PORTLAND, Ore. — With less than a month left before the 2024 general election, political advertisements are running near-constantly. Since last week, KGW's The Story has been fact-checking some of the negative ads in competitive races, focusing this week on Oregon's 5th Congressional District.
After the 2020 census, Oregon's population growth earned it a new seat in the U.S. House. A group of state lawmakers, led by Democrats, then redrew the state district maps — adding in the new House district and altering all of the others accordingly.
The 5th Congressional District in particular changed quite a bit. Where once it included areas southeast of Portland, all of Salem and out west to a stretch of the coast, the new map lost the coast, lost Salem proper and instead picked up Bend.
For years, the 5th District's representative in Congress was Kurt Schrader, a centrist Democrat. But after redistricting, a more progressive Democratic voter base tossed Schrader in the 2022 primary. The Democratic nominee, Jamie McLeod-Skinner, then lost to Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer in the general election — despite registered Democrats having an edge in the district over their Republican counterparts.
The Oregon Secretary of State's office shows that there are now about 169,000 registered Democrats in the district to 145,000 Republicans. But the largest voting bloc is unaffiliated voters, with 186,000. This year, as Democrat Janelle Bynum tries to retake the district from Republicans through the now-incumbent Congresswoman Chavez-DeRemer, the race is considered a toss-up.
With control of the U.S. House down to just a few competitive seats across the country — including this one — money is pouring into this year's race. That means a great deal of political ads, both positive and negative.
On Tuesday, we looked at an ad attacking Bynum. This time, we're looking at an ad aimed at Chavez-DeRemer.
The first thing to note is that this ad is paid for by Janelle Bynum's campaign and personally approved by her, which is unusual for the negative ads we've looked at this year. Most others have been bankrolled by congressional political action committees, or PACs, which are outside groups that specialize in fundraising and paying for these kinds of advertisements.
Claim: Chavez-DeRemer supports Donald Trump
The ad begins with the testimony of a woman named Diane who says she is a Republican, but in this election, she is "not voting as a member of a political party, but as an American."
"Too much is at stake," she says. "Our democracy — our rule of law."
In this case, we were able to look into whether this woman giving her testimony is who she says she is. The Bynum campaign shared her information, and we were able to confirm that she is a registered Republican living in the 5th Congressional District.
"We need leaders who will stand up to Donald Trump," the woman continues. "That is not Lori Chavez-DeRemer."
The ad cites an OPB article from March 6, 2024, with a headline indicating that Chavez-DeRemer endorsed Trump. It links to a tweet from the congresswoman in which she does indeed say that she will be supporting Trump for president.
The ad's testimony continues: The woman says that DeRemer is not just supporting Trump but "MAGA extremists, threatening everything we value in Oregon."
That claim verges on a statement of opinion, and it highly depends on the definition of "MAGA extremists." DeRemer does support Trump, and she did — for example — vote to ensconce staunch conservative Rep. Mike Johnson as speaker of the U.S. House. But her record on extremism of the Jan. 6 variety is backed up primarily by association with the leadership of her party.
The ad closes with a call to action, with the woman saying to "Oppose Lori Chavez-DeRemer before it's too late."