Oregon’s 2nd Congressional District is the largest in the state, covering 20 counties across central and eastern Oregon. Cliff Bentz, the only Republican representing the state in Congress, has held that seat since 2021.
Six Democratic Party primary contenders want to flip the district. But to do so, they’ll need to reach conservative and independent voters.
Dawn Rasmussen, a small business owner and former school board member, said the first step is to listen to what constituents have to say.
“I'm actually going to those places that are, you know, scary for me because I'm the only one that's blue and everybody else is red,” Rasmussen said. “It's not about me telling my story as much as it is about listening to what their stories are.”
Rebecca Mueller, a pediatrician who grew up a Christian conservative only to eventually drop the conservative tag, said she’s heard plenty of voters’ stories while working in a rural clinic.
“You get an inside scoop to what it looks like to not be able to pay your bills, to not have reliable housing, to have mold growing in your house, to have landlords accusing you of doing things and breaking the bank,” Mueller said.
Peter Quince, another small business owner, calls himself a policy wonk. He said he wants to remind votersof a less partisan time in our country, when policies mattered most.
“The difference between then and now is we all cared for and about each other,” Quince said. “There were no hard partisan lines. It was a marketplace of ideas and let the best idea win.”
While candidates spoke of unity and working together, they also want to set themselves apart from the Republican Party. Recent polling shows more than half of Americans disapprove of President Trump’s performance, with concerns ranging from tariffs to immigration enforcement to the Iran war.
Mary Doyle, an educator, doesn’t think Bentz has stood up to this administration.
“It's going to be paramount to highlight the corporate capture of Cliff Bentz,” Doyle said. ”It's also important to highlight with voters the lies that are being told and to bring the receipts.”
Chris Beck is the only former politician running. He was a state house representative before working at the U.S. Department of Agriculture under the Obama administration. He also linked Bentz to Trump.
“Most people in the district are pretty troubled by some of the venomous, war-crimes intended, profanity-laden speeches that have come out from the president,” he said. “And we still haven't heard anything from Cliff Bentz about it.”
In 2024, Bentz won his seat with 64% of the vote.
But Patty Snow, who has worked in business and written a novel, said things have shifted over the past two years..
“This is a different world than it was in 2024,” she said. “We now are at war from a president who said he would stop wars.”
The Democratic winner will face an uphill battle to wrest Republican control over the district, said Portland State University political science professor Chris Shortell.
“It's just a very heavily Republican district,” Shortell said. “That's the way that it's drawn, that's the way that it has historically voted."
Bentz has about $1.3 million in his campaign fund, and while Trump and the Republican Party aren’t polling high, neither is the Democratic Party.
But Shortell said flipping the seat isn’t impossible. This election season can upend expectations, he explained, depending on the president’s actions.
“The only thing that would make this race competitive is low levels of public support for President Trump,” he said.
Bentz will be facing two challengers in the Republican primary on May 19th.
