Monique DeSpain, a Republican vying to represent Oregon's 4th Congressional District, takes the mic at a forum in Eugene Oct. 11, 2024. (Photo by Alex Baumhardt/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
Republican Air Force veteran and attorney Monique DeSpain will for the second time challenge incumbent Democratic Rep. Val Hoyle for the Eugene-area 4th Congressional District seat.
DeSpain would first have to win the Republican nomination in the state primary taking place on May 19, 2026, to be on November ballots. So far, the only other Republican candidate is Jonathan Lockwood, a former legislative staffer and campaign consultant.
“I am running again because I refuse to give up on the people of this district. Oregon has endured too many tough years as Hoyle and Oregon’s political elites have delivered rampant homelessness, unsafe streets, rising prices, and declining living standards,” DeSpain said in a statement. She was not available for an interview Thursday.
DeSpain last challenged Hoyle to represent the district — which slightly favors Democrats, and spans seven counties mostly along the southwest coast from the Oregon-California border to Lincoln City — in 2024. Hoyle beat her by about 10 percentage points.
Hoyle is a longtime elected official who served in the Oregon House for eight years, including as majority leader, and was labor commissioner between 2019 and 2023. She was elected to Congress in 2022 following the retirement of former U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio, who had represented the district in Congress for 36 years.
In that election, Hoyle beat by a 7-point margin Republican Alex Skarlatos, a former National Guardsman whose campaign was marred by revelations he joked about strangling women during sex. Skarlatos is now a Republican state House representative for Canyonville.
DeSpain, a 30-year veteran of the Air Force and Oregon Air National Guard who retired as a colonel, has never held elected office before, but she worked for several years for one of the state’s most prominent Republicans, Salem state Rep. Kevin Mannix. She spent much of her time in the military as an attorney with the Judge Advocate General’s Corps.
DeSpain’s priorities, according to her website, are to lower the cost of living in Oregon, grow the state’s economy, “fight crime” and “bring transparency and accountability to our federal government.” She has not yet outlined policies or actions she would take.
During her previous campaign, DeSpain focused on scrutinizing Hoyle’s relationship with the troubled founders of a cannabis company that donated to Hoyle’s campaign and that came under federal investigation for tax evasion. The company, La Mota, donated to Hoyle’s campaign while she was labor commissioner and gave millions of dollars for an apprenticeship program at the labor department. DeSpain repeatedly said during the campaign that Hoyle was under federal investigation, which she was not.
Hoyle in turn hammered DeSpain during the previous campaign for being against abortion and reproductive rights, and characterized her as being supportive of a nationwide abortion ban. DeSpain repeatedly said she would not support a nationwide abortion ban.
DeSpain in her news release Wednesday went after Hoyle for Hoyle’s recent violations of the STOCK Act, for which Hoyle paid a $200 fine. Hoyle was found to be weeks or months late disclosing 217 individual stock trades by her husband, Stephen, according to an OpenSecrets review.
Hoyle told OpenSecrets the trades weren’t reported because she didn’t know they were happening. The company her husband works for ended its employer-sponsored pension program last year, and his retirement savings transitioned into an individual retirement account run by a new financial advisor, she said, who did not consult with Hoyle or her husband before making trades.
Hoyle this year is a co-sponsor of the TRUST in Congress Act, which would stop members of Congress, their spouses and dependent children from buying and selling individual stocks, and the Stop Politicians Profiting from War Act of 2025. That act would ban federal lawmakers and their immediate family members from owning most defense industry stocks.
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