Analysis | A House swing seat is at stake in Oregon’s Democratic primary (2024)

In today’s edition … The discordant messaging of RFK Jr. and Nicole Shanahan … Trump outraises Biden in April, but Biden maintains cash lead … but first …

Two Democrats face off today in a crucial primary for a Republican-held Oregon swing seat the party is eager to flip as Democrats work to win back the House.

Jamie McLeod-Skinner defeated moderate Democratic Rep. Kurt Schrader in the 2022 primary by running to his left in a district President Biden carried by nine points. But then she narrowly lost to Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer in the general election.

Now McLeod-Skinner is running again — and much of the Democratic establishment is trying to stop her. Democrats need to flip only four Republican-held seats in November to regain control of the House, making every swing district critical to the majority.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is supporting McLeod-Skinner’s primary opponent, state Rep. Janelle Bynum, and is running ads encouraging voters to back her over McLeod-Skinner. Gov. Tina Kotek and Reps. Earl Blumenauer, Suzanne Bonamici and Andrea Salinas — all Oregon Democrats — have endorsed Bynum, too.

The DCCC says Bynum has a better shot at beating Chavez-DeRemer, in part because Bynum defeated her in state House races in 2016 and 2018.

“Janelle has already defeated Lori Chavez-DeRemer twice before — and we’re hopeful she’ll have the opportunity to do it again in 2024,” Dan Gottlieb, a DCCC spokesman, said in a statement.

Other Democrats have lined up behind McLeod-Skinner, including Reps. Mark Takano (Calif.), Ritchie Torres (N.Y.) and Becca Balint (Vt.) and a smattering of Oregon state lawmakers.

McLeod-Skinner’s ads seek to portray her as more progressive than Bynum.

“She’ll ban politicians from stock trading, stand up to anyone who’d outlaw abortion and IVF — and unlike Janelle Bynum, she’s never taken corporate PAC money,” one McLeod-Skinner ad says.

Bynum’s TV ads — which the DCCC helped to pay for — don’t criticize McLeod-Skinner, but some of the outside groups backing Bynum have gone negative.

“Politics are nastier and more divisive than ever, and Jamie McLeod-Skinner is part of the problem,” the narrator says in an ad the New Democrat Coalition Action Fund PAC is airing, citing a story in the Oregon Capital Chronicle last year that described McLeod-Skinner as “a nightmarish boss.” (McLeod-Skinner told the Capital Chronicle at the time that she had “always sought to create a positive work environment.”)

The PAC is affiliated with the New Democrat Coalition, a caucus of nearly 100 House members.

McLeod-Skinner has gotten support from Health Equity Now, a new super PAC that has plowed about $550,000 into the race since the group started this month. It won’t need to disclose its donors until after the primary.

The Associated Press reported last week that the super PAC’s ad-buying firm “has traditionally been employed by Republican candidates” and that its treasurer had the same name as an operative who helped raise money for Republican Herschel Walker’s Senate campaign in 2022, raising questions about whether Republicans were trying to help McLeod-Skinner because they believed she would be easier to defeat in November than Bynum.

Here are four other primaries we’re watching tomorrow:

Three Democrats — Susheela Jayapal, Maxine Dexter and Eddy Morales — are facing off for retiring Democrat Blumenauer’s deep-blue seat, which includes much of Portland.

Jayapal, a former Multnomah County commissioner whose sister is Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), has been endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Her campaign has run TV ads calling her “the one true progressive in the race.”

Dexter has run on her record on abortion, renewable energy and housing in the state legislature.

The race has drawn a flood of outside money.

A mysterious super PAC called Voters for Responsive Government spent $3.2 million on TV ads attacking Jayapal. It won’t be required to disclose its donors until after the primary.

And 314 Action Fund, a hybrid PAC that supports Democrats with science and engineering backgrounds, has spent $2.2 million in the race backing Dexter. (The PAC has also spent about $500,000 supporting Bynum.)

A campaign finance filing last night revealed who gave to 314 Action last month and helped to underwrite the ads. Top donors included former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, who gave $500,000, and the investor Robert Granieri, who gave $350,000.

Granieri has given to Republican House and Senate candidates as well as to Democrats. He also gave $350,000 last year to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s super PAC.

“Maxine’s position has been clear for months — we need a ceasefire that ends the conflict, brings the hostages home and rushes humanitarian aid into Gaza,” Nathan Clark, Dexter’s campaign manager, said in a statement. “These things are essential for a durable two-state solution.”

Democratic Rep. Lucy McBath is facing two challengers in the primary for a newly redrawn, majority-Black seat near Atlanta, created after a federal judge ruled last year that the previous map violated the Voting Rights Act. Rep. David Scott, the top Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, is facing six challengers in a heavily Democratic seat near Atlanta.

We’re watching to see whether McBath and Scott win a majority of the vote and avoid a runoff.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is prosecuting former president Donald Trump in Georgia over attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election there, is facing a primary challenge from the author and attorney Christian Wise Smith.

Willis has faced criticism for her romantic relationship with the lead prosecutor she appointed in Trump’s case — but Trump isn’t the focus of the primary. Smith has said he supports the prosecution of Trump and instead has emphasized local issues.

Willis, who has raised more than seven times as much money as Smith, has run a single campaign ad in which she talks about prosecuting gang violence but doesn’t mention Trump.

If Willis wins, she’ll face Courtney Kramer, a former intern in Trump’s White House Counsel’s Office who later helped consult on his efforts to overturn the election. Fulton County is heavily Democratic, but Kramer will probably try to elevate Trump’s message in the case against him.

Leigh Ann will interview Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) on Thursday, May 23, at 11 a.m. Eastern for Washington Post Live about his bipartisan bill to limit kids’ use of social media as well as efforts to rein in Big Tech and the state of the Republican Party. Cruz, the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, is also up for reelection in Texas this year. Register for the program here.

The Rules Committee will take up a bill today that prohibits noncitizens from voting in Washington, D.C., in the latest attempt by conservative members of Congress to legislate how the District governs itself.

Noncitizens will be able to vote for local offices in D.C. for the first time in the 2024 election.

Noncitizens may not vote in federal elections in D.C. or anywhere in the country.

The liberal veterans political group Vote Vets is out with a $400,000 cable TV ad buy backing retired Army Col. Yevgeny “Eugene” Vindman in the Virginia 7th Congressional District’s crowded Democratic primary to fill Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger’s seat. Spanberger is retiring at the end of the year to run for governor.

The group praises Vindman, who worked in the Trump administration and became a key witness in the first impeachment trial against Trump, for 25 years of military service and “putting it all on the line to stop Donald Trump.” The ad will run until primary day June 18.

The two front-runners in the crowded Republican primary for Spanberger’s seat are also veterans as the GOP sees an opening in a seat that has trended Democratic in recent elections, our colleague Teo Armus reports.

Libertarian-minded Cameron Hamilton and the more mainstream Derrick Anderson reflect broader rifts playing out in Republican primaries across the country.

Anderson has framed himself to voters as a “patriot problem-solver” backed by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and other top Republicans. Hamilton, a self-described “constitutional conservative” who talks about ramping up limits on the federal government, points to his support from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and much of the House Freedom Caucus, Teo reports.

America hasn’t seen much of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, yet. It’s not clear that Kennedy has either.

Our colleagues Ashley Parker and Meryl Kornfield report that Kennedy talks about his vice-presidential pick as “more of a casual acquaintance or Craigslist Missed Connection than a true political and ideological partner.”

The extent to which Kennedy and Shanahan are ideological partners isn’t obvious either, with a podcast Shanahan did recently drawing attention to the running mates’ differing views on abortion. When podcast host Sage Steele said Kennedy had told her he supports abortion until birth, Shanahan said that she supports restrictions on abortion and that it was her belief Kennedy did, as well.

(Kennedy later said in a social media post that he favors restrictions “in the final months of pregnancy.”)

Shanahan is new to the political scene, with a background as a patent attorney and philanthropist. Her divorce from Google co-founder Sergey Brin left her with a settlement reported to be close to $1 billion, and some have suggested it’s Shanahan’s money, not her political savvy that the Kennedy campaign is after.

Even allies aren’t so sure about Shanahan’s selection.

“How do you sell financial support as … inspiring to the general public?” Kennedy fan Jessica Reed Kraus wrote on Substack.

Biden maintained his cash-on-hand advantage over Donald Trump in April, even as Trump outraised him for the month, our colleagues Maeve Reston and Clara Ence Morse report.

In their latest campaign filing, the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee reported $76 million in fundraising in April, about $25 million more than the Biden campaign and its affiliated committees raised.

Despite Trump’s big April, his campaign and the RNC report $88 million cash on hand, still far behind Biden and the Democratic National Committee’s $146 million in cash on hand. Biden’s numbers are bolstered in part by a major fundraising push in March, while April has had a relatively slow fundraising schedule for the president. (Some committees that support the candidates file quarterly, rather than monthly, meaning we won’t have a full picture of the state of their campaigns until June.)

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