McLeod-Skinner postpones expected congressional campaign announcement because of COVID

Jamie McLeod-Skinner, the central Oregon attorney and Democrat who narrowly lost the 5th Congressional District race to Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer last year, has postponed the expected start of her next campaign.

McLeod-Skinner had scheduled a rally and a “special announcement” at Bend’s Worthy Brewing on Saturday, where she was expected to officially launch her campaign for the district. On Thursday, her campaign team announced that the event would be postponed until sometime later this month because McLeod-Skinner had tested positive for COVID, with what she described as mild symptoms. 

“In the meantime, please be on the lookout for news from Jamie in the coming days,” the campaign wrote in an email to reporters. 

McLeod-Skinner began testing the waters for another run with a poll of likely primary voters, as the Capital Chronicle reported last week. That poll, conducted for McLeod-Skinner by Democratic polling firm GBAO Strategies, showed her with a clear lead over state Rep. Janelle Bynum, Metro Council President Lynn Peterson and state employee Kevin Easton, the other three Democrats who have announced they’re running in Oregon’s 5th Congressional District.

The 5th District stretches from Bend to southeast Portland, scooping up a portion of the Cascades and farmland in Marion and Linn County along the way. It’s Oregon’s most competitive congressional district, with about 169,000 Democrats, 145,000 Republicans and 177,000 non-affiliated voters. Chavez-DeRemer, the former mayor of Happy Valley, won by almost 7,300 votes.

McLeod-Skinner and her allies contend that she lost in large part because national Democrats, led by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, spent millions attacking her in her primary against conservative incumbent Democrat Kurt Schrader and then abandoned the race in the general election. Republican groups spent heavily in the district, with the Republican Congressional Leadership Fund spending more than $6 million attacking McLeod-Skinner to help Chavez-DeRemer.

National pundits, meanwhile, concluded that McLeod-Skinner’s progressive politics were a bad fit for the district. 

Some national Democrats, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-New York, have strongly encouraged Bynum, a state representative since 2016 who owns several McDonald’s franchises.

She’s staked out a position as a more business-friendly lawmaker than many of her Democratic colleagues, supporting efforts to protect businesses from lawsuits over COVID and leading efforts to provide tax breaks and subsidies to semiconductors. Bynum, the only Black woman in the state House, has also led on police reform efforts, causing criticism from Republican opponents. 

This article’s headline was updated to clarify that McLeod-Skinner postponed her launch event.