OR-3: Blumenauer campaigns for more progressive House

At first glance, U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Portland) is the rare politician that has it easy come re-election time. He’s a popular Democrat facing nominal competition in bleeding-heart liberal Portland. If he wanted to, he could cruise through the November election without breaking a sweat.

But he doesn’t want to do that.

Instead, as Blumenauer heads toward his eighth term in congress, he has logged thousands of travel miles and raised close to a million dollars through his LivPAC committee to help out his fellow Oregon Democrats, as well as Democrats around the country.

According to Blumenauer’s campaign manager Willie Smith, Blumenauer has maxed out his donations to Oregon Democrats facing tough elections, including U.S. Senate candidate Jeff Merkley (D-Portland) and 5th Congressional District nominee Kurt Schrader (D-Canby). But, he said, there is still a lot of work to do in the rest of the country.

“Rather than spending a lot of money on Earl's race, we spend money to make sure there’s a better, more progressive congress,” Smith said.

So Blumenauer has been on the campaign trail from Arizona to Florida to North Carolina to Michigan, meeting prospective House candidates, teaching them how to talk about environmental issues and giving them money. A lot of money. This election cycle, LivPAC has donated $988,700 dollars to 55 different House and Senate candidates.

“We don’t just take people who are the easy ones,” Smith said. “We look for people that haven’t quite made the threshold early on. And we help them.”

Smith points to Democrat Daniel Johnson, running in North Carolina's 10th Congressional District, as an example of Blumenauer’s determination to elect more members to congress that will support progressive issues, such as alternative transportation. Johnson is running against Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) in arguably the most conservative district in that state. Few in the Democratic congressional circles thought Johnson stood a chance against the two-term congressman. But Blumenauer remembered when McHenry made a speech on the floor of the state capitol mocking Democratic plans for increasing alternative transportation opportunities in the country.

“McHenry took to the floor and made fun of bicycles,” Smith said (video below). “So we started to get the bicycle community to donate to Johnson. We want to send a message that if you want to get on the floor and make fun of alternative transportation, there will be a political cost.”

Through donations and fundraising appearances, LivPAC has helped Johnson raise $37,500. And the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and others have caught on to the race, adding it to their “Red to Blue” program, which helps out candidates who have exceeded expectations in traditionally Republican districts.

Most of the money LivPAC gives to out of state candidates comes from Oregon donors. Smith said that a few donors prefer that their money stay in state. But he said that Blumenauer always tries to impress on Oregonians that it’s not enough to have a representative that shares your outlook. It’s important to have the House of Representatives share that same outlook in order to get things done, he says.

“People will say, ‘Earl, you’re safe, you don’t need money.’ Well, why not help other people?” Smith said. “It’s allowed us to open up these relationships even before these candidates get to Congress.”