6th Congressional District shouldn’t be competitive, but it is

Incumbent Democratic Rep. Andrea Salinas, who’s frequently meet with constituents, like this visit to Wilsonville in April 2024, is fighting a close race against Republican challenger Mike Erickson. (Alex Baumhardt/Oregon Capital Chronicle)

By most political rules of thumb, Oregon’s 6th Congressional District race this year shouldn’t be particularly competitive. 

But both the Democratic and Republican national political parties have declared the district a priority, a place where significant money and support will be sent. 

There’s a case for why that shouldn’t be so.

Two years ago, when the brand new district had no incumbent, neither party had an incumbent’s advantage. The winner then, Democrat Andrea Salinas, is running as an incumbent now, and she has the advantages most incumbents can have. She has visited her district rigorously, worked on constituent projects and requests, kept in touch with key constituencies and raised plenty of money, typically an incumbent advantage. 

She also is a Democrat running in a district that leans gently Democratic, and isn’t particularly bedeviled in her district by issues or controversies from the Beltway. The Cook Political Report lists the district as leaning Democratic.

And one more thing: She is running against the same candidate she defeated two years ago, Republican Mike Erickson. Reruns are a dynamic that more often than not – unless the candidate has some particular and specific political problem of the sort Salinas seems not to have – usually results in a repeat of the earlier result, even more so. Erickson is an experienced candidate, but his track record doesn’t inspire confidence: He has run for the U.S. House three times, and twice for the Oregon Legislature, and lost all those races. 

While the two candidates spent comparable amounts of money, each between $3 million and $4 million, this cycle Salinas has reported raising and spending far more than Erickson. Erickson is, however, wealthy enough to self-fund a substantial campaign, but reports of that haven’t surfaced as of the most recent federal campaign report at the end of June. 

These considerations may be one reason why the national Republican congressional committee decided only last month to add Erickson to its priority list of candidates. 

Given all that, you have to wonder why the sixth is considered so close. But there are reasons for that, too. Even if you dismiss the recent poll released by the Erickson campaign, the only poll of the race so far that showed the two candidates nearly tied, with Salinas at 45% and Erickson at 43%), there are some reasons to class this race as competitive.

First, the general election of 2022 was close. Salinas took 50% of the vote to Erickson’s 48%, a gap of just 7,210 votes. In 2022, the ballot also included a Constitution Party candidate, who pulled 6,762 votes. If you assume, reasonably, that many of those votes would have gone to Erickson absent that candidate, then the outcome would have been exceedingly close. 

There are no third-party candidates on the ballot in the sixth this year, with Salinas cross-nominated by the Independent Party of Oregon.

Second, the voting base of the sixth was close two years ago and seems close and fluid now. For years, the numbers of registered Democrats and Republicans both have been in decline while the number of nonaffiliated voters has picked up significantly. That trend has held in this district in recent years. While the number of registered voters has increased by about 10,000 to 474,332 as  of August according to the  Secretary of State’s Office, the numbers of both Democrats and Republicans have fallen from two years ago by almost identical percentages. 

We can only guess at how that will translate to votes in November. 

Third, while Erickson’s campaign as such seems lightly funded, it has allies. Pro-Erickson third party mailers have hit the district, at least one blasting Salinas over a lawsuit Erickson has filed against her. 

Erickson could also benefit from some name familiarity after his earlier races. 

All that said, the advantages Salinas should accrue this year still give her the edge. The changes from last cycle to this one do soften or even eliminate some advantages she had then, but she’s added some new ones from her incumbency. 

It’s not a wrapped-up contest. The parties are not wrong to put a priority on it, and Oregonians would be wise to pay it some attention too.