Six rural Oregon Democrats compete to oust U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz

The district spans more than 70,000 square miles across 20 of 36 counties. It runs through The Dalles, and Medford, skirting Bend and Roseburg and stretches east into every town until reaching the Idaho border. The district has been held by a Republican since 1981, and it’s Oregon’s only congressional district with more registered Republicans than Democrats. 

The six Democrats combined have raised only a fraction of what Bentz has this election cycle. Many of them are first-time candidates, motivated to run because of their disillusionment with the Trump administration and what they see as a lack of responsiveness from Bentz. 

The Oregon Capital Chronicle interviewed all six Democratic candidates. Bentz did not respond to the Capital Chronicle’s request for comment for this story. Here’s a look at those candidates, listed in alphabetical order. 

Chris Beck 

Chris Beck was staying at his childhood home in Portland watching the Trump administration lay off thousands of federal workers when he decided to run for office, filing his candidacy in February. 

“I was like, ‘what can I do to help the country?’” he said. “Well, we have one seat that has a Trump toadie incumbent. Well, maybe I can give that a whirl. And it’s in Southern Oregon, where I’m at, and Eastern Oregon, where my heart’s at.”

Beck spent much of his youth hunting in the Ochoco Mountains, fishing on the Deschutes River and collecting petrified wood east of the Cascades with his dad. 

His first job out of college was working for Oregon’s then-Senate president John Kitzhaber, a Democrat who was elected governor in 1994. Beck went on to work for then-Portland City Commissioner Earl Blumenauer, a former Democratic congressman and champion for transportation issues.

A job for a legislative agriculture and natural resource committee inspired him to pursue a 15-year long career in the nonprofit sector advocating for rural Oregon and land use. During that role, he was elected to serve in the Oregon House of Representatives for three terms, followed by graduate school and a rural economic development job in the Obama administration.

If elected, his priorities for his district include rural healthcare, affordability, land use planning, addressing wealth inequities, opposing the Iran War and protecting mail-in voting.

Mary Doyle

Mary Doyle grew up in Beaverton and started working for the Bend-La Pine Schools 20 years ago. During her first three years, she waited tables at night trying to make ends meet.

“I know what it means to struggle, and that’s what a lot of families are experiencing right now,” she said.

Since then, Doyle has made her way into leadership roles within her union. She has also served on the board for the Oregon Education Association and as a delegate for the National Education Association.

Now that her daughters are grown, she said she’s at a point in life where she wants to do something for the greater good. 

“I just can’t sit here and just watch democracy die in darkness without trying to do my part,” she told the Capital Chronicle. 

If elected, Doyle said she’d prioritize affordability, accessing healthcare, strengthening labor laws, protecting election integrity and addressing student debt. 

“The bar for success has been set so incredibly low, and I think that’s what this campaign is doing across all the candidates, is that we’re elevating the voice of what should be done in this district for the people who are not being served,” Doyle said. 

Plus, Doyle said she thinks Bentz is vulnerable this election.  

“He doesn’t show up to town halls. You can’t get your phone calls answered. You can’t get your emails returned, and if you do, it can be a boilerplate response,” she said. “When he tweets out or when he’s on Facebook and posts, it’s very prop-orientated.”

Rebecca Mueller

Medford pediatrician Rebecca Mueller traveled to Washington D.C. to advocate for rural healthcare in February and left feeling disappointed. 

On behalf of the National Rural Health Association, she met or at least briefly shook hands with everyone she was supposed to except for Bentz — the congressman who represents her and her patients. Her meeting with him was cancelled, and she met his staff and golden retriever instead, even though she could see him in his office with the TV on.

“That was just startling to me because every single hospital in his district is a rural health hospital,” she said. “It just really set a tone of what his interests were.”

Mueller has worked with mostly conservative communities throughout the 34 years of her career in Iowa, and for the past decade in Oregon. She prioritizes creating safe and nonjudgmental spaces for patients — a skill that she said could translate into representing rural Oregon interests in Congress at a time of increasing partisanship.

Dignity and mutual respect are values guiding her campaign. Mueller said she wants to change the way Republicans and Democrats speak to each other, and encourage more Democrats to take pride in hanging the U.S. flag. 

“A lot of people hesitate to hang up flags with recent actions, and even some of our history that we find to be shameful,” she said. “But we all also recognize that there have been generations of people before us that have fought so hard for our country to make progress and be a light to the world.”

Peter Quince

Originally from upstate New York, Peter Quince moved to Ashland 34 years ago with his partner and opened a small business where he wrote classes on state and federal laws governing insurance, contracting, real estate, banking and commerce.

This is his first run for political office, but his political involvement traces back decades. Quince was a young volunteer for the Democratic presidential campaigns of former President Lyndon B Johnson and U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy, and later volunteered for former President Barack Obama.

He stepped up to run to represent Oregon in Congress in January because he thinks Bentz is “running against the tide of the time.”

As a member of the Jewish faith, Quince lives by the phrase “tikkun olam,” or Hebrew for “heal the world.”

“The principle is not that it’s up to any one person to heal the world, but it’s up to each of us to make it better,” he said. 

If elected, Quince said his top priority is better resource management in the face of climate change, or bringing water modernization projects to the district, improving forest management and fire suppression efforts, unlocking the district’s rare earth minerals and investing into more efficient energy resources. 

Dawn Rasmussen

Dawn Rasmussen has lived in Oregon for more than 40 years. She is a former school board member and owns a business that helps people with their resumes and job search. 

Her job experience, she said, would help her in an elected role as she is used to listening and working with people with different backgrounds and beliefs.

“I think that’s what people are most hungry for in this district,” she said. “They want someone who’s actually going to listen and actually do something for them.”

If elected, Rasmussen said she’d prioritize hosting regular town halls and being responsive to her constituents by sending quarterly evaluations on her performance. She would also prioritize resiliency planning for water and wildfire, creating jobs and infrastructure and realigning the district against Trump’s policies.

“We have tariffs, runaway inflation, war-induced price surges and housing and healthcare affordability issues,” she said. “All this is hurting rural businesses, farmers and families. Let’s be clear, the cost of living is becoming unbearable for all of us.”

Rasmussen said she would work to bring household relief to lower utility, housing and healthcare costs by ensuring big corporations pay their fair share. 

Her goal is to create a safe space for people who may have changed their minds since they voted in the 2024 presidential election, she said. 

“My job is not to say ‘I told you so,’” she said. “My job is to say, you’re here. I’m glad you’re here. Welcome, and let’s get to work because there’s a lot of work to get done. It’s a place of respect.”

Patty Snow

Patty Snow has a background in business management, having worked in the hospitality and information technology industries in Los Angeles and Chicago.

After raising her family and going through a divorce, Snow came out at age 50 and moved to Brookings to be with her partner. They lived there for two years before moving to the Rogue Valley.

She had never considered running for office until July, when Trump signed a massive tax and spending law that directly impacted the Ashland wellness center she and her partner owned and operated for six years.  

“My membership for my business was predominantly seniors, and they started expressing a lot of concerns about their savings and retirement, and they were becoming very scared of their financial situation,” she said. “So in the course of nine months, we lost 40% of our membership over fears of finances and we had to close our doors in November.”

If elected, she said her priority would be restoring the economy, protecting the environment and civil rights and reforming the federal government by supporting term limits for Congress. 

She and the three other women who filed to run in 2025 agreed early on not to run any negative campaigns against each other, she said. 

“The four of us, we found a bond because we all had a similar goal, and that was to defeat Cliff Bentz and to bring the focus back to the people of our district instead of supporting large corporations, foreign interests and the interests of the president.”

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