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House District 27
(Cedar Hills, Beaverton)
Tammy Carpenter
Democrat
State Rep. Ken Helm (D-Beaverton), a mild-mannered land use whiz, has opted not to seek reelection in this deep blue House district, which forms a “V” down from West Slope into Cedar Hills and much of Beaverton. Two qualified competitors vie to succeed him on the Democratic ticket.
One is Tammy Carpenter, 55, whose Beaverton School Board seat, which she’s held since 2023, is her only position in public office (she ran unsuccessfully against Helm in 2022). Her name took a turn through the news last year, when school district investigators looked into social media posts she’d made—on a personal account—condemning Israel’s war in Gaza. The investigation cleared her of any wrongdoing. But some in her orbit haven’t done her any favors: “I am Hamas, we are all Hamas,” said a Portland State University professor at a rally organized for Carpenter’s cause. (The professor contends this was meant as sarcasm.)
Of course, Carpenter’s politics run far broader. An anesthesiologist for two decades—her residency was at Oregon Health & Science University—she formed her political proclivities not just by working within our contorted health care hellscape, but as a mother whose children’s rents are higher than her mortgage. After Trump’s first presidency, she joined the Democratic Socialists of America, she tells us, as a way to organize against fascism, and for programs like universal health care and as a serious response to the climate crisis.
Carpenter’s opponent is Ashley Hartmeier-Prigg. A current Beaverton City Council member and former member of the Tualatin Hills Park & Recreation District board, Hartmeier-Prigg, 41, centers a liberal platform of affordability. She offers a grounded take on housing. “No one’s going to build the housing if they can’t make a profit out of it,” she says. Unsurprisingly, she has the support of the Democratic establishment, not to mention several trade unions that, we imagine, whether through data centers or housing developments, think she will get them more work soon.
Carpenter lacks Hartmeier-Prigg’s experience as a politician. She also lacks her polish. Yet we are endorsing her for two main reasons. One is simple: We think the statehouse would benefit from the presence of a physician who speaks fluently and sober-mindedly about health care. (When we asked whether she’d prefer the Oregon Health Plan to cull members, cut provider pay, or offer fewer services, Carpenter matter-of-factly answered option 3 and offered compelling reasons why.)
Second, just as Republicans at their best add productive tensions to an Oregon Legislature dominated by Democrats, we think Carpenter’s left-wing presence would make it more of a thinking place. We don’t say this naively—she’s backed by unions like SEIU that already wield considerable power, and asked about DSA’ s reputation for dogmatism, Carpenter acknowledges some members can be “a little much.” But Carpenter is no caricature; her values are sound and she sees building relationships within her caucus—and across the aisle—as paramount to her success in the Legislature. We recommend you go out on a limb and give her your vote.
Carpenter’s biggest kitchen fail: She and her husband tried to make black bean dip, but added too much cumin. They added four cans of black beans to try to balance out the mistake, to no avail. “The lesson learned there is that sometimes you’ve just got to eat the fact that that’s going in the garbage,” she says.
WHAT’S NEXT? The winner of this primary faces G. Mark Norman, who is running unopposed in the Republican primary.
House District 29
(Hillsboro, Cornelius, Forest Grove)
Mark Watson
Democrat
Rep. Susan McLain, a former schoolteacher, has represented this comfortably blue patch of Washington County for six terms. She hasn’t earned a seventh.
Let’s get this out of the way: There’s not much to distinguish McLain’s challenger, Mark Watson. He’s a longtime Hillsboro School Board member has some acquaintance with the Capitol, having worked as a legislative aide serving offices in both the House and Senate. (His background is in technology.) We struggled to find much daylight between McLain, 76, and Watson, 59, on policy. Both are avid champions for school funding—Watson emphasizes revenue reform a little more than McLain—and they have similar stances on creating jobs. Both seek modest expansions of the urban growth boundary. Were he facing a strong incumbent, we’d say Watson didn’t make a case for himself.
But he faces an incumbent whose latest term has been a fiasco. As chair of the House Transportation Committee, McLain played a key role in fumbling the top priority of the 2025 legislative session: a funding bill for the Oregon Department of Transportation whose last-minute failure embarrassed Democrats. She failed to build enough support for her package, even as her party held commanding supermajorities in both chambers. (The compromise version is about to die via the ballot box.) She tells us she couldn’t have worked harder or talked to more people, which isn’t exactly reassuring. If this was the best she could do, we wonder if McLain is any longer capable of forging the connections needed to push meaningful policy through the Legislature.
Worse, McLain co-chairs the Joint Committee on the Interstate 5 Bridge—perhaps the only project going worse than the ODOT funding package. In less than four years, as the Oregon Journalism Project revealed, the estimated cost of the project has more than doubled, from $6 billion to $13.6 billion. The replacement bridge may never span the Columbia River, but McLain appears to be in denial. She says the project has been “successful” because “we’ve met every target and goal we’re supposed to.” She refuses to concede costs have ballooned, or admit that her fellow committee members were outraged at project officials for keeping the new numbers under wraps. Discussing the bridge with her is like watching The Office’s Michael Scott drive his car into a lake on the instructions of his GPS.
McLain’s detachment may explain how Watson amassed an impressive number of local endorsements, including from all three mayors of cities in his House district, and all three city council presidents. “I think she’s lost the community,” he says of McLain. “We can’t keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result.” (McLain, for her part, brushed off the loss of those endorsements, and offered little insight as to why she thought she’d lost them.)
McLain’s policy failures are frustrating. Her refusal to acknowledge them is disqualifying. It’s time to correct course and back the guy who’s racked up the support of the people he’d represent. Watson it is.
Watson’s biggest kitchen fail: As a banquet cook at a resort one Mother’s Day, he made more than 1,850 eggs Benedict. A couple of bystanders found him covered in hollandaise, stuffing Benedicts into his mouth with his bare hands. (He doesn’t remember how many he ate.) “It was very embarrassing,” he says.
WHAT’S NEXT? No Republican is running, so the winner of the Democratic primary likely gets the seat. (They could face a third-party challenger.)
House District 31
(Columbia County)
Tom Forest
Democrat
Voter registration numbers in House District 31—which covers much of Columbia County, including Vernonia, St. Helens and Scappoose—indicate only a slight advantage for Republicans. But if the candidates in the Democratic primary are any indication, the party’s all but given up the race already.
We recommend you cast your ballot for Tom Forest, 67, a former software engineer who says he entered the race after receiving a mass email from the Democratic Party of Oregon on March 9 informing him that no Dem had filed for the seat. Forest has limited experience in government, serving on the Banks School Board and as a volunteer on the district’s budget committee. He’s running to better fund public schools, modify the corporate tax, and establish public transportation options in rural parts of the state.
Neither Forest nor his opponent, Rebecca Schaleger, 58, a lawyer with a private practice in juvenile law, is mounting a serious campaign. At the time of our endorsement interview, Forest had a $5 campaign contribution and Schaleger one endorsement—from the Center for Freethought Equality, a D.C. advocacy group backing humanist and atheist candidates. Neither had established political action committees. (To his credit, Forest set one up the same day.)
Schaleger’s legal experience and prior government service—she advised juvenile law attorneys—might better qualify her for the role. But she’s currently tangled in a messy split with a former law firm partner, who among many allegations claims Schaleger breached her fiduciary duties. Schaleger denies the allegations. But in a race where we’re not singing either candidate’s praises, we’ll opt for the one with less baggage. Vote for Forest.
Forest’s biggest kitchen fail: He got distracted making rice and forgot to turn the burner down. He lifted the lid to an explosion. “I’ve only done this thousands of times,” he says.
WHAT’S NEXT? The winner of this primary faces Rep. Darcey Edwards, the Republican incumbent.
House District 35
(Beaverton, Aloha)
Farrah Chaichi
Democrat
Socialism? In the suburbs? Rep. Farrah Chaichi has made that notion seem almost mundane in Washington County, representing a House district that spans west from downtown Beaverton into Aloha. Here, registered Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly 3 to 1, and Chaichi is running with nominal primary opposition, meaning she’s all but guaranteed to clinch a third term in November.
Chaichi, 40, is one of just a handful of state legislators openly affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America. (She’d like to clear up our reports that she had a photo of Karl Marx hanging in her office: She says it belonged to a staffer.) In her two terms in office, “I’ve definitely shown that you can do what you think is right and weather the blowback,” she says.
But the idealistic Chaichi also seems a little more tethered to political practicality this go ’round. Since her explosive freshman term, when she was the lone legislator to vote against recriminalizing fentanyl, she’s seemingly mellowed, making headlines this short session for a more constructive reason: She successfully championed a bill that restricts mask-wearing by federal immigration agents, among other law enforcement officers. (“No secret police” is an ideal that leftists and liberals can share.) “You’re not going to change a whole system by yourself, and certainly not in four years,” she says. While she’s still a touch more radical than this newspaper often leans, we respect that she’s becoming a steady voice for the left flank of the Democratic Party—and she’s clear about her values of putting the proletariat first.
Her opponent, Johan Arteaga Cruz, is—somehow—running to Chaichi’s left. It is not a serious campaign. Beyond filing a Voters’ Pamphlet statement, in which he touts embracing “left-wing nationalism,” he has largely been missing in action, and has no political action committee. We’ll go with Chaichi.
Chaichi’s biggest kitchen fail: Back in high school, it took her and a friend almost an hour and a half to make skillet lasagna, even though all the dish’s components were premade.
WHAT’S NEXT? The winner of this primary faces Daniel Martin, who is running unopposed in the Republican primary.
House District 38
(Lake Oswego)
Daniel Nguyen
Democrat
It’s been a little while since Rep. Daniel Nguyen has enjoyed any company in his bids to represent Portland’s toniest suburbs: Lake Oswego, Dunthorpe, and some hilly bits of the city south of the Terwilliger Curves. The owner of three Bambuza restaurants took this seat after a nail-biter of a Democratic primary in 2022 (winning by a mere 28 votes) and an easy general election victory, then faced no competition in 2024.
But the ease of his reelection belies the suspicion with which progressives view him. The last time WW polled Salem insiders for our Good, Bad and Awful rankings in 2023, business groups praised Nguyen while lefties called him “a Republican wrapped in a Democratic voter registration card.” Little wonder he chairs the House Committee on Economic Development, Small Business and Trade, and in the short session served as the point man for Gov. Tina Kotek’s economy-boosting agenda. (His own pet project, a bill that would have expanded the kinds of businesses eligible for state CHIPS Act grants, died in Ways and Means.)
This explains why Nguyen, 47, now faces a challenger from his left: John “Waz” Wasielewski, a teacher at Lake Oswego Middle School with vibes strongly recalling Ryan Gosling in Hail Mary. Wasielewski, 29, says Nguyen hasn’t given enough attention to schools— by that, he largely means funding them more. The race is a kinder, gentler echo of the teacher union revolt happening in Senate District 15, where an Oregon Department of Education employee is challenging a Democratic senator who dared to question how schools are funded.
We think Waz makes some good points (especially about data centers, the controversy of the moment) but he gets squirrely on the details of a substitute vision. Nguyen, meanwhile, points out that with the corporate activity tax, lawmakers tied school funding to sales receipts—so the most effective way he can boost that funding is by making Oregon a place where business booms. While that argument feels like an oversimplification, we’re sold—at least enough to give Nguyen another two years.
Nguyen’s biggest kitchen fail: He squeezed mayonnaise rather than condensed milk into his Vietnamese coffee.
WHAT’S NEXT? No Republican is running, so the winner of the Democratic primary likely gets the seat. (They could face a third-party challenger.)
House District 40
(Gladstone, Johnson City, Oregon City)
Charles Gallia
Democrat
Democrats have a significant voter registration advantage in this district, which encompasses some blue-collar ’burbs on both sides of Interstate 205. (Rep. Annessa Hartman opted in September not to seek reelection as she eyed a run for the Clackamas County Board of Commissioners. Shortly thereafter, she was diagnosed with stage 3 cervical cancer, forcing her to step away from political life altogether, at least temporarily. (Hartman found out April 24 that she is now cancer free, following intensive treatment.)
We recommend you cast your ballot for a familiar name. Charles Gallia, 68, is no stranger to running for state office. He’s run for some iteration of state office—through some redistricted variations—in 2016, 2018 and 2022, suffering a string of losses. In that time, we’ve grown fond of Gallia, who spent 17 years with the Oregon Health Authority and is a health care policy wonk. His presence in the House would be useful as legislators debate the future of the Oregon Health Plan, which covers 1 in 3 Oregonians but is reeling from federal cuts and questions about whom it can cover.
Gallia’s answer: everybody. He helped author Senate Bill 770, a 2019 bill that established a task force on universal health care and is poised to release a plan in September. That gives him a toehold on what will certainly be a hot topic in the coming years. He’s also committed to advocating for students with disabilities in the health system: The first bill he’d sponsor would eliminate red tape that keeps school districts from accessing Individuals with Disabilities Education Act funding.
Gallia’s opponent is Michael Sugar, 34, a high school history teacher and debate coach who is political action chair of the West Linn-Wilsonville Education Association. We’ve got nothing against Sugar, who characterizes himself as a coalition builder and proposed a refreshing way to rally lawmakers around a bill that would take the cap off of special education funding. But for all his prowess in debate, he was largely unwilling to explain why voters should pick him over Gallia. We think Gallia’s got a sense of purpose and is the right person for the moment at hand.
Gallia’s biggest kitchen fail: Gallia doesn’t believe in the saying, “as easy as apple pie,” because apple pie was not easy for him. “I burnt the crust,” he says, comparing his lattice work to something post-apocalyptic. The sugar and apples saved the day.
House District 40
(Gladstone, Johnson City, Oregon City)
Adam Baker
Republican
Two former House candidates return to the ballot seeking the Republican nomination to represent this Clackamas County district. Democrats have a meaningful voter registration edge here—but so did they in 2022, when Annessa Hartman prevailed by just 181 votes in the general election.
The Republican she defeated then was Adam Baker, a now-retired Gresham police officer who presently works as a real estate agent. We endorsed Baker, 51, in the 2022 Republican primary. We found him thoughtful and sober-minded, and his opponent was a Proud Boy.
He faces a stronger Republican primary opponent this time around. Sue Leslie, an Oregon City resident with a background in real estate and as a contractor for the telecom and utility industries, ran for this seat in the 2024 GOP primary, but was handily defeated by Michael Newgard. (Newgard later lost to Hartman in the general election.) We endorsed Newgard in that primary race, citing his stronger record of public service. But Leslie does have government and political experience of her own, including past work as the legislative assistant to Rep. Larry Sowa, as a volunteer on the Clackamas County Aging Services Advisory Council, and having served in various roles as a member of the state Republican party.
Leslie did not accept the invitation to speak with us, but her platform emphasizes a boilerplate GOP aversion to regulations and taxes, and a tough-on-crime mien. Baker, in his endorsement interview, recited some half-baked talking points of his own about taxes and fees being the reason life in Oregon is unaffordable, and about how government must to do more with less (“I’d have to think about that,” he said, when asked which state agency, besides the Oregon Department of Transportation, should run leaner). Still, his platform offers some substance and specificity, particularly regarding a desire to invest in addiction treatment and mental health services. And his law enforcement experience might help enrich state policy discussions. Baker is the Republicans’ best choice here.
Baker’s biggest kitchen fail: Attempting to make ramen after a long day, he put water on to boil—then fell asleep on the couch. “I wasn’t allowed to make ramen late at night anymore.”
WHAT’S NEXT? The winners of these two primaries face each other in November.
House District 51
(Canby, Estacada)
Darla Mead
Democrat
Democrats have all but conceded this rural crescent of Clackamas County as red-hat territory. State Rep. Christine Drazan (R-Canby) vacated the seat to run for governor, but faced with a 5,000-voter registration disadvantage, Democrats aren’t leaping at the chance to reclaim it for the first time since 2022. The state party has dropped just $1,000 into the race so far, a meager offering that shows just how uninspired Dems are to put their thumb on the scale.
The recipient of that in-kind contribution is Darla Mead, 60, an oncology nurse navigator who guides head, neck and lung cancer patients through treatment options at Oregon Health & Science University. This work has understandably soured her on private health insurers, and she’s running on a platform of universal health care. Her conviction is evident; her grasp on the mechanics of implementation less so. Still, she believes she can connect with her neighbors in Mulino: “I live in the woods,” she says. “I’m one of them.” Her experience packing up her ducks, chickens and horses to flee the 2020 wildfires certainly seems more in touch with her district than the platform of her opponent, Joseph Richards, a data consultant at Kaiser Permanente who wants to turn the Clackamas River basin into a tourist destination to rival Bend.
Mead’s biggest kitchen fail: She popped the lids on bottles of kombucha she had been fermenting, spraying her kitchen ceiling with “this purple goo” on her daughter’s birthday.
House District 51
(Canby, Estacada)
Matt Bunch
Republican
When Christine Drazan jumped to the state Senate, the Clackamas County Board of Commissioners unanimously appointed an insurance broker named Matt Bunch in her place. Now Bunch, who has served as the county’s Farm Bureau president and county fair board chair, faces a true election for the seat. He did not accept our invitation for an endorsement interview, which afforded us more time with his lone competitor, Dana Hindman-Allen.
Hindman-Allen, 56, is a real estate broker, former teaching assistant, and frequent candidate for public office. She seeks to repeal Oregon’s corporate activity tax—a large source of public education revenue—but desires lower teacher-student ratios and thinks the state should consider expanding eligibility for the Oregon Health Plan. To replace the lost revenue, she would have the government harvest dead trees in Oregon’s forests, and sell the wood for mulch and chips at reasonable prices. (More alarmingly, she cites as an example of her independence a 2022 lawsuit she and another candidate filed pro se, demanding an audit of elections they’d both lost five months before. She lost in federal court.)
It is unusual for us to endorse the office seeker who would not meet with us. And Bunch, 67, hasn’t exactly left us a trail of bread crumbs: He sponsored no bills in the 2026 short legislative session (to be fair, he was appointed right around the bill filing deadline). However, his record of volunteerism is laudable, his endorsements reflect the respect of the Republican establishment, and colleagues in the Legislature tell us Bunch got up to speed quickly and engaged constructively during the short session. Given the strong chance a Republican will win the general election, we’d prefer they have their feet on the ground.
Bunch’s biggest kitchen fail: Who can say?
WHAT’S NEXT? The winners of these two primaries face each other in November.
House District 52
(Cascade Locks, Hood River, The Dalles)
Nick Walden Poublon
Democrat
For two cycles, state Rep. Jeff Helfrich (R-Hood River), a former Portland police sergeant, has successfully fended off Democratic candidates in the Columbia River Gorge, even though Dems have a nearly 3,000-voter registration advantage in the district. Helfrich is making a bid to move up to the Senate, and four Democrats are lining up for another bite at the apple.
Bernard Seeger, 57, touts bureaucratic experience, including stints in the city halls of Gresham and Cascade Locks. His platform is short on specifics, except for a tourism tax that we’re not sure is a great idea. Hank Sanders, 25, is precocious and has the gift of gab—he once hosted a podcast for WW—but he abruptly pivoted from journalism gigs at the Chicago Tribune and New York Times to move into this district months before filing for office. Sanders casts himself as a son of the soil, but his father is Dr. Dave Sanders, the founder of ZoomCare, and his prior political experience is working as a legislative aide for his mother, state Sen. Lisa Reynolds (D-West Portland).
That leaves two contenders to whom we gave serious consideration. Nick Walden Poublon, 45, is a drug and alcohol prevention specialist for the city of Sandy. He was the Democratic nominee in 2024, narrowly losing to Helfrich. David Osborn, 43, is an environmental sociology professor at Portland State University and Mt. Hood Community College who touts his work as a protector of Oregon’s water.
That makes it all the more odd that Osborn scored the endorsement of the Oregon State Building and Construction Trades Council, which covets the construction jobs that come with data centers. (Google has six in The Dalles, and they guzzle an enormous amount of water.) Walden Poublon says his endorsement interview with the trade unions came to a screeching halt when he told them he wants a halt on data centers until the energy impacts are studied. Osborn says he conveyed a similar message but more tactfully. Walden Poublon seemed abashed at losing the council’s endorsement, but we think he showed some spine on a matter that poses real danger along the Columbia. That, plus his hard-won experience in a general election fight in this swing district, gives him the edge.
Walden Poublon’s biggest kitchen fail: He forgot to put the lid on the blender when making split pea and ham soup. “My kitchen was green for quite a while,” he says. “It smelled nice.”
House District 52
(Cascade Locks, Hood River, The Dalles)
Scott Hege
Republican
Sometime early this year, the Oregon Republican Party was making desperate appeals in the Columbia River Gorge. One of the Legislature’s true coin-flip districts—which begins where Troutdale ends and extends east past Hood River to The Dalles, and south to encompass Mount Hood—had been vacated by Senate-aspiring Rep. Jeff Helfrich. And the GOP didn’t have much faith in its people seeking to fill the void.
One candidate was Robert Fleming, who did not bother to submit a biography to the state Voters’ Pamphlet. The other was Darcy LaPier, a colorful figure with no political experience, limited professional history and—as WW reported in February—fraud accusations in Florida stemming from a sizable bankruptcy.
In early February, the GOP prevailed upon Scott Hege to run. The 64-year-old Wasco County chair was eyeing retirement and more time as a ski instructor at Mt. Hood Meadows. Reluctantly, he told us, he tapped into his evangelical faith and heeded the call.
Hege is an affable fellow who, if vague on the particulars, seems authentically open-minded and practical about the task of making state government run better. He also has an actual track record in public life, serving on the county board after years as executive director at the Port of The Dalles.
Not all will celebrate his accomplishments. One he cites is having ushered in, quite early, the era of data centers in Wasco County—where Google is now a keystone of an uncommonly robust tax base. We have some skepticism here on several levels. Nonetheless, Hege would be a credible challenger to whichever Democrat emerges.
Hege’s biggest cooking fail: He tried to make sourdough bread, and instead got a brick.
WHAT’S NEXT? The winners of these two primaries face each other in November.
