Courtesy Andrea Salinas for Congress/Mike Erickson for Congress
Democrat Andrea Salinas (left) and Republican Mike Erickson, nominees in Oregon’s Sixth Congressional District
SALEM, OREGON – In what may end up being the most head-spinning race of the midterm cycle, another Republican who, like embattled Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker, paid for a former girlfriend’s abortion, and who is already threatening to contest the results of the election should he lose, may be poised to sweep a Democratic-leaning district in central Oregon.
So far, all indicators suggest Mike Erickson, a millionaire businessman and scandal-plagued perennial candidate for public office, is outpacing the fundamentals in his race against state representative Andrea Salinas. The two are squaring off for Oregon’s new Sixth Congressional District, which stretches west from the state capital, Salem, and takes in a slice of the southwestern Portland exurbs.
Salinas, a policy-focused progressive who worked for the late Majority Leader Harry Reid and other members of Congress, has yet to define herself and her opponent to voters after emerging from a primary that featured unprecedented amounts of outside spending and the interference of the national party. Her lack of name recognition has grown increasingly concerning with only days remaining before ballots are sent out in Oregon’s vote-by-mail election.
Erickson, meanwhile, has used his personal fortune to put millions of dollars in ads on the airwaves following a relatively easy primary election. Salinas’s own polling, which shows her with a razor-thin lead, admits that name recognition is still a significant barrier for her candidacy.
There are reasons to think Salinas, whose professional history also contains stints as a consultant and environmental lobbyist, still holds the edge, given the volume and magnitude of scandals in Erickson’s past and his conservative positions on most social issues. The two most prominent controversies surrounding Erickson are his apparent payment for a former partner’s abortion, which defined one of his two other runs for Congress, as well as recent accusations that he avoided consequences for possessing unprescribed oxycodone by pleading guilty to a DUI after a traffic stop in 2016—a charge that stands at odds with the tough-on-crime stance he’s adopted during his campaign.
The tactics Erickson has used to answer those charges, which both appear to be essentially true, mirror those employed by Walker and former President Donald Trump. When asked about the abortion, Erickson—who has identified saving the life of the mother as the only circumstance in which he would support abortions—has mostly deflected, varying between claims that he knew nothing about the abortion to emphasizing that he never pressured the woman to receive it. He does not dispute giving her money or driving her to the clinic. The fact that the details of the scandal have been thoroughly exhausted in prior races going back to 2008 has likely lessened its salience, but they could be seen in a new light following the Supreme Court’s gutting of abortion rights. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has sponsored ads on the topic, appears to think so.
Erickson has taken a more aggressive approach to the DUI and drug scandal. While he does not deny that he drove under the influence or was carrying illegal oxycodone, Erickson has sued Salinas for running ads saying Erickson was “charged” with possession of the drug. In those suits, Erickson’s legal team has argued that the ads are slanderous because drug charges were never officially filed, though they were referenced in his plea agreement. (Erickson’s lawyer now insists his inclusion of that language was a mistake.) Erickson’s team has also reportedly threatened to try to overturn the election results over the matter should Salinas win next month.
Salinas has yet to define herself and her opponent to voters after emerging from a primary that featured unprecedented amounts of outside spending.
This approach was on full display at a debate with Salinas hosted by the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce at the end of September. After a mostly cordial debate, both candidates were given the opportunity to ask the other a question. Erickson used his opportunity to demand an apology from Salinas over the ads his team has sued over. Salinas stood by the ad’s contents, and claimed the ad was necessary to “set the record straight.”
Before the debate’s bombastic turn, Erickson also tried out another interesting messaging strategy. While he indicated he would have opposed most of the large legislation enacted during Biden’s presidency, Erickson adopted a populist tone on economic issues, and he repeatedly called for the end of Federal Reserve interest rate hikes as one of the few tangible policy changes he would push for if elected. (Congressmembers have no real authority to do this other than by pressuring Fed officials.)
In a brief interview with the Prospect after the debate, Erickson restated his firm belief that the Fed should stop hiking interest rates, though he declined to engage at length on the issue and seemed confused about whether the Fed or the Treasury was the relevant policymaking body. He was also surprisingly supportive of Biden’s antitrust reforms, saying that he “believes in supporting small businesses and giving them a fairer shot at competing in the market.”
When the conversation turned to workers’ rights, however, he demurred. After declining to state whether he supports the PRO Act, which advocates believe would level the playing field in union organizing campaigns, Erickson ended our discussion and referred further questions to his campaign’s press team. Representatives of Erickson’s campaign did not respond to my follow-up request about his positions on these issues or the other controversies in the race.
Salinas—who used her question to ask Erickson whether he would return his own PPP loan given his critiques of pandemic spending programs and student debt forgiveness—displayed an unorthodox approach of her own. In an interview with the Prospect after the debate, she fleshed out some of the populist economic positions she clashed with Erickson over.
She agrees that interest rate hikes are presenting a serious recession risk, though she correctly identified authority over rates as lying with the Federal Reserve. She also echoed Erickson’s sentiments on antitrust, and used the opportunity to explain how mergers and acquisitions in the health care marketplace have harmed care in Oregon and to tout legislation that she has worked on to address those harms.
On the topic of workers’ organizing rights, she got especially heated, saying that unionization is key to creating an economy where everyone who wants a job is working. “People want to work; they want to be productive members of society,” she said. “What they don’t want to do is take a bunch of shit from people in power without having a voice.” (She sheepishly apologized to her communications team for saying “shit” on the record after finishing her answer.)
If Salinas does lose to Erickson, national political commentators will likely claim her record as a progressive legislator is to blame. But Erickson’s potential success likely would not be possible had national Democrats not assisted crypto king and anti-progressive donor Sam Bankman-Fried in creating an opening. Bankman-Fried, who has quietly stepped back from political donations after blowing tens of millions in Democratic primaries this cycle, spared no expense in supporting his favored nominee, first-time political candidate Carrick Flynn, in the Democratic primary. Bankman-Fried’s super PAC, Protect Our Future, poured over $10 million directly into ads supporting Flynn and another million into ads attacking Salinas.
In a naked display of the power of money, Bankman-Fried managed to purchase national party support for Flynn with a $6 million donation to House Majority PAC, the super PAC arm of the House Democratic leadership. House Majority PAC in turn provided Flynn’s campaign with another million dollars in support, as well as a veneer of credibility. Perhaps most offensively, Protect Our Future also funneled money to Flynn’s campaign through a misleading pop-up super PAC called Justice Unites Us, which claimed to be an “AAPI-led and run organization” that was built to “engage and mobilize the United States’ most rapidly growing voter bloc and help create progressive change across the country.” Despite those claims, the organization appears to have ceased all political activity after directing one single donation from Protect Our Future into an $850,000 independent expenditure supporting Flynn.
Several prominent national media outlets also played eyebrow-raising roles in elevating Flynn’s candidacy and deflecting criticism from the tactics Bankman-Fried employed to support it. Liberal news organization Vox made the decision to interview the first-time primary candidate about his connection to the so-called “effective altruism” movement, in which Bankman-Fried is also deeply involved. And NBC News’s Alex Seitz-Wald wrote a glowing, entirely uncritical article about the formation of Justice Unites Us PAC—after the organization had already funneled Bankman-Fried’s money and ceased all other operations.
All of this cash didn’t move voters in the primary. Salinas won by over 20 points in a crowded field, with Flynn capturing less than one-fifth of the vote. But the fractured primary made it more difficult for Salinas to pivot to the general election and get her message out.
Salinas, who currently serves as the majority whip in an increasingly progressive Oregon legislature, claims the incredible amount of outside spending is related to her effectiveness as a legislator. “I think people understand that I am a threat to corporate profits,” she said.
Amid a widely reported national cash crunch, the national Democratic Party is now making up for their ill-conceived quid pro quo with Bankman-Fried by paying for $2 million in air support for Salinas through the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and, ironically, House Majority PAC. But that money does not go nearly as far as Erickson’s personal campaign funds, given the competitive ad rates offered to candidates’ committees.
Added to the million dollars wasted on Flynn’s primary bid, the Democratic Party’s spending on the race now accounts for over half of the $6 million Bankman-Fried donated. Most election prognosticators appear to think that will be enough to bring the race back in line with the fundamentals—though Cook Political Report officially deemed the race a toss-up earlier this week.
On the ground in the district, you can tell firsthand that the consequences of the primary between Salinas and Flynn are still reverberating into the general election. Several of the voters I interviewed in late September and early October had no idea who Andrea Salinas was. On two separate occasions, voters told me they believed the race was between Flynn and Erickson, rather than Erickson and Salinas. When I informed one of those voters that Salinas was the nominee, she paused for a moment before claiming faint recognition of Salinas, then quickly changed the subject. But every voter knew who Erickson was.
