Democratic U.S. Rep. Andrea Salinas will return to Washington DC for a second term in Congress, early voting tallies showed on Tuesday. By 8:30 p.m., Salinas had captured 54% of the vote in Oregon’s 6th Congressional District. Her Republican challenger, Lake Oswego businessman Mike Erickson, had 46%.

National election observers from the Cook Political Report and the University of Virginia Center for Politics predicted Salinas would likely win.

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Registered Democrats made up about 30% of the district’s 480,000 voters, who live in and near wine country west of Interstate 5 from Tigard to south of Salem. Republicans represented about 25% of voters and unaffiliated voters made up 38%.

The race for Oregon’s 6th District was a rematch between Salinas and Erickson, who first vied to represent the new district in 2022 shortly after it was created through redistricting. Salinas won that contest by a margin of just 2.5 percentage points.

In 2024, the dynamics were different.

As the election approached, Salinas had far outpaced and outspent Erickson, who had largely self-financed his 2022 campaign. Salinas had raised more than $5 million by mid-October, federal filings showed, and spent $3.7 million on her campaign. In 2022, Erickson raised and spent approximately $3.8 million, with most of that money coming from of a $2.7 million personal loan. By early November, Erickson’s campaign had raised about $1.2 million, about half of which he had lent himself.

Erickson founded and leads AFMS, an internationally successful supply chain and logistics company based in Tigard. Its federal financial disclosures list it as an asset worth between $25 million and $50 million.

Salinas has been a political insider for years. She worked as a legislative assistant for U.S. Senators and Representatives, and then as a lobbyist and political consultant before being elected to the Oregon Legislature in 2017. She served as a state representative for five years and helped pass a law that paid workers family and medical leave. She supported laws extending overtime for farm workers and backed a bill requiring the state’s largest utilities to provide clean energy.

In Congress, Salinas has sponsored bills to expand support for people dealing with mental health and substance use issues and to encourage wood products innovation in rural communities. In her second term, Salinas says she will fight to lower the cost of living, fight climate change and tackle the addiction crisis.

Sami Edge covers higher education and politics for The Oregonian. You can reach her at [email protected] or (503) 260-3430.