Oregon is not one of the states currently wrapped in turmoil over congressional districting, which is an activity that usually happens around the beginning, not in the middle, of decades.
Texas — which started this year’s remapping battle — and California are the current hot spots, but many other states are watching closely and could jump into the fray. Indiana, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Illinois and others have been mentioned as possibilities if the war over district maps really takes off.
The explicit object is partisan gain. The Texas redistricting effort got a push when President Donald Trump made clear he wanted to see more U.S. House seats in Texas turned Republican. (The response of Texas Democrats was to stage a quorum-busting walkout, an action with resonance in Oregon.) The California counter may be to try to diminish the number of Republican House seats in that state.
Oregon, with its six House seats now set up to the liking of its Democratic majority (only one Republican), is not really a part of this national battle. But it can offer a cautionary tale to places like Texas and California: Be careful when you try wringing all possible partisan advantage out of reapportionment.
Most of Oregon’s neighbors — California, Washington and Idaho — have redistricting commissions which generally have delivered broadly fair results.
This state’s redistricting approach still is overtly political, run by and through the legislature, which means legislators (collectively) get to design their own districts. In general and in practice, the legislature most often has wound up focusing more on helping incumbents than shaping districts for partisan benefit. One clear indicator of whether a legislature is heavily gerrymandered is if its membership splits on party lines at least reasonably close to the way voters do when they vote on statewide races. The Oregon Legislature is a little more Democratic than the average statewide vote totals, but not by much.
The story this decade tilted differently on the federal side — the legislature also sets congressional districts — when for the first time since 1983, Oregon got an additional congressional district, its sixth. The partisan split in the U.S. House was close after the 2020 census, when the new lines would be drawn, and pressure was on among majority Democrats to ensure that additional seat went to their party — changing a House delegation of four Democrats and one Republicans to five Democrats and one Republican.
That would not be automatic or easy. The normal Democratic statewide vote for major offices is a majority but usually less than 60%. If the congressional districts happened to be designed so that each party received three, that 50% Republican representation would be a strong over-performance. But Democrats would be over-performing in a four-blue, two-red map, which would be 67% Democratic. For Democrats to reach for a fifth district meant holding 83% of the state’s House delegation, something no impartial mapmaker might devise.
Democratic redistricters did find options that could work, though. They eventually abandoned at least one effort that seemed to give Democrats a strong advantage in what amounted to a new district. But the newly-devised and eventually adopted 5th Congressional District, which includes most of Deschutes and Clackamas counties and pieces of several others, still seemed to offer Democrats an edge and the likelihood of keeping the additional seat out of Republican hands.
Or so they thought. The test came with the election of 2022, as incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. Kurt Schrader ran for another term in his drastically redrawn district and in the first 5th District upset of the year lost his primary to Jamie McLeod-Skinner.
Then, in the fall, McLeod-Skinner lost the general election to Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer. The district specifically drawn to elect a Democrat wound up instead electing a Republican, who now is secretary of labor in the Trump Administration.
The details and the rest of the story do matter, of course. The district as it has evolved seems simply very close. In 2022, Chavez-DeRemer won by only about 2 percentage points. Two years later, she lost to Democrat Janelle Bynum, also by only about 2.5 points.
The 5th District has been highly competitive, and could remain so through this decade. While Bynum generally seems to be in a good position for 2026, the nature of her district doesn’t allow her to hold a truly “secure” seat as many in Congress do.
Congressional redistricting sometimes has given reason for partisans to be regretful about what they asked for. Oregon has a few things to say about that.
This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.
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