Democratic state Rep. Janelle Bynum (left) and Republican incumbent Lori Chavez-DeRemer debate on KTVZ in Bend on Oct. 10, 2024. (Courtesy of KTVZ)
A final televised debate in Oregon’s most competitive congressional race ended Tuesday night with the candidates talking over each other, each insisting the other was lying.
The abrupt ending to that third debate on Bend’s Central Oregon Daily TV station continued a theme for first-term Republican U.S. Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Democratic challenger Janelle Bynum, a state representative from Clackamas, who grew increasingly feisty during their three matchups over the past week.
The race for the 5th Congressional District could be decided by just a few thousand swing voters living in central Oregon, Portland’s suburbs or the Santiam Canyon — Chavez-DeRemer won by fewer than 7,000 votes in 2022 — and it could determine which party controls the U.S. House.
While Chavez-DeRemer and Bynum remained relatively civil in their first debate for a Portland audience last week, the gloves came off when they traveled to Bend for televised matchups on KTVZ last Thursday and Central Oregon Daily on Tuesday. Repeated interruptions — “cite them,” “that’s a lie,” “that’s not true,” “you are a liar” — pepped their responses to questions from local journalists who struggled to control the crosstalk.
Bynum attacked Chavez-DeRemer over her inconsistent stances on abortion access and her consistent support of former President Donald Trump, while Chavez-DeRemer faulted Bynum for Oregon’s homelessness and addiction crises.
Meanwhile, national groups stepped up their ads on television and in mailers, with the National Republican Congressional Committee launching its first TV ad bashing Bynum’s record on crime legislation on Tuesday. The NRCC this summer reserved $6 million in ads in Portland, more than any other TV market in the country. Along with the 5th District, the Portland TV market includes competitive races with Democratic incumbents in Oregon’s 6th District and Washington’s 3rd. Another NRCC ad, featuring union members who disapproved of Bynum, is running in Bend and aired on Central Oregon Daily immediately after Tuesday’s debate concluded.
The Congressional Leadership Fund, a Republican PAC, began airing an ad on Sunday attacking Bynum for defending former state Rep. Diego Hernandez, D-Portland, after he was accused of sexual harassment in 2020 and donating to his reelection campaign. At the time, Bynum told Willamette Week that Hernandez maintained his innocence and that his experiences with the Legislature’s complaint system mirrored the experiences of other men of color in the justice system.
Chavez-DeRemer homes in on public safety bills
Ahead of Thursday’s KTVZ debate, Chavez-DeRemer released a letter from the Oregon Coalition of Police and Sheriffs, which has endorsed her, accusing Bynum of lying about her record on police reform bills in the Legislature.
“You have sided with the wrong people, and you have dismantled law enforcement to do their job and keep Oregonians safe, and because of that, people are dead,” Chavez-DeRemer said.
Bynum was the chair of the House Judiciary Committee in 2021, when lawmakers passed a suite of bills regulating law enforcement. Former state Rep. Ron Noble, a McMinnville Republican who lost a congressional primary in 2022, was the vice chair of the committee and signed the letter.
“I worked across the aisle with my Republican partner, Ron Noble, who was the vice chair of the Judiciary Committee, and I made sure that no bill passed our committee without his support,” Bynum said on KTVZ.
An Oregon Public Broadcasting story at the time quoted Noble, a former police chief, as saying the effort was bipartisan.
“All of these bills here, really they’re bipartisan because it’s an effort to raise the bar a little bit, [while] trying to minimize any unintended consequences to safety,” Noble said.
Most of the bills passed with wide bipartisan support.
But Noble strikes a different tone in the letter with the police coalition. It alleges that Noble and law enforcement organizations who supported the 2021 laws were trying to “mitigate the consequences” of “even more disastrous litigation.”
“In her position of power, Rep. Bynum was hyper focused on forcing her ideals that proved harmful to our state,” it said. “The statement that Rep. Noble ‘rubber stamped’ her bills is categorically false and a complete misrepresentation.”
Bynum attacks Chavez-DeRemer’s abortion stances
At each debate, Bynum repeated her criticism of Chavez-DeRemer’s mixed record on abortion access.
During the legislative races Chavez-Deremer lost to Bynum, she described herself as supporting abortion rights when talking to some voters and opposing abortion when talking to others. In 2016, for instance, the Oregonian editorial board described Chavez-DeRemer as “an independent thinker who’s pro-choice,” while she told the Oregon Family Council that year that she opposed abortion except in cases of rape, incest or where continuing a pregnancy would endanger the woman’s life.
While running for Congress in 2022, she celebrated the overturning of Roe v. Wade, tweeted that she would support passing a version of the “heartbeat bill” that prohibits abortions six weeks after conception, told attendees of the annual Dorchester conference for Republicans that she would always vote against abortion and said she would support a 12-week ban during an October 2022 interview.
Now, she says she won’t support a federal ban and refused to answer Tuesday whether she would support restoring abortion rights nationwide.
“SCOTUS has said you cannot. It’s a states’ rights issue. We don’t have the luxury of voting in the House. That’s how Congress works,” she said.
Bynum, meanwhile, said restoring the right to an abortion nationwide will be one of her top priorities if elected. She referred in multiple debates to her 22-year-old daughter, who like young women around the country is making decisions about where to attend school based on which states protect reproductive rights.
“Every American woman, every woman on our soil, should have the right to have decisions made between her and her doctor, and it doesn’t matter where in this country you exist, you should have the right to have your reproductive health options safeguarded by this country. The government should not come between you and your doctor, period.”
Bynum hits Chavez-DeRemer on Social Security votes
One of the more contentious moments of the first Bend debate came when Bynum accused Chavez-DeRemer of voting 26 times to cut funding for Social Security. Chavez-DeRemer repeatedly interrupted, telling Bynum to cite those votes.
“It’s in the literature,” Bynum said.
“Cite it,” Chavez-DeRemer repeated.
“Baby, I will send it to you tonight,” Bynum concluded.
Chavez-DeRemer, in a post on X the next day, said Bynum hadn’t sent said “literature,” and that the statement was a “flat-out lie.” The Bynum campaign sent the list of 26 votes to reporters, and 25 of the 26 votes were her joining fellow Republicans to defeat attempts by Democratic representatives to introduce amendments related to protecting Social Security benefits. The 26th example was her April 2023 vote for a Republican debt limit suspension and spending cap that the Biden administration said would lead to longer wait times for assistance with Social Security and Medicare.
Chavez-DeRemer blames Bynum, legislative Democrats for homelessness
Throughout their final debate Tuesday, Chavez-DeRemer blamed Bynum and Democrats who hold the majority in the state Legislature for Oregon’s ongoing homeless crisis.
“What have you been doing for 10 years at the state agency to support this? Nothing. There’s more homeless today than there was when you started, because you have failed in your policies,” she said.
She said Congress has to fix problems caused by the Legislature, including providing funding for housing affordability and infrastructure. The state Legislature invested a record more than $2 billion for housing and homelessness in 2023 and another $376 million for infrastructure funding, homebuilding, homeless shelters and rent assistance to address the crisis this year.
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