Oregon primary results: Janelle Bynum crushing Jamie McLeod-Skinner in closely watched 5th District contest

Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers in Ore­gon’s bat­tle­ground 5th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict are over­whelm­ing­ly back­ing State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Janelle Bynum for their par­ty’s nom­i­na­tion, set­ting the stage for a fierce gen­er­al elec­tion bat­tle with Repub­li­can Lori Chavez-DeRemer.

Bynum is eas­i­ly best­ing Jamie McLeod-Skin­ner and holds a lead of more than forty points. The Ore­gon­ian and oth­er out­lets have called the race for Bynum. 

Results as of press time

McLeod-Skin­ner oust­ed long­time Con­gress­man Kurt Schrad­er in 2022 to cap­ture the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion before los­ing to Chavez-DeRe­mer in a tight gen­er­al election. 

The con­test between Bynum and McLeod-Skin­ner has been increas­ing­ly acri­mo­nious, espe­cial­ly in the wake of report­ing from Ore­gon Pub­lic Broad­cast­ing reveal­ing that groups with ties to Repub­li­cans were try­ing to ele­vate her candidacy. 

The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gres­sion­al Cam­paign Com­mit­tee (DCCC), con­cerned that a win by McLeod-Skin­ner would hurt the par­ty’s chances of recap­tur­ing the House major­i­ty, decid­ed to get behind Bynum, who has a his­to­ry with Chavez-DeRe­mer, hav­ing faced and defeat­ed her twice for state House, as you can see from the tables below:

Janelle Bynum ver­sus Lori Chavez De-Remer, 2016

Janelle Bynum ver­sus Lori Chavez De-Remer, 2016

DCCC Chair Suzan Del­Bene of Wash­ing­ton and a long list of promi­nent Democ­rats embraced Bynum’s can­di­da­cy in part due to that favor­able elec­toral history. 

“We’re sup­port­ing Janelle Bynum and we’ll see what hap­pens after the pri­ma­ry,” Del­Bene said to a group of reporters last Fri­day, as report­ed by Politico.

Bynum received a major boost back in Feb­ru­ary when rival can­di­date Lynn Peter­son sus­pend­ed her can­di­da­cy and embraced Bynum, say­ing:

I was the first Demo­c­rat to enter the race, because I was appalled at the MAGA extrem­ism of Lori Chavez-DeRe­mer and the Repub­li­can House Major­i­ty. The 5th Dis­trict remains a key race to retake the House major­i­ty and return sane lead­er­ship to Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

I believe State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Janelle Bynum is the best can­di­date to defeat Chavez-DeRe­mer. She has my enthu­si­as­tic endorse­ment and full sup­port and I urge all 5th Dis­trict Democ­rats to entrust her with this work.

Over the course of the last eight months since I declared, almost 1,500 peo­ple invest­ed in this cam­paign to pro­tect and strength­en our democ­ra­cy. I want to thank each one of them for their com­mit­ment and invest­ment and ask them to sup­port Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Bynum because work­ing togeth­er we can take back the U.S. Congress.

With Peter­son out, the con­test became a duel between Bynum and McLeod-Skin­ner. And now it’s clear who has pre­vailed. There are still votes to count, but Bynum’s lead is insur­mount­able. It will be her duty to car­ry the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s stan­dard in the gen­er­al elec­tion. McLeod-Skin­ner, mean­while, will be wind­ing down her fourth con­sec­u­tive unsuc­cess­ful cam­paign, hav­ing fall­en short in 2018 against Greg Walden in the 2nd Dis­trict, in 2020 against Shemia Fagan and Mark Hass for Sec­re­tary of State (Fagan received the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion), and in 2022 against Chavez-DeRemer.