PORTLAND, Ore. — In the run-up to the November election, a great deal of focus is on the U.S. House of Representatives, where Republicans hold a slim majority. If Democrats can manage a net gain of four seats, they can wrest control of the chamber from Republicans.
In addition to Washington's 3rd Congressional District, one of the more contentious races this election is in Oregon's 5th Congressional District, where Democrats hope to flip a seat narrowly won by Republicans in 2022. The 5th District stretches from the corner of Southeast Portland through the eastern half of the Willamette Valley and all the way across the Cascades to Bend and Sisters.
It's currently held by freshman Congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a Republican. She faces a challenge from Democrat Janelle Bynum, erstwhile Oregon state representative. And this is not the first time they've faced one another: Bynum beat Chavez-DeRemer twice, in 2016 and 2018, for the state House seat.
The well-respected Cook Report has rated the race a "toss-up." Though Chavez-DeRemer took it in 2022, President Joe Biden carried the district by more than 8 percentage points two years prior.
In such a close race, the political attack ads are getting nasty — and in need of some context. We began our fact-checking with a look at an ad attacking Bynum, paid for by the Congressional Leadership Fund, a PAC dedicated to getting Republicans elected to the U.S. House.
Claim: Bynum supported decriminalizing fentanyl
The ad begins with video appearing to show homelessness Portland, accompanied by a woman saying, "You can't walk down the street without stepping over someone." She claims that the reason for this is because of a push to decriminalize drugs like fentanyl "from politicians like Janelle Bynum."
Bynum did support the passage of Oregon's Measure 110, which decriminalized possession for user amounts of drugs, but that needs context. A story from the Washington Examiner cited in the ad has the headline "Democrats put faith in House candidate Bynum, but past support for decriminalizing fentanyl threatens chances," and it links to a Facebook post from Bynum in 2020.
In the post, Bynum said she was personally voting for Measure 110, but called it "a very hard toss-up" and said she thought the legislature could do it better.
While public opinion has shifted significantly against Measure 110 in the intervening years, it's important to recall the context in which it passed. More than 1.3 million Oregonians voted for it, passing it with 58% of the vote. Multnomah County voted in favor of it by a 3 to 1 margin.
Moreover, saying that Bynum voted to decriminalize fentanyl specifically is doing some historical revisionism. While fentanyl was beginning to enter the Oregon street drug supply by 2020, it had not reached nearly the ubiquity or level of public awareness that it would over the next few years.
Earlier this year, Bynum voted in favor of House Bill 4002, which recriminalized possession of hard drugs, including fentanyl.
Claim: Bynum wanted prisoners released early
The ad continues by saying that, "worse than decriminalizing drugs," Bynum drafted a plan to released thousands of criminals from prison early. It cites an article from The Oregonian dated June 15, 2020.
It's true that Bynum was one of four lawmakers who lobbied then-Governor Kate Brown to allow early release for 2,000 prison inmates. This was relatively early in the COVID-19 pandemic, and Bynum argued that Oregon prisons were "overly congested" and could become a death sentence for inmates with severe medical problems. She felt that the appropriate humanitarian response would be to release them as soon as possible.
The concern wasn't entirely unfounded. By the end of the pandemic, the Oregon Department of Corrections had recorded over 6,000 COVID-19 cases among inmates and over 2,000 among corrections staff. In all, 52 inmates died, as well as three employees.
Gov. Brown ultimately released 963 inmates between July 20202 and Oct. 2021. A report from the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission noted that 609 of those were considered medically vulnerable, while the remaining 354 had six months or less remaining on their sentence and were allowed out early.
Of those released inmates, 34% were arrested for a new crime within two years, and 20% were convicted of a new crime within the same period. In all, 12% went back to prison. Taken together, they were no more likely to reoffend than prisoners released at the end of their sentences, the OCJC report found — although the medical cases were slightly less likely to reoffend, and the other early releases were slightly more likely.
The ad closes with a statement of opinion, saying, "This is Bynum putting her agenda ahead of our safety. We don't need Janelle Bynum in Washington."
In the news: Bynum ethics probe
While unrelated to this particular ad, Janelle Bynum was firing back at Republicans on Tuesday, accusing Lori Chavez-DeRemer's campaign of planting a false story on FOX News to district voters.
The story goes back to something which allegedly happened during Bynum's campaign for the state legislature in 2022.
The Oregon Capital Chronicle reports that the campaign manager for a rival of Bynum in the 2024 May primary filed a complaint based on information she deemed credible that came from an "informant." That information referred to alleged sexual harassment or assault by a 22-year-old man who was working for the Democratic group FuturePAC, facilitating Bynum's campaign.
While the complaint was made over the summer, the FOX News website ran a story on it over the weekend, headlined, "'Willful coverup': Democrat in key House race hit with ethics complaint that could derail campaign."
But that headline is misleading, based on what The Story's Pat Dooris could confirm. The complaint in question was made to the Oregon Legislative Equity Office, not the state ethics commission. And an email from the office's director that Dooris reviewed clearly states that Bynum is not under investigation for the alleged incident.
Oregon State Police said that while they are investigating the allegations, Bynum is not the focus of the complaint.
For her part, Bynum characterized the story as an attempt to sling mud in the congressional race.
"I think this is also coming from Lori Chavez-DeRemer's campaign, where it's politically motivated," Bynum said, in part. "It's one of those things where ... it's a fake."
The DeRemer campaign provided a short statement in response:
"A Democrat filed a complaint alleging Janelle Bynum failed to fulfill her legal duties as a mandatory reporter. Janelle Bynum then blamed others for her failures. Janelle Bynum needs to grow up and be accountable instead of pointing fingers."
Bynum acknowledged that she did hear something about this campaign staffer, but she insists that she did the right thing at the time and handled it through the proper channels.
"As a mom, I'm always really concerned when my kids or any young people are facing issues at work," Bynum said. "And for me and the campaign, I reported the information that I found, and I think that it's really important for there to be accountability, so the employer is accountable for making sure they handle issues."
By that, Bynum meant that she reported it to FuturePAC, the group that employed the 22-year-old staffer in question. It's not entirely clear what obligations she would have, if any, to report to the Legislative Equity Office for incidents not involving any legislative staff, and any obligations as a mandatory reporter would depend on the details of the allegations.