“I consciously wanted the CEO of a high tech company to have the same access to me as any other person,” she recalls now. “I wasn't gonna go to fancy lunches. I was going to keep things simple and be accessible.”
It’s a principle that has guided McLeod-Skinner throughout her time in public service, which has stretched from that stint in the Bay Area up through more recent years in her native Oregon. Now, in the midst of a heated Congressional race, the coffee shop anecdote offers a stark contrast to the modus operandi of her opponent, one of the most notorious recipients of special interest money in Washington.
Though embarrassing and infuriating, Democrats’ legislative failures over the past year have also offered some important clarity. With ultra-slim majorities in both Congress and the Senate, passing any legislation this term requires total unanimity among Democrats, a precarious position that both empowers and puts the spotlight on any lawmaker that opposes keeping the promises that won them the 2020 election.
(Yes, Republicans are the true menace and now an existential threat to American democracy, but too many Democrats are ostensibly helping them by blocking the ambitious reforms that would help stave off the GOP’s advanced this fall.)
Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have earned themselves the most enmity among Democrats, but they’re hardly the only members to thwart the party’s agenda. In the House, a handful of conservative Democrats spent 2021 working in concert to chip away at different aspects of the Build Back Better Act, including prescription drug price reform, the single-most popular provision of the social infrastructure bill. Leading the assault was Oregon Rep. Kurt Schrader, who McLeod-Skinner is challenging in a newly redrawn fifth Congressional district that offers little incumbent advantage.
“When fears come up, there's often a sense of like, ‘Oh, let's slow this down and pump the brakes on that and water this down.’ I do appreciate that politics is the art of compromise, but I think there's also a lack of appreciation for the crises that people are in, that our planet is in,” McLeod says, pushing back at the Problem Solvers Caucus approach to incremental lawmaking. “Working families are in crisis right now, people are exhausted. They're at the breaking point. You can't keep pushing people, pushing our democracy.”
Schrader isn’t exactly in touch with the rage simmering in communities across the country. He inherited a fortune from his Pfizer executive grandfather shortly before the 2008 election cycle, which helped him clear the primary field ahead of a historic Democratic wave year. He’s been in office ever since, consistently scoring as one of the most conservative and corporate-friendly Democrats in DC, compiling a voting record that reflects the gobs of special interest money he gladly accepts. McLeod, meanwhile, refuses all corporate PAC donations.
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As the caucus’s center shifts to the progressive left, Schrader’s neoliberal politics have not only become a relic, they’ve done serious damage to urgent attempts to address the myriad crises facing the country.
This term alone, Schrader has led the charge that killed the BBB provision that would have substantially lowered drug prices by allowing Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies (and was richly rewarded for doing so), was one of two Democrats that voted against the American Rescue Plan, and likened the impeachment of Donald Trump for his role in stoking the January 6th insurrection to a lynching.
Schrader couches his decisions in the language of sensible moderation, which is still seen by many in party leadership as the way to win over swing voters. That’s a dubious argument, given Democrats’ ongoing failures in rural and de-industrialized parts of the country, and one that McLeod is eager to dispel.
“We’ve seen in this urban-rural divide this attempt to pit us against each other,” she says, “but my wife and I live in a rural area and rural folks want relief and results just as much as urban folks. They don’t things watered down, as we're seeing the centrist politicians do, but to really just have [lawmakers] get things done and to take care of each other.”
McLeod grew up in rural Oregon and moved back there nearly a decade ago after an adulthood spent serving communities around the world. As an openly gay woman, she was barred from serving in the military in the ‘90s, so she went to work for the International Rescue Committee to coordinate reconstruction and humanitarian aid in Bosnia, which led to a job managing a refugee program in the Bay Area. She spent a little over a decade in California, serving on the city council in Santa Clara and working as a city and environmental planner.
After earning her law degree at the University of Oregon and completing all the associated clerkships and other legal training, she worked as a city manager for two different municipalities. Her stint as the city manager in the southwest Oregon town of Talent coincided with the devastating wildfires that engulfed much of the Pacific Northwest, turning McLeod-Skinner into a crisis manager.
That experience helped inform her approach to politics in a newly reconstituted district that now contains wide swaths of rural Oregon. A strong supporter of progressive priorities such as Medicare for All and the Green New Deal — she’s been endorsed by the state and national Working Families Party, Sunrise, and Indivisible — McLeod-Skinner calibrates the way she discusses policy depending on her audience.
“When I'm in urban areas I talk about climate change, and I'm in rural areas, we'll talk about drought and wildfires and flooding,” she explains. “It’s about getting people to lean into recognizing the challenges, and then most importantly, how we address them. I often stay away from buzzwords, and when I’m talking about making sure we all have access to the full range of healthcare, you’ll have heads nodding all around.”
This is McLeod-Skinner’s third run for elective office in Oregon, but by far the one she is best-positioned to win. In 2018, she took on powerhouse Rep. Greg Walden in Oregon’s deep-red second congressional district and exceeded expectations, winning her home county and outperforming the rest of the Democratic ticket.
In 2020, she finished third in a statewide primary for Secretary of State, but she again over-performed in rural areas. Now, in a district where half of the voters have never seen Schrader on the ballot, McLeod-Skinner is making the case to Democrats in a solid blue district that they can — and must — do better than a corporate sellout.
“I'm a lifelong Democrat, and I'm sometimes really frustrated with my own party, but the reason that I identify as a Democrat is because I believe we care about people and care about our planet,” she says. “We've got a lot of people who wear the uniform of the team that they think is going to be most beneficial to promoting themselves but then find ways to undermine the very vision and values that are laid out by a party.”
By replacing Kurt Schrader with a grassroots progressive, voters can prove that ambitious policies appeal to working families everywhere.
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