Freshman Democratic Rep. Andrea Salinas and Republican challenger Mike Erickson recently aired their differences on immigration, inflation, and the economy.
Incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. Andrea Salinas and Republican challenger Mike Erickson are once again locked in a tight battle for Oregon’s Sixth Congressional District. The race is a rematch of 2022, when Salinas edged out Erickson 50.1 percent to 47.7 percent.
Both the Democratic and Republican parties have designated the district as a priority.
In July, the National Republican Congressional Committee named Erickson to its “Young Guns” list, identifying him as one of its top candidates to flip a House seat. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has Salinas on its “Frontline” list of vulnerable incumbents.
The Cook Political Report considers the race a “toss-up.”
As of Oct. 17, four independent election forecasters differed in their ratings, with forecasts ranging from Safe Democratic to Lean Democratic.
The race in the Sixth Congressional District is just one of three Oregon races that could determine which party controls Congress in 2025.
Freshman Rep. Val Hoyle, who is also on the DCCC’s Frontline list, is facing a challenge by Republican Young Guns candidate Monique DeSpain in Oregon’s Fourth Congressional District. Freshman Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer is trying to hold off Democrat challenger Janelle Bynum in the Fifth Congressional District.
The Sixth District
Created after the 2020 census showed population growth of 10 percent, the Sixth Congressional District was the first new congressional district in Oregon in 40 years. Salinas became its first elected representative with her win in 2022.
The district is home to roughly 480,000 voters who live in Portland’s southern suburbs; the state capital, Salem; and more rural areas west of Interstate 5. Independent voters outnumber registered Democrats and Republicans.
When running in 2022, Salinas vowed to “govern with an equity and justice lens.”
Since taking office, she has been a lead sponsor on 29 bills, 15 of which had bipartisan support, according to her campaign team.
They include the Assault Weapons Ban of 2023, the Women’s Health Protection Act and the Ensuring Women’s Right to Reproductive Freedom Act to ensure access to abortion, and the Equality Act to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, gender identity, or sexual orientation.
She also sponsored a bill to establish a Transgender Day of Visibility and a U.S. Commission on Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation.
In a second term, Salinas said, she will fight to bring down the cost of living, increase access to affordable health care including reproductive health, take action regarding the climate, fight for environmental justice, address the addiction crisis, and make housing more affordable for Oregon families.
A supply chain and logistics consultant, Erickson identified lowering inflation and the cost of living and securing the border as his top priorities. He said he wants to see the United States produce more domestic oil and diesel to lower costs at the pump in order to reduce inflation.
Erickson said he would also prioritize reducing the ballooning debt and lowering taxes.
A self-described “fiscally conservative business guy,” he said he “wouldn’t run his company the way the country is being run.”
Erickson said he would bring a badly needed business perspective to Congress.
“We have too many career politicians who’ve never stepped in the real world of running a business and paying for health care and finding business solutions and staying within a budget,” he said.
This is Erickson’s fourth run for Congress. In addition to his 2022 Sixth Congressional District loss to Salinas, he unsuccessfully campaigned for the Fifth Congressional District in 2006 and 2008.
On the Issues
The two candidates debated on Oregon Public Broadcasting on Oct. 7.
Salinas called the current situation at the border “unsustainable.”
“Customs enforcement is being overrun and too many people are coming across the border,” she said. “It’s not orderly, and the communities cannot support this.”
She said she would allocate more resources to help customs officials at the border to establish more “orderly migration.” Salinas said she also wants to provide more certainty for tax-paying immigrants.
This year, Salinas co-sponsored the U.S. Citizenship Act (HR 3194), which would have established a path to citizenship for certain people in the country without documentation.
That bill would have replaced the term “alien” with “noncitizen” in the immigration statutes and established a new status of “lawful prospective immigrant” for noncitizens who had been continually present in the United States since Jan. 1, 2023, and passed background checks.
After five years with this status, an eligible noncitizen could have applied for and received lawful permanent resident status. It would also have redefined for immigration purposes the term “conviction” and established grant programs for providing training and services to immigrants.
The bill was defeated in April by a vote of 215–199.
Erickson said that immigrants are “coming here illegally through the asylum process” because the country’s guest worker visa program is broken.
He proposed reducing fees and shortening the wait time for a U.S. work visa. He said he would also reallocate resources from the IRS to run background checks to speed up the visa process.
The two also differed in their approach to inflation.
“The biggest driver of inflation is the price of diesel,” Erickson said. “Every product you buy was delivered by truck.”
Saying the price of diesel has doubled, he proposed to “return the country to energy independence through fracking and other technologies that would drive down prices.”
Salinas proposed “a strong bipartisan farm bill” that she said would stabilize the food supply chain and bring down the cost of groceries.
“That means improving automation and mechanization on farms, so farmers don’t have to depend on unreliable labor sources,” she said.
Salinas said she would also push for the Clean Electricity and Transmission Acceleration Act and cut red tape to make it easier to upgrade the U.S. energy infrastructure, improve supply, and bring down the cost of energy.
The two aired their views on climate-related issues on the heels of another fire season in which nearly 2 million acres burned in Oregon.
Erickson criticized the incumbent for failing to support the Fix Our Forests Act, H.R. 8790.
The bipartisan legislation would “encourage active forest management, support community resiliency to wildfires by expediting environmental analyses, reduce frivolous lawsuits, and increase the pace and scale of forest restoration projects,” he said.
“Even Nancy Pelosi—one of the most liberal members of Congress—voted for it, because she knows how devastating all the forest fires have been,” Erickson said.
The act would have provided federal dollars immediately to help replant forests and provide firefighting resources, he said.
“I’m just scratching my head,” Erickson said, regarding why Salinas “would vote no.”
Salinas said the bill would have rolled back environmental protections including the Endangered Species Act.
“Wildfire season is starting sooner and going later and the fires are more intense,” she said.
Salinas said she would prioritize change action and endorse projects to “monitor the carbon and greenhouse gas impacts of timber production” and “keep the investments in the Inflation Reduction Act to give our agricultural industries the tools that they need to be a part of the climate solution.”
She also proposed the Civilian Conservation Center Act, which would allow the U.S. Forest Service to hire directly from Job Corps to ensure adequate firefighting and land management personnel. The bill also would authorize the Forest Service to remove any dead fuel from forest floors.