PORTLAND, Ore. (KGW) — President Joe Biden will stop in Oregon next weekend as a part of a West Coast trip. It can be his second time this 12 months visiting Oregon, a state where presidential visits are inclined to be relatively rare.
Biden will travel to California from Wednesday, Oct. 12 to Friday, Oct. 14 after which to Oregon from Oct. 14 to Saturday, Oct. 15, in keeping with a Friday morning news release from the White House.
On Monday, the White House released further details in regards to the agenda for Biden’s visit, though the timing and placement of events was not released:
- Biden travels from Orange County, Calif. to Portland, where he’ll take part in a grassroots volunteer effort with the Oregon Democrats
- Biden will attend a reception for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tina Kotek in Portland
- Biden will give a speech in Portland about “lowering costs for American families”
The trip will come one week after First Lady Dr. Jill Biden makes her own visit to the Pacific Northwest, stopping at Bates Technical College in Tacoma Friday afternoon and attending a finance event for Sen. Patty Murray in Seattle on Saturday.
President Biden last visited Oregon in April as a part of a nationwide tour to advertise the $1 trillion infrastructure bill that Congress passed late last 12 months. Oregon is estimated to receive about $1.2 billion for transportation projects over the subsequent five years.
In a speech delivered at a hangar near Portland International Airport, Biden highlighted several ongoing and planned upgrades to the airport as examples of the form of infrastructure renewal that the brand new bill would bring.
Biden’s visit next week comes just a couple of weeks before Americans are set to vote within the Nov. 8 midterm elections.
The typically deep-blue Oregon has emerged as a surprisingly competitive state this 12 months, due partly to its three-way race for governor, where recent polls have showed Republican Christine Drazan with a narrow lead over Democrat Tina Kotek.
Oregon also has some competitive House races this 12 months, with Democrat Andrea Salinas and Republican Mike Erickson facing off in Oregon’s newly-created sixth Congressional District and Democrat Jamie McLeod-Skinner and Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer battling it out within the state’s fifth District after McLeod-Skinner ousted Democratic incumbent Rep. Kurt Schrader within the May primary.
KGW political analyst Len Bergstein speculated that those races could possibly be a part of the rationale for Biden’s visit, which comes at a time within the election cycle when it’s more common for presidents to make appearances in swing states like Wisconsin or Pennsylvania.
“I can understand why it is smart for him to be here, it’s just unusual for Oregonians to think ‘gee, we’re a battleground here? … enough in order that we be a magnet for the President of the USA to are available and campaign for Democrats?’” he said. “So it’s a sign that Oregon politics are a bit of bit uneasy and volatile right at this point.”
The last time Oregon saw two presidential visits in a single 12 months was in 2015, when President Barack Obama visited Nike headquarters in May after which returned to Oregon in October of that 12 months after the shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg.
There have been several other times when a president has made back-to-back Oregon stops in a single 12 months, in keeping with Oregon Historical Society executive director Kerry Tymchuk.
In a single outstanding example, President Bill Clinton visited twice in 1996, first as a part of a tour of the region after that 12 months’s historic flood, as covered by The Recent York Times, after which later within the 12 months during his re-election campaign, as covered by CNN and the Spokane Spokesman-Review.
