In Pacific Northwest, 2 toss-up US House races could determine control of narrowly divided Congress

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — In their battle for Congress, national Republicans and Democrats are keenly eyeing the Pacific Northwest, where two of the most competitive U.S. House races in the country are playing out.

Oregon’s GOP-held 5th Congressional District and Washington state’s Democratic-held 3rd Congressional District are considered toss-ups, meaning either party has a good chance of winning.

Both districts are purple — meaning a blend of Republican red and Democratic blue — and feature freshman incumbents who narrowly flipped their seats in the 2022 midterms. And with turnout typically higher in presidential elections than in midterms, political experts say they’ll be watching to see which candidates are able to mobilize more voters — especially moderates and independents.

“These races could determine who controls the House of Representatives in the next Congress,” said Chandler James, assistant professor of political science at the University of Oregon. “The Pacific Northwest is kind of where the center of a lot of action is.”

An intense rematch is playing out in southwest Washington, where first-term Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is defending her seat against Donald Trump-backed Republican Joe Kent. Both candidates are trying to frame the other as the extreme choice.

The Republican-leaning district featuring sprawling farmlands as well as the suburbs of Portland, Oregon, narrowly went for Trump in 2020, making it a crucial target for the GOP this year.

Gluesenkamp Perez has sought to showcase herself as an independent-minded moderate. Her actions during her tenure have ranged from co-sponsoring a bill to protect medication abortion to voting in favor of a resolution rebuking Vice President Kamala Harris’s role in the handling of the U.S.-Mexico border. She was also ranked by the Lugar Center and the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy as having one of the most bipartisan voting records in the U.S. House.

She has outraised Kent, bringing in $6.7 million compared to his $1.4 million, according to the most recent quarterly federal campaign finance records.

Kent, a former Green Beret who has promoted Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen, has blamed his opponent for things he sees as bad policy by the Biden administration, including its border policy. He has cited inflation and illegal immigration as top concerns while seeming to dull down some of his more extreme positions. In the past on social media he has called abortion an “evil stain on our humanity,” but in a debate on Monday, he said he doesn’t support a federal ban.

“He is saying exactly what the pollsters tell him to, but we know what he believes,” Gluesenkamp Perez said in response.

Both have honed in on the economic issues plaguing parts of the region, especially the rural areas, according to Mark Stephan, associate professor of political science at Washington State University Vancouver.

“They’re both trying to claim that they care more than the other one about small communities, rural areas, the economic vitality of Southwest Washington,” he said.

Gluesenkamp Perez came out of nowhere to narrowly win the seat two years ago against Kent in a district that hadn’t been in Democratic hands for over a decade. She replaced Jaime Herrera Beutler, a more moderate Republican who lost the 2022 primary in part because she voted to impeach Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection.

There is no registration by party in the state, but for presidential primaries, Washingtonians must declare a party. In the primary this March, Republican voters outnumbered Democrats by nearly 30,000 in the district. However, a spokesperson from the Secretary of State’s office cautioned that this doesn’t indicate who will win.

The boundaries of Oregon’s 5th District were significantly redrawn following the 2020 census. It encompasses disparate regions spanning part of Portland and its wealthy and working-class suburbs, as well as rural agricultural and mountain communities and the fast-growing central Oregon city of Bend on the other side of the Cascade Range.

In the 2022 midterms, the first elections to be held in the 5th after redistricting, GOP U.S. Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer flipped a seat that had been held by Democrats for roughly 25 years. But this November, she’s facing a different opponent — Janelle Bynum, a state representative who previously beat her in legislative elections in the district and has the backing and funding of national Democrats.

Bynum was elected to the Oregon House in 2016, representing the suburbs southeast of Portland. She says she would seek to codify the abortion protections of now-overturned Roe v. Wade into federal law if elected.

Before her election to Congress, Chavez-DeRemer was a former mayor of the Portland suburb of Happy Valley and small business owner. She has endorsed Trump and highlighted her endorsements from law enforcement groups. She says she doesn't support a national abortion ban, despite previously expressing support for the U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and its federal abortion protections.

If Bynum wins in November, she'll be Oregon’s first Black member of Congress. Chavez-DeRemer became the first Latina member of Congress to represent Oregon, along with Democratic U.S. Rep. Andrea Salinas in the state’s 6th Congressional District, when both were elected in the 2022 midterms.

Democrats hold a slight advantage in voter registration in the 5th, but roughly a third of voters are unaffiliated, and the two candidates have sought to appeal to the district’s purple hue. Bynum describes herself on her campaign website as a “common-sense, pragmatic leader,” while Chavez-DeRemer has highlighted her work on bipartisan bills. They've both tried to paint their opponent as extreme or radical.

In terms of campaign fundraising, Chavez-DeRemer has outpaced Bynum, raking in about $4 million compared to her opponent’s $2.4 million, the most recent quarterly federal campaign finance records show.

The separate fundraising arms for both parties in the U.S. House have each reserved over $6 million in ads in the Portland media market, which includes parts of Oregon's 5th and Washington's 3rd districts.

Golden reported from Seattle.

FILE - Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, R-Ore., accompanied by Majority Whip Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., left, and House Majority Leader Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., right, speaks at a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2023. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

FILE - Janelle Bynum, the Democratic candidate running to represent Oregon's 5th Congressional District, poses for a photo on Sunday, July 21, 2024, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File)

FILE - Washington 3rd District Republican candidate Joe Kent speaks during a debate at KATU studios on Monday, Oct. 7, 2024, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File)

FILE - Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez, D-Wash., speaks during a Washington 3rd District debate at KATU studios on Monday, Oct. 7, 2024, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — If you think your Spotify playlist is getting a little too long, consider the one shared by the members of Khruangbin. It's got 51 hours of songs.

“I’m trying to listen to as many different things as possible before they all start to sound kind of the same,” says Mark Speer, the trio's guitarist and musical explorer, capturing interesting sounds from Thailand to the Middle East.

“We lose Mark sometimes for a small period of time because he’s on an anthropological dig,” says bassist Laura Lee. Drummer Donald “DJ” Johnson finishes her thought: "For the quintessential Chinese funk."

The mainly instrumental Khruangbin's sonic explorations have paid off of late, with a warmly received 2024 album, “A La Sala,” that reached the top 40 of the Billboard 200 and a Grammy Award nomination for best new artist. Not that any of that is going to their heads.

“I think we’re just going to keep leaning in what we do and keep trying to be more the silhouette version of ourselves as much as we can and let the music speak for itself, because that’s who we are. We don’t like the spotlight in that way,” says Lee.

The Texas trio makes music that's hard to describe, a mix of soul, surf rock, psychedelic and funk that creates a melodic, Afro-pop-inspired, reverb-heavy sound with nods to other cultures. The band's name is appropriately travel-related — Khruangbin is the Thai word for airplane.

“Mark's storytelling feels like words, even though there are no words. And my storytelling feels like math even though there are no numbers necessarily. And D.J. is the translator between my language and Mark somehow,” says Lee.

They are highly collaborative, working in the studio and performing live with Leon Bridges on two EPs, Paul McCartney, Vieux Farka Touré, Wu-Tang Clan, Childish Gambino, Toro Y Moi, Men I Trust and more.

For “A La Sala,” Khruangbin focused on the trio, realizing that they didn't need anyone else in the studio. They say that was empowering.

“I think because we had just been through a process of collaborating quite a lot, it felt important for us to just huddle, just the three of us,” says Lee. “When it’s just the three of us, it’s like a deep breath and a collective sigh.”

Most of their music is instrumental, but vocals — either ghostly or a full-on lyric song — have been employed, like on “May Ninth” from the new album, with the lyrics “Memory burned and gone/A multicolored gray.”

“The music comes first,” says Johnson. “And when we finish putting everything together, if we feel that it needs one more thing, something missing, or we just want a vocal texture, then usually we go down the path of adding that.”

The trio, especially early on, faced pressure from record executives who liked the instrumentals but wished there was a vocal on top.

“I think it’s just human nature. I don’t think it comes from like any sort of bad place," says Lee. "But people just want to sing on top of it. And people are used to hearing a vocal. They’re like, ‘This sounds so good. Let’s add a vocal.’”

"A La Sala" is the trio's fourth studio album, with Pitchfork saying “each member of the trio has several opportunities to shine while making each track sound individual, and it all comes together cohesively.” The Guardian said Khruangbin make “their intricate music sound so gentle that it lulls the listener into a newly imaginative state.”

Although they formed in 2010, the Grammy administrators chose Khruangbin as a best new artist nominee alongside Benson Boone, Sabrina Carpenter, Doechii, RAYE, Chappell Roan, Shaboozey and Teddy Swims. The rules of the category have changed over time and now offers inclusion for any act that has “attained a breakthrough or prominence.”

The members of the band see their albums like snapshots in time. If their third, “Mordechai," was the sound of energy and movement as the band toured relentlessly, then “A La Sala” is more sedate, born from the pandemic and with a title that means ”To the Room."

It's a more chilled-out sound, even cozy. One song, “Three from Two” even celebrates the home birth of Lee's first child. “We needed some quiet, and it felt nice to put out something quiet in a world that’s not so quiet anymore," she says.

The band has heard their music playing at the oddest places, like “Texas Sun” becoming a popular tune played on TikTok by people making out in Australia or “Two Fish and an Elephant” heard at yoga studios.

“I hope that our music is malleable enough to communicate to later generations in whatever way it works,” says Speer. “That’s how language happens. That’s how music happens, that’s how cultures happen. So, I’m super into it.”

They don't know what direction their next album will take, but they have lots of ideas, like maybe the quintessential Chinese funk.

“We have a ever expanding folder full of stuff that may or may not ever see the light of day,” says Speer. “When it’s time, it’s time. And if it’s not time for it, it’s not time for it. Don’t dig in your heels — move on to the next thing.”

The 67th Grammy Awards will be held Feb. 2, 2025, at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. The show will air on CBS and stream on Paramount+. For more coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/grammy-awards.

FILE - Mark Speer, left, and Laura Lee Ochoa, of Khruangbin perform on Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024, at The Eastern in Atlanta. (Photo by Paul R. Giunta/Invision/AP, File)