Janelle Bynum flips US House District and will become Oregon’s first Black member of Congress

Nationwide, the Democratic Party had little to celebrate this election cycle. Republicans took control of the Senate, the House and the presidency. But in Oregon, state Rep. Janelle Bynum ran against 5th Congressional District Republican incumbent Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer — and won. Bynum’s victory is also notable as she will become the state’s first Black representative in Congress. We talk with Bynum from Washington, D.C., where she’s already prepping for office.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Nationwide, the Democratic Party had little to celebrate this election cycle. Republicans re-took the White House, flipped control of the Senate and retained their majority in the House. But in Oregon, as most folks have probably heard by now, it was a kind of mirror image. Democrats maintained their hold on every single statewide office, extended their lead in the state Senate and flipped a congressional seat. That seat is in the 5th District, where State Representative Janelle Bynum ran against the Republican incumbent Lori Chavez-DeRemer and won.

Janelle Bynum joins us now from Washington, D.C. Congratulations and welcome back to Think Out Loud.

Janelle Bynum: Thanks for having me.

Miller: What was the moment like for you when you realized that it had happened, that you had been elected to Congress?

Bynum: I think yes, it was actually yesterday because up until The Oregonian had called it, and then when it was called by the AP, I started receiving text messages. I would say it was surreal. It was a long, long, long road. And I remember during the primary, my son asked me if he could do something with me, and I said, well, I need to kind of give myself a little space. Can we do it after the election? And he looks at me, he’s 14, and he says, “What election?” And I felt a little humbled. I was like, I’ve been running for almost a year for Congress, and he didn’t know. But truthfully, like I said, he’s 14. And for the last eight years, I’ve been running in a swing seat. And so for him, it’s just been normal. Now, to have reached this level of government service is quite the honor and I’m humbled.

Miller: I imagine it’s also humbling to have somebody who lives in your house who doesn’t seem like he’s that focused on your political ambitions or career.

Bynum: [Laughter] Well, I mean, kids detect authenticity. They detect who’s important, and I’ve always tried to maintain my closeness with them as a mother and as a legislator. And when people ask me, what was the difference in this race, I think that actually the difference is that I have four children. I’ve remained very focused on creating a better life for them and focusing on the things that they’ve told me were important. So it’s one reason I’m a big sports fan. And I think about children’s health, being able to be outdoors, being able to be safe. My kids, my older kids, are going to college and now professional school. My daughter’s going to OHSU to be a dentist. And so all of that perspective, once I stopped fighting being a working mom and all the things that came with that, I think that’s when I really became great as a legislator.

Miller: I imagine that you’ve been talking to constituents for eight years now as a state lawmaker, well before you ran for Congress. But I’m curious if there was a difference in issues that people talked to you about, in terms of importance, when you ran for federal office?

Bynum: To be honest, not really. Running for state office and then moving to the federal slate, I think if you have the skills of communicating with people, meeting them where they are, not being judgmental … I kind of reject the urban/rural divide whole argument, but understanding that people get to their positions differently, but they can still end up in the same place. I think I’ve shared that there was a mom who was secretly hoping that her son would build a mother-in-law unit on his house. And I think she was in the Albany-Salem area. The issues of housing costs and affordability were hitting our more rural areas, not as sharply or not at the same cost, but what she was explaining to me was that our Social Security payments weren’t keeping up with the rise in rent. So she was going to have to make different housing arrangements. That really isn’t any different from what’s happening, for instance, in Clackamas County or the sliver of Portland that we have, or even in Bend and Redmond, where we’re seeing housing costs skyrocket. So it’s not the issue that’s different, it’s the contours of the issue.

Miller: I talked to Washington Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, I think two days ago now. Two years ago, she did what you just did. She flipped a seat that had been held by a Republican. And she said a lot of things, but one of the things she said in the Think Out Loud conversation, and has said in the past, is that if Democrats are going to win, they have to be less condescending in terms of class and take specific issues like border security more seriously. First of all, I’m wondering if you agree with her take?

Bynum: I’m a sports fan and I kind of think of things in sports analogies … so right now we got pretty bad field position, right? So you need to assess the players. And whether you have the best leadership, whether you have the best team, whether you have the best coaches. You need to look at your equipment, like how you are communicating with people and not communicating to people. So it’s a two-way conversation. I also think it stands for us to look at where we play and how we play.

This [Congressional District] 5 is a really, really interesting district. It’s a Democratic registration edge of about two points, but it really is purple. I mean, it is purple. And what I mean by that is it’s not holistically red, it’s not mostly conservative thinkers, it’s not mostly progressive thinkers. It’s actually people who are working class, working families, many are retired professors. That’s kind of what I encountered in the Bend area. So people are looking around for a level of authenticity, and I think that’s where Democrats can actually shine going forward in the field position that we have.

Miller: How do you think that translates in terms of policies? And I guess if we’re going to stick with the sports metaphor, then it would be the game plan – not how you communicate them, but the policies themselves.

Bynum: The policies come from the people. That’s how I’ll have always looked at it. When I think about work that we did, for instance, with the Oregon Student Activities Association on the CROWN Act – which is basically Oregonians being able to wear their natural hair. And student athletes being able, for instance, if they wear a hijab or they have locks in their hair, that they can do that without interference. When you think about how you develop policy, if it comes from the people, it’s stronger, it doesn’t get overturned, it builds momentum. And that’s the way I look at it. So when people tell you, for instance, “I can’t find housing,” you start to look at, what are the barriers? They’ll tell you I have to pay a million and one inquiry fees. I have to take time off from work and do visits. So they’ll tell you all of the things that it takes. You, yourself, may be in a position … you’re in a house, you haven’t moved for 20 years, you have no idea what it’s like to be a renter.

I think what made the difference in my race is that I have two kids who are college age, who are renters, which means by default, my husband Mark and I are renters. So understanding the fact that, for instance, when my daughter moved into her apartment, we knew we had one set rate. We knew that there was an extra fee if you wanted to bring a car and park it in the garage. But then what happened was that she started to get all of these other ancillary fees: a wifi fee for the common area, a trash pickup fee for the other common area. So all of a sudden, she’s like, “Mom, my rent keeps going up.” Then you had to have another gas fee for the common area. All of these little things started getting tacked on to her rent. And so when people tell you “my rent keeps going up,” and you’re so far away from the issue that you don’t even understand what’s happening cause you haven’t seen it, that’s when you lose races.

Miller: OK, but now you are in a position of power … not unilateral, you’re one of more than 400. And you’re saying you have this experience through the role of a parent and maybe a co-signer, so skin in the game here. But, what do you do with it? I’m wondering if this recent experience has led you to want to pursue specific policies just in this particular arena when it comes to, say, the fees that landlords can and do charge right now?

Bynum: Well, I’ve been here a few days in D.C. and it’s been interesting to see how the place organizes itself. And so I would be speaking ahead of myself if I said, “oh, I want to tackle this.” I know what Oregonians told me to tackle, which is housing costs, which is making sure that we have adequate resources to fight wildfires and prevent them, and to be an outspoken voice and bring back solutions on mental health and healthcare accessibility.

The interesting thing that I learned from eight years in the legislature is you can do that by being a policy wonk, as they call it. You can be on a committee. You can affect the ability for the state to get grants. There are a million ways to do that, so the short time that I’ve spent here so far has been an exploration on which avenue to pursue, in order to bring back those wins for the 5th Congressional District and Oregonians at large.

Miller: One big difference – and I’m sure this is very obvious to you – is that this will be the first time you’ve been a lawmaker at the state level for eight years, but always a member of the majority party. And I think for some of that, a supermajority, meaning you didn’t need Republican votes to pass revenue measures. Now, obviously, it’s flipped. You are going to be in the minority. How are you thinking about approaching that?

Bynum: That has been on my mind, besides finding a place to live and how I’m going make sure my kids get their homework done. So I’ve already made a few Republican friends. One gentleman stands out in particular – he’s the former Speaker of the House of North Carolina. And he and I were talking today, and he said that when he was Speaker, when he first came into the legislature, he won a significant portion of the Black vote. I think he’s an R+18, something like that. And that means there’s 18% more Republican registrations in his district than Democrats. So pretty strong Republicans are pretty much going to win that seat. I’m sorry, he started off as a D+4, and now it’s like an R+18. Anyway, he said that the way he did that was because he had the trust of all of the Black churches. He used to be the lawyer for Black churches.

Miller: You didn’t say this, but I feel like it’s important for us to know. Is he Black? Is he white? Is he Latino?

Bynum: Oh no, he’s a short white dude.

Miller: OK. Good for us to know for the context as you’re describing race.

Bynum: Yes

Miller: We know who knows who he is, a short white dude. OK, in a district that had had a modest Democratic advantage, now very much to the right. But he had been a lawyer for a bunch of Black churches.

Bynum: Yes. So it was in this conversation that I learned something about him and he learned something about me. And that’s always been kind of the route that I would take in trying to work across the aisle with my Republican colleagues. Like, you can’t judge a book by its cover. You should talk to people, find out their story, find out their why, find out how they got here. And that makes it a whole lot easier to work with people.

Likewise, I would say even though I’ve been in the political majority in the Oregon State House, one of the things that has been to my advantage is that I always had to run in a purple seat. Some of my views are a little more conservative and I always try to make sure that I represented everyone in my community. So that’s, I think, kind of the trick, being able to make friends and grow your network across the aisle. Understand how people get to their opinions. Figure out how you can get to a “yes.” And to me, it’s really about moving the ball. Sometimes it’s 10 yards at a time, sometimes it’s three; sometimes you run the ball, sometimes you throw the ball.

Miller: And sometimes there’s an interception too.

Bynum: But yeah, that’s quality of personnel.

Miller: Sometime we should just talk about sports but not today. You’re going to be the first Black member of Congress in Oregon’s history and there are a lot of ways to look at that. I mean, one of the things it means is that it took 165 years since statehood for this to happen, or 98 years since exclusion laws were removed from our state’s constitution. How do you think about this first?

Bynum: You know, I’ve shared that I think it’s … I put it in the context of my mother. When my mom came to visit, it was kind of the last week of the campaign. I was still doing a lot of my fundraising, even to the last day. She was watching TV and she would come knock on my door. She’s like, “You’re on TV, again. You’re on TV! And this time, your grandfather’s in the picture.” And it was so heartwarming for her.

Miller: She was seeing campaign ads?

Bynum: Yeah.

Miller: OK … which were all over the place. You got a lot of national money.

Bynum: Yes

Miller: But it enabled your mom to see you on TV a lot.

Bynum: Right, but one of them was a picture of my grandfather and my grandmother in his police uniform. And she would say, “Oh, James, he’s made it to Oregon!” And he grew up in Seneca, South Carolina, and was a police officer at the Pentagon. His picture was now being shown in Oregon more frequently. It wasn’t the first time, but she saw it. I thought through her eyes, she was a kid of segregation. She grew up in Jim Crow. I think that the win was significant for her generation, far more significant for hers than than I would say for mine. And she was a kid who graduated as the valedictorian of her class, but did not have a route to college, didn’t have a route to even a job after she graduated.

I think of it in that context of how can I take her lived experience and map that on to make something great for the kids of [Congressional District] 5. So that means bridging talent with opportunity. And that’s what I want this congressional session to be about for the young people of our district. How do I bring more opportunities for them so they have something to look forward to? I love my kids dearly. I want them to be able to come back home to Oregon and contribute. If they choose to stay here after high school, I want them to have meaningful opportunities.

I know that’s also what the voters were telling me. They needed to see hope in their communities, whether it was Albany, Lebanon, Bend, Redmond, Portland, Happy Valley, Clackamas or Milwaukee. They wanted to see that their kids' lives were going to be better, or at least at minimum at par with what they had. And they also wanted to see their parents be able to live out their final years in dignity. So that, to me, is the mission, and that’s how I think of the progress that we’ve made in terms of making history.

Miller: Janelle Bynum, thanks very much for your time.

Bynum: My pleasure.

Miller: Janelle Bynum is a four-term Democratic state lawmaker from Happy Valley, who was just elected to represent Oregon’s 5th Congressional District.

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