Column: Is there room for a non-MAGA Republican in Trump's GOP? This purple patch of Oregon will tell

For nearly a decade, Donald Trump has ruled the Republican Party with a power that rivals the moon and tides.

Lori Chavez-DeRemer is trying to fight that gravitational pull.

Two years ago, the former mayor of Happy Valley, a Portland suburb, scratched out a narrow victory in a Democratic-leaning Oregon congressional district, one of just 16 Republicans nationwide who prevailed on turf where Trump lost to Joe Biden.

Her reelection contest, among the costliest and most competitive races in the country, is also one of roughly two dozen that will determine control of the House.

Beyond that, the race in this purple patch of a deep-blue state will address two broader questions.

How much, in these fractious and deeply polarized times, are voters willing to look past party labels? And what room is left in the Republican Party for someone pledging less than 100% fealty to Trump and rejecting his orthodoxy on issues such as green energy and election denial?

A vote for her, Chavez-DeRemer insists, is not affirmation of the MAGA agenda, nor should voters see it as support for the House Republican leadership firmly lodged under Trump’s thumb.

“What they should see is that I’m going to be thoughtful,” the congresswoman said after touring a union apprenticeship center in Tualatin, another upscale Portland suburb.

“Being a conservative voice, but also being … forward-thinking on how we can get things done,” she went on, “rather than get caught up in just the rhetoric or the talk or the identity politics.”

Her Democratic rival, state Rep. Janelle Bynum, is having none of that.

“My opponent supports President Trump,” she said in the first of two testy debates the pair held last week. (Chavez-DeRemer has, in fact, endorsed his return to the White House.)

“Rubber-stamps his agenda,” Bynum said. “Rubber-stamps his ideas.”

The Democrat’s wall-to-wall TV advertising is blunter still, showing Chavez-DeRemer with glowering images of the ex-president, his mini-me running mate, JD Vance, and scenes from the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

“Don’t believe MAGA extremists,” one spot ominously intones.

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Oregon’s 5th Congressional District unfurls from the outskirts of Portland, rolling south and east through the forested Cascades, across table-flat farmland and high desert to the recreational mecca of Bend.

The registration is nearly evenly split among unaffiliated voters, who make up the largest chunk of the electorate, followed by Democrats and then Republicans.

For years, much of the region was represented by Kurt Schrader, one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress. He lost the 2022 primary to a left-wing opponent, Jamie McLeod-Skinner, who, in turn, lost the general election to Chavez-DeRemer.

Fearing a rematch, national Democrats spent millions of dollars in this year’s primary attacking McLeod-Skinner and promoting Bynum, whom they considered a stronger candidate. She has twice beaten Chavez-DeRemer in campaigns for the state Legislature — though, it should be noted, those contests were held in friendlier Democratic territory.

If Bynum wants to make this congressional race about Trump and national Republicans, Chavez-DeRemer is eager to focus on Democrats in Salem, the state capital. She blames one-party rule for surging crime and drug abuse, a growing homeless population and a housing affordability crisis that’s priced out more and more Oregonians.

Bynum, she asserted, has “almost a decade-long” record of failing to address those issues in the Legislature. Things would only get worse, Chavez-DeRemer said, if she went to Congress.

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Chavez-DeRemer, 56, was born and raised in California’s Central Valley and graduated with a business degree from Fresno State University.

She and her husband, who met when she was 15, moved to Oregon more than two decades ago. Together, they founded a network of medical clinics and had twin daughters, now 30.

Chavez-DeRemer began her political career with election to the Happy Valley City Council in 2004 and served two terms as mayor, ending in 2018. It was a job, she tells audiences, where problem-solving was more important than partisanship, an approach she says she’s taken to Washington.

“This isn’t about one side or the other,” Chavez-DeRemer told a meeting of Clackamas County law enforcement officers, before they delivered their endorsement. “I’m willing to work with anybody.”

As a Latina, Chavez-DeRemer doesn’t look like most Republican members of Congress. Nor does she act or vote like them.

She was ranked the 29th most bipartisan House member in a survey done by Georgetown University; Chavez-DeRemer used that particular B-word or some variant a dozen times in an hourlong debate.

She is also the rare GOP lawmaker with strong support from organized labor. Several of the unions that backed her Democratic opponent two years ago endorsed Chavez-DeRemer this time.

Touring the plumbers and steamfitters apprentice program, she talked up the importance of organized labor, extolled the job-creating potential of green energy and mentioned her father was a proud member of the Teamsters. “We are union strong in Oregon,” Chavez-DeRemer said. “That’s important.”

As she entered one training area, where apprentices learn to install sinks and toilets, she paused and took a deep breath of air redolent with the scent of PVC glue and primer. “I love that smell,” she said with a broad smile.

“Smells like money,” said James King, the union’s assistant business manager.

Chavez-DeRemer turned on her heels and gave him a high-five.

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The congresswoman doesn’t run from Trump. She supports his election in November, she says, because she believes the policies of the Biden administration have failed the country and she considers the former president a strong leader.

But Chavez-DeRemer doesn’t talk about him, either — unless someone brings him up first. “I’ve never even met President Trump,” she says.

In one debate, a viewer-submitted question asked whether Chavez-DeRemer believes Biden legitimately won the 2020 presidential race. “Yes, I do believe that,” she said crisply and without hesitation.

Endorsing the former president without embracing him is not the only fine line that Chavez-DeRemer is walking in a district almost certain to back Kamala Harris. She’s also attempting a tricky balance on the abortion issue.

Though Chavez-DeRemer praised the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe vs. Wade and previously indicated support for a ban starting at six weeks — before some women know they are pregnant — she said she would oppose any efforts to outlaw the procedure nationwide.

Most Oregonians favor legalized abortion, she noted, as do most Americans. “I will protect their access,” she promised.

In the end, the contest is likely to come down to trust — a word her opponent used in their second debate even more times than Chavez-DeRemer invoked bipartisanship.

“My opponent cannot be trusted,” Bynum said, whether the question dealt with taxes, housing, inflation or her willingness to break with Trump and fellow Republicans to work, as she constantly pledges, with Democrats.

Janelle Bynum, the Democratic candidate running to represent Oregon’s 5th Congressional District.

(Jenny Kane / Associated Press)

Chavez-DeRemer insists, repeatedly, that her pursuit of compromise is not calculated or a function of being a Republican running in a purple district, which leaves her no choice. It reflects, she said, her true self.

“Oh, I have lots of choices,” she said as she left the peace officers union headquarters. “And my choice is to work hard and work with my colleagues across the aisle.”

Voters will take her word, or not, and that will decide not just Chavez-DeRemer’s future, but how much of a shrinking middle ground still exists.