At the beginning of 2022, Deschutes County was going to be the place where Democrats would show their strength east of the Cascades.

By the end of October, Republicans were forecasting the area in and around Bend might be the Democrats’ Waterloo.

Now, officially at the end of the election, it’s a little bit of both or just a lot of neither.

Friday night, the Deschutes County clerk released the final official vote counts for the election. The Democratic steamroller of 2020 had not re-appeared. But neither did a Republican resurgence as the GOP’s efforts to defend its political strongholds met with mixed results.

Friday night’s announcement certified Democrat Emerson Levy’s 509-vote win over Republican Michael Sipe in House District 53. 

Democrats had hoped that Deschutes County would be a replay of their signature wins in 2020. Two years ago, Democrat Jason Kropf defeated Rep. Cheri Helt, R-Bend, to flip the House District 54 seat. A Democratic target for most of the prior decade, it had an increasingly Democratic voter registration tilt, but was won by a series of moderate Republicans who also included Jason Conger and Knute Buehler. 

Alongside Kropf’s win, Democrats broke up the previously all-Republican county commission with the election of Phil Chang. Biggest of all: Deschutes County supported Joe Biden over Trump, the first Democrat to win a majority of the county’s presidential vote since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

The 2022 race started out with redistricting of legislative and congressional districts as required by population and demographic shifts shown in the 2020 U.S. Census. The rapid growth of Deschutes County required small, more urban — and likely more Democratic — districts. 

Kropf easily won re-election in the strongly blue-tinted House District 54, now concentrated even more heavily in Bend city. On paper, House District 53 went from Republican-leaning to a Democratic-friendly outline. The incumbent, Rep. Jack Zika, R-Redmond, opted not to run.

Sipe, a Bend businessman, stepped in to challenge Levy, who had lost the 2020 election in the old House District 53 to Zika. Sipe’s campaign raised $670,000 and looked to be overwhelming Levy in the campaign ad competition, though state Democrats dispatched funds to her campaign coffers in late October that would bring Levy’s final fundraising total to over $179,000. In the 24 days after voting ended, the ballot totals separating the two candidates number a few hundred. At one point last week, Levy’s lead grew to over 500 votes.

Levy’s win is a late bit of good news for Democrats, who had hoped for better outcomes in the congressional race and a ballot that included two Republican incumbents on the Deschutes County Commission running for re-election. 

Democrats had been so sure of Deschutes County’s march to the left that it drew the 5th Congressional district as a zig-zag connecting parts of the Willamette Valley to a blossoming Democratic voter base on the other side of the Cascades. 

Plus, two more Republican commissioners would be on the ballot against strong, well-financed Democratic opponents. 

Deschutes County Democrats favored Terrebonne attorney Jamie McLeod-Skinner’s insurgent Democratic primary campaign against U.S. Rep. Kurt Schrader.

The centrist Democrat who was technically the incumbent in the 5th district, though it included less than half of the constituents from the previous version he represented. McLeod-Skinner won the primary, then won Deschutes County in the November general election.

However, Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Happy Valley, offset her vote margins by running up large totals in parts of the district west of the Santiam Pass, including Linn and Marion counties,

In the three-way race for governor, Deschutes County cast 46% of its votes for Republican Christine Drazan. Democrat Tina Kotek received 43%. Former Sen. Betsy Johnson, who was born in Bend and raised in Redmond, won 10.5%. Johnson, a longtime Democratic state senator living in Columbia County, ran as an unaffiliated candidate. 

Deschutes County supported U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, in his bid for re-election to the seat he’s held since 1996. It backed Helt, the former Republican state representative, in the non-partisan race for labor commissioner. Helt was defeated statewide by Portland attorney Christina Stephenson, who was supported by union and Democratic party activists.