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U.S. Senate
Jeff Merkley
Democrat
Jeff Merkley, whose homespun manner always concealed great ambition, has served as Oregon’s junior U.S. senator since unseating Gordon Smith in 2008. Six years ago, he thought about giving up the seat to run for president, hoping to become the Democratic Party nominee challenging Donald Trump. Last year, he considered retiring altogether but decided he had one more term in him. In many ways, he’s still running against Trump.
Merkley, 69, isn’t thinking about his nominal opposition in the primary or his eventual race against a Republican challenger (see our next endorsement). He clearly views the president as his actual adversary. He came to our office with a handbill titled, “The Ten Rules of Trump’s Authoritarian Playbook.” In the leaflet, he argues—rather persuasively—that the masked agents, shameless corruption, and political prosecutions engendered by the White House are taking the nation down a path already traveled by Orbán, Maduro and Erdoğan.
“People think of democracies dying at the hands of men with guns,” Merkley writes. “But, in the modern era, they more often die at the hands of elected officials who erode the separation of powers to solidify a strongman state.”
This is the sort of thing Merkley’s been saying for a while, with increasing intensity and sometimes at great length: Last October, he spoke on the Capitol floor for 22 consecutive hours. He has grown adept at the filibuster—in our hour with him, we struggled to get a word in edgewise. Still, he’s not wrong, and his diagram of how Trump attacks voting by mail as a means to disenfranchise tens of thousands of Americans was so chilling it inspired this week’s cover illustration.
If we were nitpicking, we might fault Merkley for not doing more during the Biden years to buttress the federal government’s safeguards against a second Trump presidency. But if he’s seemed a little like an onlooker at a car crash, well, who hasn’t? He serves on the Senate Appropriations Committee—Congress’ pocketbook—and while earmarking $2 million for the California condor recovery program at the Oregon Zoo isn’t going to save democracy, that doesn’t make it meaningless. Merkley has become something like a statesman in this shabby age.
In the primary, Merkley faces Paul Damian Wells, a retired electrical engineer who is peeved that Oregon Democrats aren’t giving third parties and independent voters a sufficient voice in primary elections. We concede his point, but he otherwise lacks policy prescriptions.
Merkley’s biggest kitchen fail: He burns grilled cheese sandwiches. “In which I say, ‘I will not get distracted. I will be back in three or four minutes to flip this over.’ And then I absolutely get distracted.”
U.S. Senate
David Brock Smith
Republican
It’s unlikely a Republican will unseat U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, who hasn’t dipped below 55% of the vote in his two successful runs for Congress since his narrow victory over incumbent Gordon Smith in 2008. But Republicans’ best bet to do so this time is state Sen. David Brock Smith (R-Port Orford).
Brock Smith, 49, currently represents Curry County and parts of Coos, Douglas and Jackson counties in Senate District 1. We disagree with him on plenty. He’s an outspoken supporter of President Trump; when we asked him if he disagreed with anything Trump had done in his second term, Brock Smith, as the kids say, had no notes. Still, he’s the most serious candidate by a long shot.
Brock Smith has deep roots on the coast. He worked for years in his family’s restaurant business before entering government life; he spent time serving on local boards and in elected positions, including Port Orford city councilor, Port Orford-Langlois School Board member, and chair of the Curry County Board of Commissioners. He joined the Oregon House in 2017 as a junior legislator, and was appointed in 2023 by county commissioners to fill the vacated seat of Sen. Dallas Heard, who had resigned. Brock Smith won reelection in 2024.
Despite being to the right of many of his Republican colleagues, Brock Smith developed a reputation for working across the aisle on bills targeting rural counties, including Senate Bill 872 in 2023, which increased cooperation between the feds and the state on wildfire prevention, and Senate Bill 498, which allowed an exclusion from the estate tax for the first $15 million of a farming, fishing or forestry property’s value.
Brock Smith has three notable opponents in the primary. Brent Barker has worn as many hats—fitness center designer, real estate broker, dispute mediator, and advance man for the president—as he has made failed bids for state office. Jo Rae Perkins is a former real estate broker who is on her sixth run for Congress. The previous five were unsuccessful and, in 2020, Perkins became a vocal adherent of the QAnon conspiracy theory, which she still espouses. A soft-spoken veteran out of Grants Pass named Russ McAlmond showed a conscience by condemning some of Trump’s dehumanizing remarks about immigrants, but he doesn’t have much experience in public life. Brock Smith is the clear choice to face Merkley.
Brock Smith’s biggest kitchen fail: He routinely burns cheesy bread under the broiler.
WHAT’S NEXT? The winners of these primaries face each other in November.
U.S. House District 1
(Clatsop, Columbia, Tillamook and Washington counties, parts of Multnomah County)
Suzanne Bonamici
Democrat
Was Suzanne Bonamici made for these times? That question has followed the congresswoman since President Donald Trump first took office in 2016, ushering in a new, frightening era of American politics. At the time, Bonamici was winning her third term representing a district that fans out from Portland’s West Hills to cover a hefty slab of the Washington County prefab, Coastal Range timberlands, and North Coast playgrounds from Buoy Beer in Astoria down to Pelican Brewing in Pacific City. Now Trump is in his second term and Bonamici, 71, is seeking her seventh. America feels much worse. Bonamici seems the same, a studious former lawyer playing defense on the margins of educational policy while Trump turns the Department of Education into a weapon against free speech and racial justice.
It’s a sign of how completely Bonamici has been sidelined that she counts among her achievements of the past two years protesting in the streets outside that agency, as well as filing amicus briefs when states sue the White House. The biggest headlines she’s made in the past two years were when her husband, U.S. District Judge Michael Simon, recused himself from Oregon’s successful lawsuit to block Trump from sending National Guard troops to Portland, because her outspoken opposition to the president’s military gambit could call Simon’s impartiality into question. Still, she has scored little victories here and there—like sticking a provision into a NASA funding package that will help forecast wildfire conditions—and she is the only member of the House delegation with firsthand memories of Trump 1.0. (“It was bad then,” she says, “but it’s much worse now.”) Hopefully, she can show others a trick or two.
For the second consecutive primary, Bonamici faces principled single-issue opposition from Jamil Ahmad, 47, an Intel engineer who opposes sending aid to any state with an official religion—that means Israel, but also Egypt and Jordan. Bonamici has far more to offer.
Bonamici’s biggest kitchen fail: She was baking an apple crisp, added a little water, and the dish exploded in the oven. “I really wanted to eat it, but I couldn’t because it had glass in it.”
WHAT’S NEXT? The winner of this primary likely faces Barbara Kahl, who is running without significant opposition in the Republican primary.
U.S. House District 5
(Clackamas, Deschutes and Linn counties)
Janelle Bynum
Democrat
In 2024, longtime state lawmaker Janelle Bynum, a Democrat, defeated one-term U.S. Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Ore.) to represent this oddly shaped congressional district, which stretches from South Portland down toward Marion County, before whipping in a thin line across the Cascades to swallow up Sisters, Redmond and Bend. (Chavez-DeRemer soon made herself at home in President Trump’s scandal-happy Cabinet; her tenure as labor secretary lasted about as long as an exploding cigar.)
Bynum, 51, a former electrical engineer from Happy Valley who co-owned four McDonald’s restaurants near Portland’s eastern city limits, sponsored 18 bills in her first term in Congress. They didn’t go far. One, which passed the House, would commission a study of the effects of drone incursions on wildfire suppression efforts. She sits on the House Financial Services Committee, and has found issues of common concern with Republicans—most recently regarding first-time homeownership with Rep. Jimmy Patronis (R-Fla.).
On some questions she can be elusive. Asked what Amazon wanted for its contribution to her campaign, she said it sought an open-minded listener. Notably, she was among Democrats who supported Laken Riley Act, which instructed the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to detain suspected undocumented immigrants accused of a range of crimes. Bynum says she has been outspoken on “the trash that ICE has engaged in,” but saw the bill as consistent with her desire for “fast, fair and final” immigration policies.
Her challenger from the left is Zeva Rosenbaum, 31, who says she was laid off from her communications job in the fall, has no prior government experience, and has never run for office. She joined a small activist group in 2024 that had a group chat for helping marginalized communities. She says it ate itself alive. We respect her decision to forgo corporate campaign support, and the “big three” issues she highlights on her campaign website are genuinely intriguing: artificial intelligence, affordability and government corruption. Unfortunately, she had little of substance to say about them.
Bynum’s track record as a thoughtful, professional and independent-minded operator makes her the clear choice for Democrats in this key swing district.
Bynum’s biggest kitchen fail: Forgot to turn on the Crock-Pot. “When you have four kids, that’s a fail.”
U.S. House District 5
(Clackamas, Deschutes and Linn counties)
Patti Adair
Republican
Two Republicans are vying for a chance to make District 5 red again. The district contains 35% unaffiliated voters, trailed by 31% registered Democrats and 27% registered Republicans. In a state where few congressional seats are easily flipped, this is the closest thing the state has to a swing district.
Patti Adair is a Deschutes County commissioner with a background in finance, having worked for years as an accountant. Adair, 74, lives on a horse ranch near Sisters and grew up in Heppner in Morrow County. Approaching the end of her second term on the county board, she has formed a bloc with the other Republican on the three-member body—together, they killed an expansion of county health plan coverage to include abortion and eliminated the county’s volunteer diversity, equity and inclusion committee.
Endorsed by a slate of Republican lawmakers, Adair says she wants to serve at the federal level to make expenses like groceries, utilities and health care more affordable for Oregonians—something she says Bynum has failed to do.
She faces Jonathan Lockwood, 36, a law student who for years worked in communications for Republican legislators and conservative think tanks, both in Colorado and in Oregon. His website is populated by brief clips of him taking potshots at Bynum, and it feels as if he’s searching for a viral moment. He says his main priorities are making Oregon more affordable, slashing taxes, and reviving the timber industry. He makes inflammatory remarks about trans youth, immigrants, and women in politics (he recently referred to former Gov. Kate Brown and former state Sen. Elizabeth Steiner as “witches”). He’s also never held public office.
We think Adair is the clear choice.
Adair’s biggest kitchen fail: She wouldn’t meet with us, so we may never know.
WHAT’S NEXT? The winners of these two primaries face each other in November.
