At the twilight's last gleaming

Photo by Bob Bowie.

With so much attention being sucked up by the daffy Portland city elections, I've neglected to say a word about the Congressional races around here. And they're important.

In the district in which I live, Maxine Dexter is a lock, and so I assume is Suzanne Bonamici out on the west side. Cliff Bentz is safe in his red-meat red district, but the other four area House races are noteworthy.

The rematch in southwest Washington between Marie Gluesenkamp-Perez and Trumpy Joe Kent is probably the most interesting. MGP won by a razor-thin margin last time, and the vote-counting kept us up nights until it was through. This time around, Kent is running behind Orange Caligula, and that may put him over the top. MGP has a track record as a moderate, and Trumpy Joe's extreme abortion views are going to hurt him more than ever, but he's got to be a slight favorite as we head into the final week of the campaign. It will be a shame if he wins.

Down here south of the river, the big slugfest is between Lori Chavez-DeRemer and challenger Janelle Bynum. DeRemer, the Republican incumbent, snatched the new Oregon seat two years ago, but Bynum has beaten her in state House elections before. They're both burning through the millions with TV ads galore, and both have had celebrity visitors at campaign events in recent days. Based on no empirical data whatsoever (that's how I roll), I'd call that one a tossup.

Incumbent Andrea Salinas has got to be thinking she'll win again over Republican Mike Erickson. Word in D.C. is that Salinas wants the seat on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee that's being vacated with the retirement of Earl the Pearl Blumenauer. Next year, there's going to be a major throwdown over taxes, and most people in Congress would like to be in the middle of it. In the House, that's Ways and Means. Based on past performance, I'd give Salinas the edge, but I think it will be closer than she expects.

Ah, Monique DeSpain, what a name. She's the Republican running against incumbent Val Hoyle in the other Oregon district. Hoyle got some mud on her, if not some blood, in the recent marijuana influence scandals in Salem. But DeSpain is a flat-out rookie. In places like Roseburg, the R is a prohibitive favorite, but there's all that granola and kefir in Eugene, and what's a little dirty weed money among that crew? I'd give the advantage to Hoyle.

So where is it all going? The Dems may lose MGP but get rid of LCD, resulting in a wash. If the majorities are going to change in Congress, it may not be the result of what's about to happen around here.