The pos­si­bil­i­ty that the least pro­gres­sive Demo­c­ra­t­ic mem­ber of the Pacif­ic North­west­’s con­gres­sion­al del­e­ga­tion could be oust­ed from office after years of alien­at­ing vot­ers and activists back home is look­ing very real.

With sev­er­al tens of thou­sands of votes now tal­lied, incum­bent Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gress­man Kurt Schrad­er is well behind in his bid for anoth­er term, trail­ing chal­lenger Jamie McLeod-Skin­ner, who pre­vi­ous­ly ran against Greg Walden for Con­gress in 2018 and then statewide for Sec­re­tary of State in 2020.

Schrad­er has been dis­ap­point­ing con­stituents and anger­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­ers in Ore­gon for years now. He described House Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi as “tru­ly a ter­ri­ble per­son” to a group of donors, used his influ­ence in the House Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus to attack Pres­i­dent Biden’s Build Back Bet­ter pack­age, and was one of just two Democ­rats to ini­tial­ly oppose the Amer­i­can Res­cue Plan last year.

While the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives was work­ing on respond­ing to Jan­u­ary 6th, Schrad­er char­ac­ter­ized the sec­ond impeach­ment of Don­ald Trump as “a lynch­ing,” which sparked a very angry and pro­nounced back­lash. Schrad­er sub­se­quent­ly apol­o­gized for his com­ments and vot­ed to impeach Trump.

Schrad­er not infre­quent­ly votes with Repub­li­cans and against Demo­c­ra­t­ic bills or amend­ments, as our Last Week In Con­gress archive shows.

Despite this, Biden and Pelosi both backed his reelection.

Schrad­er is the cur­rent chair of the Blue Dog PAC, the polit­i­cal arm of the coali­tion of the House Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus’ most con­ser­v­a­tive members.

Schrader’s behav­ior and poor vot­ing record has result­ed in him being deri­sive­ly dubbed Ore­gon’s Joe Manchin by Demo­c­ra­t­ic activists. Four out of six coun­ty par­ty orga­ni­za­tions in the new 5th shunned Schrad­er and backed McLeod-Skinner.

McLeod-Skin­ner made sure that vot­ers were aware of Schrader’s long his­to­ry of accept­ing boat­loads of cor­po­rate cash by run­ning an ad describ­ing his cor­rupt rela­tion­ships with pow­er­ful indus­tries like Big Pharma.

The Los Ange­les Times’ Mark Z. Barabak spent time with McLeod-Skin­ner in the runup to the pri­ma­ry to under­stand the dynam­ics of the con­test.

Schrader’s home coun­ty of Clacka­mas, which is home to half of the dis­tric­t’s elec­torate, has bare­ly count­ed any votes in this pri­ma­ry due to logis­ti­cal prob­lems, so we can’t say tonight that Schrad­er is toast. But he’s def­i­nite­ly in trou­ble. He’s los­ing the rest of the dis­trict to McLeod-Skin­ner by a dou­ble-dig­it mar­gin, which puts him in a very tough spot. He’ll need to do very well in Clacka­mas to get any­where near fifty per­cent. Sur­pass­ing McLeod-Skin­ner will be a tall order.

Schrad­er has rep­re­sent­ed Ore­gon’s 5th Dis­trict since the 2008 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, when he was cho­sen by vot­ers to suc­ceed retir­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Dar­lene Hoo­ley. The pre­vi­ous two incar­na­tions of the 5th ran from the Pacif­ic Ocean to the Cas­cade Moun­tains, span­ning the Coast Range, the state cap­i­tal of Salem, and the south­east­ern Port­land metro area.

The new 5th, how­ev­er, looks more like the orig­i­nal 5th Dis­trict drawn in the 1980s. It’s an east­ern Willamette Val­ley dis­trict that does­n’t touch the ocean, hav­ing ced­ed that turf to the new 6th Dis­trict and the new 1st.

How­ev­er, unlike the the orig­i­nal 5th, the new dis­trict includes a chunk of Cen­tral Ore­gon, anchored by Bend, one of the state’s fastest grow­ing urban centers.

Bend has his­tor­i­cal­ly been part of the 2nd, the state’s east­ern­most dis­trict, which has had Repub­li­can rep­re­sen­ta­tion for a very long time. Now, how­ev­er, Bend is in a dis­trict that isn’t solid­ly Repub­li­can, and Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers there are in a posi­tion to pass judg­ment on Kurt Schrader’s rep­re­sen­ta­tion, even though he isn’t their con­gress­man. Thus far, their wish­es are clear: they’d much rather have McLeod-Skin­ner as the par­ty’s nom­i­nee this November.

By a ginor­mous mar­gin of over thir­ty points, Deschutes Coun­ty vot­ers are going with McLeod-Skin­ner over Schrad­er. She has a jaw-drop­ping 70.61% of the vote there, while Schrad­er isn’t even crack­ing thir­ty percent.

McLeod-Skin­ner is also win­ning the por­tion of Demo­c­ra­t­ic strong­hold Mult­nom­ah Coun­ty that’s in the dis­trict. All togeth­er, she has 59.81% of the vote right now, though again, that’s with bare­ly any votes from Clacka­mas Coun­ty tabulated.

Schrad­er is win­ning in Linn and Mar­i­on coun­ties, though his mar­gin of vic­to­ry in Linn slipped as the night wore on, in anoth­er pos­i­tive sign for McLeod-Skinner.

In Linn, Schrad­er has 52.33% of the vote to McLeod-Skin­ner’s 46.50%. In Mar­i­on, he has 55.39% of the vote, while McLeod-Skin­ner has 42.89%.

The new 5th Dis­trict also has a tiny slice of Jef­fer­son Coun­ty. Jef­fer­son has appar­ent­ly not tab­u­lat­ed any votes for its lone 5th Dis­trict precinct.

In Clacka­mas Coun­ty, an ini­tial tab­u­la­tion run ear­ly in the evening has Schrad­er ahead. But it con­sists of very few votes… a pal­try 1,309 in total.

Schrad­er pre­vailed in that drop and has 56.84% of the vote.

The coun­ty has not pub­lished any addi­tion­al returns due to prob­lems with the major­i­ty of the bal­lots it mailed out, prompt­ing fierce crit­i­cism from Sec­re­tary of State Shemia Fagan, who over­sees the state’s elections.

“As Oregon’s chief elec­tion offi­cer – and a Clacka­mas Coun­ty vot­er — I am deeply con­cerned about the delay in report­ing from Clacka­mas Coun­ty Elec­tions tonight,” Fagan said in a pub­lic state­ment. “While I am con­fi­dent that the process they are fol­low­ing is secure, trans­par­ent and the results will be accu­rate, the county’s report­ing delays tonight are unac­cept­able. Vot­ers have done their jobs, and now it’s time for Clacka­mas Coun­ty Elec­tions to do theirs.”

“In recent days, my office and oth­er coun­ties have offered extra per­son­nel to help with time­ly report­ing,” Fagan explained.

“We eager­ly await a response from coun­ty elec­tions offi­cials on how we can aid in the time­ly pro­cess­ing of results. I am dis­ap­point­ed that we have not seen more urgency from elec­tions offi­cials in Clacka­mas County.”

Clacka­mas Coun­ty Clerk Sher­ry Hall did not offer an expla­na­tion or respond to requests for com­ment from the media on the fail­ure to pub­lish any­thing beyond an ini­tial very small tab­u­la­tion. Hal­l’s lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion this evening has been round­ly panned by Ore­gon polit­i­cal observers.

With­out more data from Clacka­mas, it would be pre­ma­ture to make any pro­jec­tions. As it stands now, though, Schrad­er is at risk of being boot­ed. If that were to hap­pen, it’d be the first time in over three decades that vot­ers in Ore­gon tossed out a mem­ber of Con­gress in a pri­ma­ry election.

Like most states, Ore­gon has a sore los­er law, which means if Schrad­er isn’t nom­i­nat­ed, he can’t then switch to run­ning for Con­gress as an independent.

We’ll con­tin­ue to watch this race close­ly and bring you addi­tion­al updates.