Janelle Bynum wins race for Congress, flipping U.S. House seat from GOP to Democratic control
Janelle Bynum wins race for Congress, flipping U.S. House seat from GOP to Democratic control
Bynum, a lawmaker and small business owner, will be Oregon's first Black representative in Congress.
Summary
Oregon Democrat Janelle Bynum won a seat in the U.S. House, becoming the state’s first Black representative after defeating Republican incumbent Lori Chavez-DeRemer in a closely watched race for Oregon’s 5th Congressional District.
Bynum led by a strong margin in key counties, ensuring a Democratic victory. Her campaign emphasized combatting extremism, reproductive rights, and economic growth, and she received significant support and funding from national Democrats.
While Republicans retain a narrow lead in the overall House, Bynum’s win represents a major gain for Oregon Democrats amid a competitive election cycle.
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That puts the house at 211 RNC and 201 DNC, then? Republicans need 7 more to claim majority.
Right, but every seat Democrats manage to siphon away is one less vote in support of fascism. And House Republicans do a lot of internal fighting. I will laugh out loud if they can't pick a speaker again, and it somehow affects the timeline for counting the EC votes.
The future will be miserable but I will at least be able to find joy in their failures. The backstabbing and incompetence in the Trump admin will be legendary.
Trump was already a paranoid nutcase who fostered an atmosphere of chaos and betrayal the last time he was in office. Given the way his declining mental state has been making him even more hostile and unstable, I can't imagine how bad it's going to get this time around.
My boss said that if they don't get anything done in the first 2 years, it's not likely to happen in the next few. And they've been involved with the government since Carter.
I hope y'all are right.
And I don’t see it going well for JD Vance either should he step in. Most of the country hates him.
Doesn’t really matter if the entire Republican Party is behind his ideals (Peter Theil’s cock with a side of project 2025) We have no voice.
That would be intentional. They'd have to screw with the timeline for counting the EC votes if Trump kicks it between December 17th and January 6th. Otherwise, the House would be obligated to create a Harris/Vance administration.
Well, looks like I'm going to pray for something for the first time.
Having the President and the Vice-president be of different parties used to be a thing until a law passed banning that.
There's no law "banning" that. You're talking about the 12th amendment revising the electoral process so that the VP is elected in a separate EC election, rather than being the runner up in the presidential election.
That same 12th amendment requires, when a presidential candidate does not have 270 votes, to select the president from the top three candidates based on number of EC votes. If Trump strokes out after they cast their votes on December 17th, no candidate will have received 270 votes. When they go to count the votes on January 6th, the only valid EC votes cast for president will have been cast for Harris, so we get a Harris/Vance ticket.
The Republicans could spend one vote on Vance for President, allowing the House to vote for him. But then a similar situation happens in the Senate with Walz, and the Senate only gets to choose between the top two VP candidates based on EC votes. We could theoretically end up with a Vance/Walz administration.
Lmfao. Imagining a Walz and Vance admin is cracking me the fuck up right now holy shit.
I appreciate the correction.
The dynamics of the game are way different with a Republican Senate and president. I bet they'll fall in line in a heartbeat if they keep the house.
Exactly. People forget they not all the republicans are MAGAs. The GOP equivalent of Joe Manchin exists, and they’re going to have a lot of power with a slim majority.
That's over. It's a MAGA world if you are a Republican. Its a mandate, like it or not
Yeah I’ll be curious to see if they censure their own party members lmfao
I don’t know the answer to this and am too drunk to research right now but. I really wonder how many of the people causing ire beforehand are still even left in congress now. I’m worried a lot of the loud voices were replaced with trumpie fucking losers. But again. Just assumption based on my end.
Yep, control runs through California, which is taking its sweet time counting the votes. It will be days before we know who controls the house, although it’s going to be the republicans more likely than not
This is also why people need to vote blue no matter how blue your state is.
California's "sweet time" includes allowing votes postmarked on Election Day to arrive and be counted. You might not be happy waiting but I'm glad to live in a state that values every vote and makes voting as accessible as possible. I won't say "easy" because our ballot was 6 pages long, but it was easy to read and mark at home, and mail or put in a box or hand to a person.
Irresponsible to say "taking it's sweet time..." these days without also mentioning explicitly that this is the specific effect of decades of a GOP cause to sabotage how votes are collected, processed, tallied and reported.
What did the GOP have to do with the vote counting in California? I appreciate California for counting every vote but I’m not sure what republicans had to do with making it slow
Is that a serious question?
Yes, please explain. Each state manages their own electoral system and California is a deep blue state
The answer here is complex and I doubt you actually want depth. But to clarify your statement, each COUNTY within a state manages their own election. California is also one of the biggest states in the country and the population of some counties dwarf the size of entire U.S. states. So the first answer is, it's a complex operation WITHOUT any obstruction attempts, but we live in this reality, and gop obstruction is rampant and regular at this point.
An epicenter for election threats and disinformation in California is Shasta County. It will probably take some time for them to dissect all of the subtle ways that this fucked their process, but late in the election cycle, their garbage county supervisors hired a lawyer with no election admin experience to replace the departing competent person who had run elections. Here's an account from a local paper wrt some of what is allowed to go on in that country:
"CalMatters’ Sergio Olmos visited last week and reports that the presence of self-appointed election observers has led some elections workers to quit. The observers spend their days at the county’s registrar of voters office on the lookout for any misdeeds related to voter fraud. Though voters are legally allowed to enter the office to observe the election process, staffers report that the observers have been following workers into their breakroom and attempting to open doors to see inside their offices. Their intensity pushed Tanner Johnson to quit after working as an account clerk for more than a year. He says that 10 of the registrar’s 21 employees have also left. *Johnson: “They want to catch us in a lie, so they’ll try to trick you into saying something. A lot of times they’ll be secretly videotaping you or recording you. … I make $19.64 an hour. I’m not going to be a martyr for $19.60 an hour.”
So that kind of ceaseless, cowardly, undemocratic intimidation has been long present. It leads to stressed, threatened volunteer temporary workers who don't get paid enough to deal with that bullshit so if nothing else, they naturally slow down. It also leads to high turnover for those positions from the fear/stress, which means people are more likely to be undertrained or frankly, lower quality job candidates as you've already cleared out the "starting lineup and the bench" in some cases and then you're just desperate for any bodies off the street - including some of these pieces of shit themselves that learn the systems so they can purposefully volunteer and obstruct from the inside work challenges to ballots that are false, but require time in a process for people to then come and do a focused verification process to reclear as flagged ballot - like the tidbit that was caught streaming those "sample" verification ballots and then immediately challenging the validity of their elections process because they didn't have those ballots (that he obviously stole, on camera)
At the larger systemic level, they've challenged valid systems meant to expedite voting and vote processing so much and for so long now, that you're left (intentionally by these GOP efforts) with a patchwork of disjointed, disconnected and overly careful processing flows that move especially slow to attempt to satisfy their never meaningfully justified "voter fraud" bullshit - claims they are now, suddenly silent about, just like with those "caravans!!!" at the border
I could write you an essay, but I doubt you actually, truly give a shit.
That makes sense, I hadn’t really considered that. Thanks for the detailed answer
I appreciate your measured response and you listening to reason here and having the strength to say you learned something new in the exchange. Wish you well and hope you spread to others - If we all convinced one person of the bigger picture right now, we might be in a much different reality.
AP still hasn’t called her. And they have 212 RNC and 200 DNC. So if it’s 201, then republican need 6 to claim majority now.