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The field for Oregon’s congressional races is set for November after state Sen. David Brock Smith (R-Port Orford) clinched the Republican nomination on Friday to challenge U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.).
Brock Smith, who has represented the Oregon Coast in the Legislature since 2017, narrowly defeated Jo Rae Perkins for the nomination. He won 29% of the vote to the 27% for Perkins, who has made seven unsuccessful bids for Congress and is a vocal adherent to the QAnon conspiracy theory. (Five other candidates were in the race.) Brock Smith is also a strong supporter of President Donald Trump, but he has a bipartisan record in the Legislature on bills supporting rural communities.
“I’m running to give a voice to the people who feel forgotten,” Brock Smith said in a statement Friday evening declaring victory, “the workers, parents, farmers, fishermen, small business owners, and rural communities who keep Oregon moving.”
Merkley won the Democratic primary with 93% of the vote. His opponent in the primary, Paul Damian Wells, is far behind at 6%. Merkley, the state’s junior senator, says he wants a fourth term in order to continue opposing Trump.
The morning after ballots were counted, Merkley decried the U.S. Department of State issuing passports with Trump’s face on them. “To our knowledge, no country places the portrait of a sitting leader in its passport,” he wrote in a joint letter with four other senators. “Even the most authoritarian and autocratic governments have avoided equating national identity to the sitting president in such a way.”
In the Portland metro area, members of Oregon’s congressional delegation convincingly defeated their challengers across the board in Democratic Party primaries.
In the U.S. House District 1 race, incumbent Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici carried 87% of the vote. Her opponent, Jamil Ahmad, ran on a platform opposing funding any country with a state religion; he took 12%. Bonamici, who serves on House committees for education and the workforce, as well as science, space and technology, will face Republican Barbara Kahl in the general election. (Kahl ran unopposed in the GOP primary.) Voter registration numbers indicate Bonamici will have a big advantage.
In U.S. House District 3, Congresswoman Maxine Dexter won 89% of the vote against two opponents who didn’t file Voters’ Pamphlet statements. She faces Republican nominee Loran Ayles, a heavy equipment operator in Hood River, in one of the bluest districts in the nation.
U.S. Rep. Janelle Bynum (D-Oregon) has 82% of the vote in the House District 5 Democratic primary, well ahead of her opponent from the left, Zeva Rosenbaum, who is currently sitting at 17% of the vote. In 2024, Bynum narrowly defeated now-tarnished former U.S. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer in Oregon’s most closely watched federal race.
In the Republican primary, Patti Adair, a Deschutes County commissioner, is leading law student Jonathan Lockwood, 59% to 39%.
District 5 will likely be the closest general election race. The district is home to 168,000 registered Democrats and 147,000 registered Republicans, making it the closest thing Oregon has to a swing district.