Election 2022: Andrea Salinas faces Mike Erickson to represent new district

Oregon’s new 6th Congressional District doesn’t have an incumbent candidate, but it has two well-known opponents.

Prominent Democratic state legislator Andrea Salinas faces businessman and frequent Republican candidate Mike Erickson in the Nov. 8 general election. Constitution Party candidate Larry McFarland is also running for the seat.

Oregon was given a sixth congressional district after the 2020 census reflected the state's population growth.

The district was drawn with a significant advantage for the Democratic Party. President Joe Biden carried 55% of the vote in the district to Donald Trump’s 42% in the 2020 election.

Salinas was one of the chairs of the committee that came up with the Congressional and legislative maps.

The non-partisan Cook Report rates the race as “Lean Democratic.”

The district includes Salem, Woodburn and Polk County cities including Dallas, Monmouth and Independence. It also includes Yamhill County cities including McMinnville and Newberg, and Washington and Clackamas county cities including Tigard, Tualatin and Wilsonville.

The race received national attention during the primary, and continues to as the parties battle over power in the U.S. House of Representatives.

During the primary, the narrative surrounded how one of the unsuccessful Democratic candidate’s campaigns was bankrolled by a tech entrepreneur. In the general election, the district has been getting attention as polls have shown Erickson leading.

Andrea Salinas

Salinas doesn’t stand on the steps that would elevate her above her supporters outside a coffee shop in Tigard.

She doesn’t shy away from the experiences her detractors use to call her a “career politician” for her five years in public office (she was appointed to the Legislature to represent Lake Oswego in 2017 and won elections in 2018 and 2020).

Salinas talks about interning for Sen. Diane Feinstein and working on the staffs of Sen. Harry Reid and Congressmen Pete Stark and Darlene Hooley, and how their work helps to keep people housed and protects them with things like paid family medical leave.

Salinas overcame a huge funding deficit in the Democratic primary to defeat a large field of challengers with 36% of the vote. Carrick Flynn, whose campaign received more than $11 million from crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, came in a distant second with 18%.

“I’m excited and I’m really optimistic,” said Salinas, who also is the Working Families and Independent Party nominee. “We always knew it was going to be a hard race. I never thought it was going to be, you know, an easy slam dunk.”

Wearing her trademark purple-framed glasses, Salinas continues her talk to her constituents as two people walking dogs 100 feet away get into a fight and the police arrive.

She talks about how the racial makeup of the district is 20% Latino and how she sponsored the bill in the state Legislature in 2022 that next year will provide overtime pay for agricultural workers.

Among her endorsements are Sen. Ron Wyden, Gov. Kate Brown and Salem-Keizer Public Schools governing board chair Ashley Carson Cottingham.

Salinas points out that a lot differentiates her from Erickson.

“I think I continue to talk about some of the issues that I’ve worked on and really show a difference between me and my opponent,” Salinas said.

Mike Erickson

Erickson thinks he has a rash from poison oak. He calls early for a phone interview and explains he had to go to a doctor that morning to get treatment. He says it hasn’t derailed his heavy campaigning schedule.

Erickson, a former kicker and punter at Portland State University, has been touring high school football games, including ones at West Salem, South Salem and Dallas, as well as hitting every fair and community gathering he can find to meet voters.

“We put a ton of effort in and I think that’s why we’re ahead in the polls right now,” he said. “We’ve got a real strong ground campaign and I’m just working my tail off from 7 in the morning until 10 at night.”

Erickson won out in the large Republican primary in May, collecting a commanding 34% of the vote. State Rep. Ron Noble had about half of Erickson’s votes with 17%.

Erickson, who has run several unsuccessful campaigns for the state Legislature and Congress, is the founder and owner of Tigard-based AFMS, which advises companies on shipping throughout the world.

In 2016, Erickson was pulled over in Hood River County and later pleaded guilty to driving under the influence of intoxicants, though he later completed a diversion program to have the case dismissed. Police also found prescription pills in his pocket.

“I was at a wedding, got pulled over. I made a mistake, I thought I was fine. Sometimes you think you’re fine to drive and I was off by .04. I made a mistake and I went through all the classes and I got it dismissed," he said. "The other part was my wife didn’t want to carry a purse, she had some surgery and she asked me to carry some pain pills. She didn’t want to carry a bottle, she wanted me to carry one or two in a plastic bag. When the district attorney heard that story, they said, show me a prescription bottle and it was your wife’s and we’ll dismiss it, and they did.”

Erickson has been endorsed by Marion County Commissioner Kevin Cameron, former Beaverton police chief David Bishop and the National Federation of Independent Businesses.

“I’m a businessman who wants to go to D.C. to get results for the people in this district in Oregon,” he said. “I don’t have a personal political agenda like many politicians. I want to do what’s right to solve our most important problems facing this state.”

Police funding

Salinas and Erickson say they have fathers who were police offers for 30 years. They both talk about how they didn’t know if their fathers would come home from work.

Erickson said he would vote against any bills “that are soft on crime and prevent law enforcement from doing their job on the federal level. That’s the first thing I would do.”

But he also talked a lot about Salinas’ voting record and alleges she helped “defund the police," mentioning three specific bills she supported.

“Those three things right there are critical to law enforcement doing their job and she voted against those in the state Legislature,” Erickson said. “I would have never voted for those.”

Erickson points to Senate Bill 110, which requires police officers to inform people they've stopped of their right to refuse to be searched; House Bill 3164, which modifies the crime of interfering with an officer; and House Bill 2002, which awards grants for restorative justice.

Salinas called the accusation “patently false."

"I did not defund the police and I found it actually very offensive," she said of the comments.

According to state records, Salinas voted for the budget that increased funding for Oregon State Police to $855.3 million for the 2021-23 budget, up $34.2 million from the prior biennium and an increase of 20 positions.

“I would never take away the resources for our law enforcement or our first responders to do their jobs and do them well," she said.

Abortion rights

Salinas says she supports access to abortion; Erickson stops short of saying that he is against abortion, but said he believed the Supreme Court struck down Roe vs. Wade.

Salinas said in September she, “helped to pass the 2017 reproductive health equity act and since that time have been trying to figure out a way to implement it in a way that is effective for all Oregonians who need reproductive health care.”

But the Oregon Legislature passed that bill prior to her being appointed to the body. She was working for lobbying firm Strategies 360 at that time. She and the lobbying firm did not provide testimony on the bill, according to state records and videos of public hearings about it.

While Erickson was running for Congress in the Fifth District in 2008 – he would later lose in the general election to Democrat Kurt Schrader – news outlets reported Erickson gave a girlfriend a ride to a Portland abortion clinic and paid for an abortion in 2001.

Erickson said at the time he gave a woman he was dating money for a medical procedure, but disputed the claims that he knew it was an abortion.

He didn't say directly if he opposes abortion, but said he would not try to change Oregon's law if elected to Congress.

The third-party candidate

McFarland, 76, grew up in McMinnville and Willamina and has lived in the Salem area since being discharged from the Navy in 1969. Now living in Keizer, he said he retired in 2008 after working for 40 years as an electrician.

McFarland is serving 36 months of probation after pleading guilty to three felonies in August for two incidents in 2021. In one, he fired a shotgun in front of the Salem Police Department while Black Lives Matter protesters were there. In the other, he drove away from a police officer while intoxicated.

“You should be absolutely 100% law abiding,” he said.

He said he intended to file for the Republican primary, but missed the filing date while recovering from his 12th heart attack.

Campaign finance

Neither Salinas nor Erickson had a large fundraising advantage as of the June 30 reporting date, according to Federal Election Commission data.

Salinas’ campaign raised $1.3 million; Erickson raised $1.4 million, including $857,000 of his own money. McFarland hadn’t reported any fundraising.

Bill Poehler covers Marion County for the Statesman Journal. Contact him at bpoehler@StatesmanJournal.com

This article originally appeared on Salem Statesman Journal: 2022 general election: Salinas faces Erickson for CD 6 seat