The 5th Congressional District is considered the most competitive of the six U.S. House in seats in Oregon up for grabs in 2022.

It’s one of the key races for control of the chamber, where Democrats hold a 221-212 majority with two vacancies. If the GOP can flip just six seats, they’ll take back control they lost in 2018.

The major party nominees are two women from opposite ends of the district.

Chavez-DeRemer, 53, lives in Happy Valley, just outside Portland. She is the marketing director for Evolve Health, a group of mental health clinics in Portland, Bend, and Las Vegas.

McLeod-Skinner, 55, is a Terrebonne attorney. She’s a former city council member in Santa Clara, Calif., and was city administrator of the Oregon cities of Phoenix and Talent.

Dave’s Redistricting, a popular website that does deep statistical analyses of the new congressional districts for 2022, gives Oregon’s 5th district a 6% tilt in favor of Democrats.

But because of some election-year upsets, the way Oregon chooses its candidates, and other oddities, the race has been rated as a “toss-up” by FiveThirtyEight.com and the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, two of three major political forecasting centers in the nation.

First, redistricting for the 2022 election moved the boundaries of the districts significantly to the east.

U.S. Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Canby, is officially the incumbent. But the newly drawn district of 706,209 residents contained less than half of its constituents in the old district.

Oregon has closed primaries, meaning only party members were allowed to vote for their party’s nominee on May 17. 

Schrader cast himself as a centrist battling increasingly “socialist” Democrats on one side and hard-right Republican followers of former President Donald Trump on the other.

The strategy failed in the new district.

McLeod-Skinner, 56, ran as a progressive Democrat and spent just under $900,000 in the primary- about one-fifth of Schrader’s expenditures. But she won a comfortable victory as the more activist-oriented primary electorate judged Schrader as too conservative for Oregon Democrats.

National conservative Republican leaders rallied around Chavez-DeRemer, the former mayor of Happy Valley in Clackamas County.

U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-NY, the third-ranking member of GOP House leadership tapped her for early funding and organizational resources from Elevate PAC. She defeated Bend entrepreneur Jimmy Crumpacker, who was making his second bid for Congress in two years.

An oddity, though not illegal: Neither McLeod-Skinner or Chavez-DeRemer live in the district. They can’t even vote for themselves. Under the U.S. Constitution, candidates for the U.S. House only have to live in the state where they are running, not the actual district.

Ironically, each lives in a stronghold of their opponent’s party. 

McLeod-Skinner’s home is just outside the 5th district’s southeastern border, in the Jefferson County portion of Crooked River Ranch. She lives in the 2nd district of U.S. Rep Cliff Bentz, R-Ontario, the lone Republican in Oregon’s delegation to Capitol Hill.

Chavez-DeRemer’s lives just beyond the far northern end of the 5th district, in a swath represented U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Portland, a longtime liberal representing the safest Democratic district in the state. 

It’s become common this year in Oregon – Democrat Andrea Salinas and Republican Mike Erickson live in Lake Oswego – which isn’t part of the 6th district.