense, have given the fight for control of the House new importance for Democrats. They need to pick up only four seats to reclaim control of the chamber. My colleague Maggie Astor has this exclusive dispatch on one of the candidates their party is pinning its hopes on.

In 2018, when Janelle Bynum was the only Black Democrat in the Oregon House of Representatives, a voter called the police to report her as a suspicious person while she knocked on doors for her re-election campaign.

Now, Bynum, the Democratic nominee in Oregon’s Fifth Congressional District, is trying to become the first Black person to represent her state in Congress.

The district, which stretches from the suburbs of liberal Portland to the outdoorsy city of Bend, is exactly the kind of place Democrats think can help them win the House. It’s currently represented by a Republican, Representative Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who narrowly defeated a progressive Democrat in 2022. It’s also where Biden beat Trump by about nine points in 2020.

To reclaim the district, Democrats in Washington set their sights on Bynum. Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, personally spoke with her and urged her to run — catching her at a time when, tired of tough statehouse races in a swing district, she was considering leaving politics altogether.

As a lawmaker, Bynum has been a vocal supporter of police reform and of liberalizing drug laws, policy positions that Republicans are attacking her for. But her résumé and background stood out to national Democrats. She is a four-term state legislator, a former electrical engineer, a business owner and a mother of four — and she has beaten Chavez-DeRemer before, twice, in tough elections for the State House.

“We viewed her as one of the strongest potential candidates in the nation to win a seat that could flip control of the United States Congress,” Jeffries told me.

The race offers insight into both parties’ strategies as they battle for the nation’s few remaining swing districts.

During the primary, Democrats worked hard to help Bynum defeat Jamie McLeod-Skinner, the progressive who had lost to Chavez-DeRemer in 2022. Bynum prevailed in a landslide, even though a super PAC that appeared to have ties to Republicans dumped $340,000 into the race to support McLeod-Skinner in its final days.

For Republicans, the question is whether an incumbent like Chavez-DeRemer can separate herself from Trump in a district that voted against him — or if she even wants to. Chavez-DeRemer broke with her party more than almost any other House Republican last year, according to Roll Call, a fact that she says undermines Bynum’s description of her as a “rubber stamp” for the MAGA agenda. But she also backed Trump for president in March.

In an interview with me — her first with a national publication since winning the nomination — Bynum did not dwell on the fact that she would be Oregon’s first Black member of Congress. Instead, she cast her campaign largely as a way to help Democrats defend little-d democracy against Trump and his allies.

“Everyone needs to sacrifice some level of their time, their energy, their commitment to investing in our democracy,” she said.

Still, she noted that her mother was part of a segregated high-school graduating class and recalled the excitement with which her children’s classmates responded to seeing her photo in a voter guide.

“Let’s acknowledge that, that I’m literally one generation away from segregation,” she said. “So that’s a thing. But more importantly, if we’re looking back, I think we should also look forward.”

— Maggie Astor