In swing districts, Republicans lean into anti-crime message to court the center

OREGON CITY, Ore. — Thirty minutes south of Portland, as rain pattered down from gray skies, Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, R-Ore., was at a wedding venue railing against Democrats in her state for decriminalizing hard drugs and accusing them of failing to support local law enforcement.

Progressive experiments with policing, Chavez-DeRemer told small-business owners gathered for a roundtable discussion last week, were largely to blame for the rising crime, overdoses and homelessness that have many Oregonians fed up.

“If you’re going to decriminalize hard drugs across the state, we’re going to pay a price for that,” Chavez-DeRemer, a first-term Congress member battling to hold her seat in a highly competitive House district, said to the half-dozen people gathered around a U-shaped banquet table under crystal chandeliers. “We have to make sure that we’re supporting our law enforcement officers.”

While Portland has struggled for years to shake its national reputation as a city in crisis, recent reporting actually finds that homicides and gun violence have decreased since last year, mirroring a national trend of declining violent crime. Still, opioid overdoses across Oregon have soared in each of the last five years, according to the state’s public health department.

And regardless of the facts, Chavez-DeRemer — like dozens of other Republicans in competitive races across the country, including former President Donald Trump — is leaning heavily into a law-and-order message to try to gain the upper hand against her Democratic opponent.

Chavez-DeRemer is working to leverage voter frustrations over the state’s handling of homelessness, crime and fentanyl overdoses — an issue that ballooned after Oregon voters chose in 2020 to decriminalize possession of small amounts of hard drugs — to blunt efforts by her opponent, Democratic state Rep. Janelle Bynum, to portray her as a rubber stamp in Congress for the Republican agenda.

The race in Oregon’s 5th Congressional District, which stretches from Portland’s southern suburbs east across the Cascade Mountains to the rapidly growing mountain town of Bend, is one of only a couple of dozen truly competitive contests in the country that could determine which party emerges in November with control of the House. Republicans now have a razor-thin majority.

Crime on its own does not rank high on voters’ list of important issues, according to recent polling from Gallup, although Republicans nationwide are far more likely than Democrats to say crime is an issue that is “extremely important.” In Oregon, local polls this year consistently find housing, homelessness, crime and drugs among the top issues for Portland-area residents and Oregonians younger than 40.

In Oregon, public polling shows Chavez-DeRemer and Bynum virtually tied, and the nonpartisan Cook Political Report lists the contest as a “tossup.” As the race enters its final few weeks, both campaigns are dumping money into the fight, with more than $5 million spent between them.

Many of Chavez-DeRemer’s ads paint Bynum, who sponsored a package of criminal justice bills that included a ban on minor traffic stops, as anti-police and soft on crime. Bynum has sought to push back on the characterization. She is running her own ads that highlight her role in restoring criminal penalties on hard drugs, which were reinstated last month, and emphasize the need for safer communities.

“I think it is really important to recognize that we all experience law enforcement in our communities in different ways,” Bynum said last week while knocking on doors in Happy Valley, a Portland suburb filled with tree-lined neighborhoods and single-family homes.

Bynum, who would be the first Black woman to represent Oregon in Congress if she wins next month, has spoken openly about how her racial identity affects her view of public safety. When she was running for reelection to the state Legislature in 2018, a resident reported her to the police as a “suspicious person” who might be a burglar.

Bynum, a mother of four, said she took great care to dress “like a suburban mom” while canvassing in certain neighborhoods of the predominantly white district. She knocks on doors using a “shave and a haircut” rhythm that she says is meant to sound approachable and friendly. And she always wears lipstick.

Chavez-DeRemer has toiled to separate herself from the Republican brand in a swing district where the largest bloc of voters is unaffiliated. She highlights the bipartisan legislation she has carried or cosponsored, including several bills related to curbing the fentanyl crisis.

“One of the things that transcends party is public safety,” Chavez-DeRemer said in an interview. “People want to wake up in the morning, know that it’s safe to go to take their kids to school and drive on safe roads,” she added. “Those transcend party. Those are the kind of things I focus on.”

It is not clear how strongly the message is resonating. In interviews with more than two dozen voters throughout the district from across the political spectrum, most — even those living on the border of Portland — said they felt safe in their neighborhoods and communities. At the same time, some voters said they were far more wary of going downtown than they were before the pandemic.

Anita Mention, who now lives in the suburb of Lake Oswego, said she first moved to Portland in the 1970s and lived there off and on for a total of more than 20 years. She used to love going downtown for entertainment and shopping, but even before the pandemic, she stopped visiting as often for safety reasons.

“I don’t really feel safe going there, and it’s really disappointing,” said Mention, a registered Democrat who said she plans to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris and Bynum.

At Johnson Creek Park in the southern Portland neighborhood of Sellwood, Tyler Roberts said he was leaning toward voting for Trump and Chavez-DeRemer, but not because of any worry about crime. His main concern, he said, was the tight housing market, given that he and his wife hope to purchase a home.

“Public safety isn’t too big of a concern, depending on where you live,” Roberts, 25, said as he and his young son watched a family of mallards float down the creek. “We haven’t really had that many issues.”

Many voters here are well aware that their ballots could potentially tip the balance of power in Congress, and the recent rightward lurch of the Republican Party nationwide poses a challenge for mainstream GOP lawmakers like Chavez-DeRemer.

Bynum routinely tells voters that a vote for the Congress member would empower House Republicans to enact policies such as those included in Project 2025, the right-wing policy agenda, and a national abortion ban — a measure that Chavez-DeRemer has repeatedly said she would oppose.

Sara Roberts, a Bend resident who moved from Portland during the pandemic, voted for Chavez-DeRemer two years ago, attracted to her experience as a former mayor and her message that she would be a pragmatic voice of reason as a moderate Republican. But Roberts, a longtime Republican turned “Blue Dog” Democrat, said she had been disappointed by Chavez-DeRemer’s performance in Congress and was planning to vote for Bynum this time.

“Her voting record wasn’t up to par with what I wanted to see,” Roberts said, speaking in particular about Chavez-DeRemer’s votes on abortion-related bills. “She ran as a moderate, and she’s not.”

On a recent sunny weekday morning, as the breeze blew the remnants of wildfire smoke out of Bend, Roberts was shocked to open her front door and find Bynum alongside Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who is the chair of the Finance Committee, standing on her porch.

“I’m voting for you!” Roberts said, hugging both of them.

Sandy Sheffield, a Bend newcomer, said crime and border safety were “absolutely” important to her, but the mudslinging and polarization in politics these days had her questioning whether she should even bother to vote. If she does go to the polls, Sheffield said, she will probably choose Republicans like Trump and Chavez-DeRemer.

“I did it for most of my life, and I always thought it was important,” Sheffield said. “But now I’m seeing it as just voting for the lesser of the evils.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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