3 leading Democrats battle for Blumenauer’s seat in Congressional District 3 race

Three front-runners have emerged in the race to represent Oregon’s 3rd Congressional District. From left to right: State Rep. Maxine Dexter, Multnomah County Commissioner Susheela Jayapal and Gresham City Councilor Eddy Morales. (Campaign photos)

Three Democratic front-runners are vying to win their party’s nomination to represent Oregon’s 3rd Congressional District, which has been represented for nearly 30 years by retiring Democratic Rep. Earl Blumenauer. 

The three candidates – state Rep. Maxine Dexter, Multnomah County Commissioner Susheela Jayapal and Gresham City Councilor Eddy Morales – have raised several hundreds of thousands of dollars each. Three other Democrats in the primary – Ricardo Barajas, Rachel Lydia Rand and Nolan Bylenga have not raised anything, according to the Federal Elections Commission, while Michael Jonas, also a Democrat, has raised nearly $16,000.

Three Republicans – Joann Harbour, Teresa Orwig and Gary Dye – are also vying for their party’s nomination. But the district, which stretches from Portland east, encompassing most of Multnomah County, part of Clackamas County and all of Hood River County, is dominated by Democrats. They represent 44% of registered voters, while Republicans represent 14%, according to the Secretary of State’s Office. Unaffiliated voters account for 36% and many of them vote for Democrats. That means that the Democratic primary winner is likely to represent the District in Congress.

The 3rd Congressional District spans parts of Multnomah County, Clackamas County and all of Hood River County. (U.S. House of Representatives)

The Capital Chronicle will publish answers from a questionnaire we sent to all the district’s candidates. Here’s a look at the three Democratic front-runners:

Maxine Dexter

Name: Maxine Dexter

Party: Democrat

Age: 51

Residence: Portland

Education: Bachelor’s degree in political science and communication, University of Washington, 1997; doctor of medicine, University of Washington, 2001; internal medicine residency, University of Colorado Denver, 2005; post graduate fellowship in pulmonary and critical care medicine, University of Colorado Denver, 2008; certificate in public health, University of Colorado Denver, 2008

Current occupation: Doctor and state representative

Prior elected experience: State representative House District 33 since 2020 

Family status: Married, two kids

Fundraising: $338,126 as of March 31, 2024

Cash on hand: $226,944 as of March 31, 2024

Maxine Dexter, who currently represents a Portland district in the state House, has served in the state Legislature for nearly four years. She’s also a pulmonary and critical care doctor who began her political career during the COVID-19 pandemic. She said her experiences caring for patients has influenced her legislative efforts to address the state’s housing shortages and addiction crises. 

“​​I have the ability to take what I see in the patient care rooms, and in the hospital, and apply it to policy making,” Dexter said. 

Dexter said in Congress she would support many of the policies she’s pushed in the Legislature, which include bills to reduce the cost of prescription drugs and in-home care and improve the state’s behavioral health care system. She said restoring the right to abortion across the country and investing in housing are two of her top priorities.

She served during the 2023 Legislative Session as chair of the House Housing and Homelessness Committee, leading efforts to pass a $200 million spending package for housing and homelessness. During that session, she also championed a new opioid harm reduction law that made naloxone – a life-saving medication that stops overdoses – more available in public schools and other public buildings. 

She said she would also make improving access nationwide to addiction treatment a priority. 

“Until treatment for fentanyl and opioid addiction is more readily available than the drugs, we will continue to have the issues that we are seeing every day,” she said. 

Dexter wants the federal government to get involved in manufacturing prescription drugs such as insulin to ensure it is always available and affordable.

Dexter also has championed environmental legislation. She said she wants the federal government to respond more urgently to curb greenhouse gas emissions, especially from transportation, and slow the worsening effects of climate change. 

In a divided Congress where she could be in the minority as a Democrat, Dexter said her strategy would be to team up with other lawmakers who are experienced, influential and effective, and assist in crafting policies she wants passed. She said she’s running in part because her own kids don’t believe the federal government works. 

“They don’t see that the government actually does anything,” she said. “We have a history of remarkable accomplishments as a country. Our democracy can work. It’s the people in leadership and it’s the culture of governing that has changed.” 

Susheela Jayapal

Name: Susheela Jayapal

Party: Democrat

Age: 60

Residence: Portland

Education: Bachelor’s degree in economics, Swarthmore College, 1983; law degree, University of Chicago, 1988

Current occupation: Campaigning

Prior elected experience: Multnomah County commissioner, 2019-2023

Family status: Single, two adult children

Fundraising: $610,581 as of March 31, 2024

Cash on hand: $408,252 as of March 31, 2024

In November, former Multnomah County Commissioner Susheela Jayapal became the first Democrat to enter the race to represent the 3rd Congressional District. By law, she had to resign from the commission she’d served on since 2019, making campaigning for Congress her current full-time job.

She said she’d apply her experiences serving on the commission during the COVID-19 pandemic to Congress, including her advocacy for refugee services, eviction protections, access to medical care and vaccines, homelessness prevention and racial justice policies. 

Jayapal, who left India at 16 to attend college in the U.S. – eventually becoming a lawyer at Adidas – said she is running, in part, to honor the personal and financial sacrifices her parents made for her and her younger sister and to ensure greater opportunities and equity for others.

“I think what that experience gave me was a glimpse of opportunity,” she said, “but also the experience of what it’s like to be on the margins; the experience of not knowing how we’re going to get to the end of the month; the experience of what it’s like to be a young, brown, immigrant woman in this country.” 

If elected, she’d follow in the footsteps of her sister Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat who represents Washington’s 7th Congressional District in Seattle and chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Jayapal said Congress seems to be the best place to make systemic changes. 

To start, she’d prioritize increasing investments in public housing, restoring the right to abortion across the country and confronting and curbing climate change. 

“Climate change is an absolute priority,” she said, “and that’s something where at the local level, especially at the county level, the opportunity to have impact is more limited.”

She said she would advocate investments in environmentally sustainable public housing like those proposed in the Green New Deal. The bill, introduced by Independent U.S. Sen Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Democratic U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, would invest more than $200 billion over the next decade to make public housing in the U.S. energy efficient.

She’d also like to propose a carbon pricing policy that makes major polluters pay for their greenhouse gas emissions.

Eddy Morales

Name: Eddy Morales

Party: Democrat

Age: 44

Residence: Gresham

Education: High school diploma; studied Spanish, public policy and management at University of Oregon, 1999-2004

Current occupation: Gresham City councilor; vice president, The Workers Lab, a public relations firm; founder, East County Rising, a political advocacy organization  

Prior elected experience: Gresham City Council member since 2019

Family status: Married

Fundraising: $490,049 as of March 31, 2024

Cash on hand: $250,616 as of March 31, 2024

Gresham City Councilor Eddy Morales has spent much of the last decade helping others from east Multnomah County get elected to local and state offices through the political advocacy organization he founded in 2016, East County Rising. 

Now, he’s throwing his weight behind his own campaign to represent the area in Congress. He credits Blumenauer with helping him to start East County Rising, and for supporting him over the years in recruiting 68 people to run for office on progressive values. 

In Congress, he said he’d champion investments in affordable housing and infrastructure and work to improve the immigration system, pass gun safety laws, and improve access to mental health care and addiction services. 

He said his upbringing has influenced his politics. One of nine siblings and the son of Mexican immigrants, Morales said his parents struggled to make ends meet and his mother, having survived domestic abuse at the hands of his father, eventually got him and his siblings from California up to Oregon. He said these challenges fueled his political campaign work and advocacy during the last two decades. 

“I got to experience a lot of things firsthand that people in our district are experiencing,” he said. “Whether it’s losing two brothers to gun violence, to being housing insecure, immigration – I’ve lived these personally. I didn’t read about them,” he said. 

Morales has worked in political advocacy for progressive policies and candidates in Oregon and across the U.S. since the early 2000s. He was president of the U.S. Students Association, which advocates free tuition at public post-secondary education institutions; deputy director of the nonprofit Voto Latino, aimed at increasing political participation among Latinos in the U.S.; and director of the Latino Engagement Fund at the Washington D.C.-based Democracy Alliance, a network of donors to progressive candidates and causes. He also served as treasurer for the Oregon Democratic Party from 2016 until this January and ran an unsuccessful campaign to become mayor of Gresham in 2020. 

Throughout his career, he said, he’s worked to generate voter and legislative support for protecting access to abortion and for recipients of DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or Dreamers, who are undocumented and immigrated as children to the U.S. with undocumented parents.

“All of the people that are running in this race, I would say we share similar values. The difference is that I’ve been working on these values for 25 years, whereas I think everybody else took awhile to get here,” Morales said. “Some people went and became bankers for Goldman Sachs and corporate lawyers for Adidas, and others went to become doctors and eventually came around, but I’ve been at this work for 25 years here. I’m the most experienced person even though I’m the youngest,” he said.

The post 3 leading Democrats battle for Blumenauer’s seat in Congressional District 3 race appeared first on Oregon Capital Chronicle.