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The Source Weekly: “Bynum is the candidate to be able to win the race against the incumbent and better represent us going forward”
Yesterday, the Source Weekly endorsed Janelle Bynum for Oregon’s 5th Congressional District – the latest in a streak of Editorial Board endorsements for Bynum.
Alongside being “the best chance” of flipping OR-05 blue, the Source Weekly’s Editorial Board writes, Bynum “can bring the dollars home that will address” the unique issues faced by Oregonians.
Bynum’s work in the state legislature, from expanding and protecting abortion access to increasing the state’s mental health workforce, “is evidence of her priorities – a stark difference from Chavez-DeRemer’s drumbeat about…MAGA-adjacent issues.”
Read more below.
The Source Weekly: Vote Janelle Bynum For Congressional District 5, Democratic Primary
Editorial Board | May 8, 2024
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Here we have two strong Democrats running to be the Democratic nominee for our relatively new district, Congressional District 5. On the other hand, we have Janelle Bynum, an electrical engineer, small business owner and state legislator with a proven track record of success in Oregon politics.
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When this race moves to the general election and pits one of these candidates against the incumbent, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, we’d like to see the candidate win who represents the values of this district as a whole.
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What we have seen from the person who presently represents us — Chavez-DeRemer — is that she does not represent our values. Heck, that might be a bit fuzzy, because in reality, we don’t know much about what Chavez-DeRemer stands for, because she pays little attention to this side of the district at all. But with all of that, we’re inclined to believe that Janelle Bynum is the candidate to be able to win the race against the incumbent and better represent us going forward.
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Bynum has worked her way up in state politics, serving as a member of the Oregon House of Representatives since 2017. She’s faced off against Chavez-DeRemer for a state House seat twice, and won both times. That’s no minor accomplishment. If the Democrats voting in this May primary want to see this seat flipped back to blue, we think Bynum is their best chance of doing so.
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Bynum possesses a warm, grounding energy that runs counter to the hard-charging style of some other politicians, and that’s one thing we liked about her on a personal level. On a professional level, she’s strong on societal issues such as access to abortion, and has enough of a track record to lean on to prove to voters that she’ll be productive in these areas.
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During her time in the Oregon House, she and her colleagues helped to preserve and expand Oregonians’ access to abortion. On behavioral health, she was the chief sponsor on a 2021 bill that increased recruitment and retention of the state’s mental health workforce — the start of addressing one of the big hurdles Oregon has faced in truly fixing our mental health and drug-treatment woes. This is evidence of her priorities — a stark difference from Chavez-DeRemer’s drumbeat about the border crisis and other MAGA-adjacent issues.
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The way our current Congressional districts are drawn, CD5 is something of a Franken-district, encompassing the southeast portion of the Portland metro as well as Bend. Bynum admits she is still in the “learning phase” of tackling the issues, such as groundwater and fire management, that stand out most to Central Oregonians, but based on her experience thus far, we believe she can get there, and can bring the dollars home that will help address those issues.
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