Shawn Griffiths
Oregon’s 5th Congressional District is a hotly contested political battleground that will be one of a handful that will decide who controls Congress in 2025. The Cook Political Voting index has the district as D+2, but it is currently represented by a Republican.
The major party nominees, incumbent US Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Democrat Janelle Bynum, were scheduled for 3 debates – but what voters didn’t see from any of those debates is that Chavez-DeRemer and Bynum aren’t the only candidates on the November ballot.
In fact, there are 6 candidates running in the district, including Brett Smith, an unaffiliated voter who was nominated by the Independent Party. In an interview for IVN, Smith said he never got an invite to debate nor was he given the criteria for debate eligibility.
“According to the FEC, it can’t be just because the candidates are a Republican or a Democrat,” he said. But that seems to be all that mattered.
He added that even if he was given polling criteria, he was certified for the ballot 2 days before the debates were announced. It would have been impossible for him to meet any polling threshold since he just got added to the ballot.
Smith believes it comes down to the same mentality about elections that exists across the nation. Any candidate outside the two major parties doesn't matter because they have no chance at winning.
So, broadcasters and the Republican and Democratic Parties give voters two options and only two options. Smith calls it "an agreed upon system” of candidate suppression and restricted choice.
Oregon's 5th District is not dissimilar from other US districts in terms of its problems. "You got homelessness, prices of living are too high,” Smith said. But any debate between the major party candidates is more about attacking each other than finding solutions.
“You are going to find across the nation that the major party candidates are going to say, 'oh, the homeless crisis,' and stuff like that, but then they are not going to do anything,” Smith said.
The reason why Oregon’s 5th District is so competitive is the makeup of its voting population. Registration with the Independent Party is at 5%, but unaffiliated registration includes 36% of district voters.
“I’m nonaffiliated. How come I don’t get to have a voice in this contest?” Smith remarked. He said anyone who sat down with him to talk about the election pinned him to the 5% number for the Independent Party.
“Nonaffiliated doesn’t mean that I haven’t decided whether I am a Republican or a Democrat,” he added. “It means I don’t like either one -- and they don’t represent me.” It is a sentiment that many independent-minded voters share across the US.
And like every independent voter, he is told – whether by broadcasters, the parties, or pollsters – what being independent means for him, rather than being given a forum to express how he defines it for himself.
When asked why he chose to run for Congress, Smith said the most important thing he wants to get out about his campaign is he is an inventor and approaches things from the perspective of finding practical solutions.
Which is not a priority in the current US political system.
“There comes a point where politics becomes a spectacle, and we stop listening to reason. It becomes a popularity contest. We’re seeing that now in the presidential campaign and smaller campaigns,” he said.
The US has faced the same problems for decades. They get lip service on the campaign trail, but they are reduced to talking points that are repeated over and over again to the point it all becomes scripted. Meanwhile, progress never happens.
“I had this epiphany watching two people argue and they said the same things they said in other videos but to each other. My epiphany was that these people can’t do anything. This is what they do,” Smith explained.
“I wouldn’t want to be in a plane crash with any one of these people.”
With that in mind, Smith is taking on the issue of school shootings. It is something he says Republicans and Democrats only use for political clout. One side says it is a fact of life while the other side proposes ideas that could never get through a legislature.
“I’ve designed a little system that can potentially incapacitate a shooter right there, on the spot,” he said. “This system is cheap, it is super easy to make, and once we put it together and it is viable I have a school that is willing to let me go in and mess around with it.”
He wasn't able to get into specifics about the system or its implementation because he is still in the process of working out the patent on it. However, he noted that it uses non-lethal means to pacify a target.
He provided a proof-of-concept video:
Smith said he has made something practical that can be implemented right now until state legislatures and Congress can figure out how to legislate the issue. But legislation will always be behind the problem because people look at the world “through the lens of yesterday.”
“I am actually trying to solve problems right now,” Smith remarked. “Any attention I get from running my campaign is going to be on that – trying to solve real world problems.”
Here are some additional Q&A questions from the interview with Brett Smith:
Tell me about yourself and what brought you to the decision to run for Congress in Oregon’s 5th District
“I had an invention I made. It was a medical device,” Smith said. “That whole process made me fall in love with inventing things and creating things. As I did that, I slowly started to see how much of an effect our political leaders have on any sort of progress.”
Smith said he was working at the lumber mill in his town when he decided to run. He said what prompted it was talking to his kids and telling them they have to participate. “It was kind of a ‘put your money where your mouth is' situation.”
He added that he was initially told he should try for something smaller first, like city council. “The reason I am shooting so high is because I think it is important that a regular person can.”
On top of debates, has anyone challenged your position on the ballot (through court challenges, etc.)?
“I don’t think I have made enough of an impact. I don’t think either party cares right now. They are too busy attacking each other because it is so hotly contested. The debate thing, however, is definitely a suppressive move.”
He added that this applies to all parties involved, from the broadcasters to the Democrats and Republicans. “It’s an agreed upon system.”
What are the issues that are important in a district like Oregon CD-5 that get ignored as a result of candidate and voter exclusion in the process?
“The problems with Oregon’s 5th District are pretty common across the US. You got homelessness, prices of living are too high,” Smith said.
“Portland Gas and Electric is one thing I’m trying to hammer on because they recently did a rate hike – by like 20%. Now, they are going to do another 13% hike next year. Our regulator said there is nothing they could do about it. What’s insane to me is that PGE is a government-sanctioned monopoly.”
Smith added that the major party candidates won’t address anything local like this issue. He said he talked to two local mayors, one of which has a solution he likes and whether or not he is elected he will pursue solutions to a problem that affects every resident in his district.
“You are going to find across the nation that the major party candidates are going to say, “oh, the homeless crisis,” and stuff like that, but then they are not going to do anything,” he said.
On political extremism and division.
“In the United States of America, the number one voting bloc is nonaffiliated. One-third of Oregon’s registered voters are nonaffiliated – over a million of the 3 million voters. We have these two parties that are sowing divisions on both sides, and it is becoming so extreme. Literal assassination attempts are happening. Two of them. It is hard to wrap your head around. And still, we prop these two sides up and say, ‘these are the solutions and there is nothing we can do.’”
Smith added that $40 million has been dumped inti his districts by Republicans and Democrats on ads that just attack each other. No solutions are being offered.
Are there systemic reforms that you believe would incentivize not just a better campaign environment, but a more competitive and open environment?
“One of the problems we have is the primary election,” Smith said.
“Look at a candidate like Janelle Bynum. I talk about Janelle not because she is a Democrat but because she isn’t the incumbent, so it is an easier example. She was announced in January, got to run in the primary, Democrats got to pump a bunch of money into the district, the primary happened, and now Janelle gets to run for the general election. And then third parties get to throw their hats into the ring. The two parties have this whole half a year to run for the general election because the primary election is nonsensical.”
He added that as an unaffiliated voter in Oregon, he doesn’t get to vote in primary elections even though taxpayers pay for them, but it “is presented as normal operations of the government.” The state conducts closed partisan primaries reserved for Republicans and Democrats only.
Smith said he supports ending primary elections altogether and moving to a system similar to what is in place for many elections in Louisiana where all candidates participate on the general election ballot, it is open to all voters, and all candidates have the same window to campaign, regardless of party.
If parties want to select a nominee, they can hold a private caucus or convention. “I don’t think there should be a primary election at all,” he emphasized, because it has allowed two private political corporations to co-opt the government at every level.
When asked if he would support a new voting method to accommodate a large candidate field, like ranked choice voting, Smith mentioned STAR (Score Then Automatic Runoff) voting, a voting solution originally proposed by Oregon entrepreneur Mark Frohnmayer 10 years ago.
STAR voting allows voters to rate candidates like people would films on Letterboxd – using a 5-star scale. The two candidates who score the highest among voters would advance to an automatic runoff and people’s votes would go to whomever they rated higher.
“I would like to see ranked choice voting or STAR voting rolled out on a small scale, so that the mechanism of voting can be perfected, and it doesn’t get thrown out at a national scale for people to then say, ‘Oh, look at this mistake. It obviously doesn’t work. Let’s go back to the way it used to be,’” Smith said