OR-04: Republican Alek Skarlatos announced Sunday that he’d seek a rematch against incumbent Peter DeFazio, a veteran Democrat who defeated him 52-46 after a surprisingly expensive race. Skarlatos made his declaration about two weeks after he learned that, even though Oregon Democrats control the governorship and both chambers of the legislature, the party will not be able to help DeFazio or anyone else during the new round of redistricting.
That’s because, as we explained in the Voting Rights Roundup, Democrats reached a deal with Republican lawmakers where Team Blue agreed to give up their majorities on the legislature's redistricting committees. In exchange for granting GOP veto power over any new congressional maps, Democrats received assurances that Republicans would back off some of their unprecedented obstruction of routine legislative business. If Democrats don’t receive the requisite GOP support now needed to implement new congressional districts, it would be up to a court to craft a new map.
No one knows how that scenario would impact DeFazio’s 4th Congressional District, especially now that the Beaver State is gaining a seat, though he’s represented competitive turf under several previous maps. The current version of this constituency, which includes the southern Willamette Valley and Oregon’s southern coast, supported Joe Biden 51-47—a close showing, though a veritable landslide compared to Hilary Clinton’s 46.1-46.0 victory four years before.
DeFazio himself prevailed by double digits in every single campaign following his first victory in 1986, but Skarlatos had a much more prominent profile than any of his previous foes. The former Oregon National Guardsman had made global headlines when he helped stop a terrorist attack on a Paris-bound train in 2015, and he’d gone on to place third on "Dancing With The Stars" and play himself in a 2018 movie called "The 15:17 to Paris" that was directed by Clint Eastwood. Still, Skarlatos initially struggled to bring in cash, and he seemed destined to be on the wrong side of another DeFazio blowout.
That impression began to change over the summer, however, when the incumbent began running negative ads against his opponent. Skarlatos also dramatically ramped up his financial efforts, and while much of his haul was eaten up by fundraising services, he still brought in more than enough to run a serious campaign.
National Republican groups deployed just $275,000 and went off the air weeks before Election Day, but their Democratic counterparts, sensing trouble, dropped close to $2.2 million to protect DeFazio. The incumbent ended up prevailing 52-46, which was easily his closest showing in any of his 17 re-election campaigns.