U.S. Rep. Andrea Salinas addresses the crowd on election night, Nov. 5, 2024, at the Willamette Heritage Center in Salem. (Ron Cooper/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
A Democratic congresswoman didn’t violate state law with a 2022 ad saying her Republican opponent faced felony drug possession charges because a reasonable person could interpret that statement as true, the Oregon Court of Appeals ruled.
The court’s ruling, issued this week, comes nearly a year after attorneys for U.S. Rep. Andrea Salinas and her former Republican opponent Mike Erickson argued their case to a three-judge panel of the appeals court in February 2024. Since then, Salinas defeated Erickson a second time in the November election by a larger margin than in 2022. Erickson blamed his 2022 loss in part on a negative ad from Salinas’ campaign.
That ad said Erickson was “charged with felony drug possession” and featured an image of four lines of an unidentified white powder. Public records from Erickson’s 2016 arrest for drunken driving, when officers found a single 5 mg oxycodone pill in his wallet while booking him into jail, show that police recommended drug charges. Erickson pleaded guilty to driving under the influence and completed a diversion program as part of a deal that also included an agreement from prosecutors not to file drug charges.
Salinas attorney Ben Stafford said the decision reinforced important protections for political speech in Oregon.
“The court correctly recognized that campaign statements that can be reasonably interpreted as factually accurate are protected under Oregon law,” Stafford said. “We are proud to defend Representative Salinas against these baseless allegations by her former political opponent.”
Salinas declined to comment further on the case. Erickson’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment.
Erickson initially sued Salinas in October 2022, seeking $800,000 to reimburse his campaign for running ads to refute her ads. He sued under a state law that allows a judge to remove an elected official if the judge determines that official won by telling a lie that changed the course of the election.
A Clackamas County judge sided with Erickson that December, ruling that Erickson demonstrated Salinas showed a reckless disregard for the truth by continuing to run the ad after Erickson’s attorney and the attorney who prosecuted him told he wasn’t charged with drug possession.
Salinas appealed under Oregon’s anti-SLAPP law. SLAPP, an acronym for “strategic lawsuit against public participation,” refers to lawsuits intended to silence criticism and stifle free speech.
Appellate judges Kristina Hellman, Darleen Ortega and Steven Powers agreed that Salinas’ ad could reasonably be understood as factually correct. They wrote that a citation in the ad for an incident report that listed felony possession of oxycodone as a charge or pending charge supported Salinas’ argument.
“That document, along with the release agreement signed by Erickson, further supports the common understanding of the word ‘charge’ as a word that is used by law enforcement to mean that law enforcement has accused a person of a crime,” it said. “The fact that, ultimately, the district attorney declined to file that charge in court based on a plea agreement does not make it unreasonable to understand that the ad stated that Erickson was charged with, i.e. accused of, that crime by the police.”
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