SALEM — Janelle Bynum clinched the nomination for Oregon’s 5th Congressional District in the May 21 primary election, according to early results.

Bynum will face a formidable challenge in November as Democrats fight to take the 5th District back from first-term Republican Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer. The district, which stretches from Bend to Portland, is one of a handful of congressional districts nationwide that could determine which party controls the U.S. House in 2025.

Political analysts have spent nearly two years rehashing the 2022 race in the 5th Congressional District, in which McLeod-Skinner, of Terrebonne, trounced incumbent Democratic Rep. Kurt Schrader in the primary and then lost the general election to Chavez-DeRemer by 2 percentage points. McLeod-Skinner has argued that national Democrats hung her out to dry by redirecting money and ad time from the 5th District to bolster Democratic nominee Andrea Salinas in the neighboring 6th District, and said that she was running a better campaign this time around.

But Democratic leaders in Oregon and nationally weren’t willing to take another chance on McLeod-Skinner, especially not after the Capital Chronicle and then Willamette Week reported on complaints from former staff that they endured a hostile environment at work. They said her behavior led to her losing what was otherwise a winnable race in 2022.

Read more: See complete local election results at bendbulletin.com/elections

This time, Democratic leaders coalesced around Bynum, a state representative since 2017 who twice beat Chavez-DeRemer in legislative races and promised that she would do so again.

Oregon’s three female governors, most of the state’s Democratic legislative and congressional organizations and all major endorsing newspapers in the state put their weight behind Bynum. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee also backed her candidacy, adding her to its “Red to Blue” list of preferred candidates to flip Republican districts.

Bynum also raised significantly more than McLeod-Skinner, bringing in more than $1.1 million for her campaign compared to about $700,000 raised by McLeod-Skinner.

The support paid off for Bynum, who in initial results posted on Tuesday night was beating McLeod-Skinner with nearly 70% of the vote and leading by large margins in all but one county in the district — the sole vote counted from Jefferson County went to McLeod-Skinner. Bynum’s margins were largest in Clackamas County, where she lives, but she was beating McLeod-Skinner by a 3-to-2 margin in Deschutes County, where McLeod-Skinner built her base.

The race has seen a flood of outside money, with close to $1.3 million boosting Bynum and more than $500,000 in ads backing McLeod-Skinner. Last-minute McLeod-Skinner ads, paid for by a newly formed political action committee that has ties to Republican operatives, sparked concerns among Democrats that the GOP was meddling to elect a weaker candidate.

McLeod-Skinner made the same allegations about ads boosting Bynum, including about $475,000 spent by the 314 Action Fund and more than $800,000 from the Mainstream Democrats PAC controlled by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman.

And while McLeod-Skinner didn’t have much institutional support, she touted grassroots backing from local Democrats, especially in Deschutes County where she had built a strong base during previous campaigns for Congress and secretary of state.