PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Democrat Janelle Bynum has flipped Oregon’s 5th Congressional District and will become the state’s first Black member of Congress.
Bynum, a state representative who was backed and funded by national Democrats, ousted freshman GOP U.S. Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer. Republicans lost a seat that they flipped red for the first time in roughly 25 years during the 2022 midterms.
“It’s not lost on me that I am one generation removed from segregation. It’s not lost on me that we’re making history. And I am proud to be the first, but not the last, Black member of Congress in Oregon,” Bynum said at a press conference last Friday. “But it took all of us working together to flip this seat, and we delivered a win for Oregon. We believed in a vision and we didn’t take our feet off the gas until we accomplished our goals.”
Chavez-DeRemer conceded the race Thursday, the day that The Associated Press declared Bynum the winner.
“I’m deeply grateful for the opportunity I had to serve as Oregonians’ voice in Congress,” Chavez-DeRemer said in a statement posted on her social media. “Although this isn’t the outcome we had hoped for, I’m proud of what we accomplished together."
The contest was seen as a GOP toss up by the Cook Political Report, meaning either party had a good chance of winning.
Bynum had previously defeated Chavez-DeRemer when they faced off in state legislative elections.
Chavez-DeRemer narrowly won the seat in 2022, which was the first election held in the district after its boundaries were significantly redrawn following the 2020 census.
The district now encompasses disparate regions spanning metro 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. Registered Democratic voters outnumber Republicans by about 25,000 in the district, but unaffiliated voters represent the largest constituency.
A small part of the district is in Multnomah County, where a ballot box just outside the county elections office in Portland was set on fire by an incendiary device about a week before the election, damaging three ballots. Authorities said that enough material from the incendiary device was recovered to show that the Portland fire was also connected to two other ballot drop box fires in neighboring Vancouver, Washington, one of which occurred on the same day as the Portland fire and damaged hundreds of ballots.
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)
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are edging lower Thursday as the market’s big burst following Donald Trump’s election continues to cool.
The S&P 500 was down 0.4% in afternoon trading, though still near its all-time high set on Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 169 points, or 0.4%, as of 1:51 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.4% lower.
Cisco Systems' drop of 2.1% weighed on the market, even though the tech giant reported stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Investors may have been looking for it to raise its financial forecasts more, analysts suggested.
The stock market broadly has been rising faster than corporate profits, which has raised criticism from skeptics that it's gotten too expensive.
Super Micro Computer, which has been one of the biggest winners of the artificial-intelligence boom, tumbled 9.6% for the worst loss in the S&P 500 after telling U.S. regulators it needs more time to file its financial statements for the latest quarter, which ended in September.
The server maker's stock has been struggling recently, particularly after Ernst & Young resigned as its public accounting firm. A special committee of the company's board has since said that a three-month investigation found “no evidence of fraud or misconduct on the part of management or the Board of Directors.”
Some of the stocks that have felt the biggest bump from Trump's election also lost momentum. Tesla fell 5.3% and was on track for just its second loss since Election Day. It's run by Elon Musk, who has become a close Trump ally.
Smaller stocks also lagged the rest of the market, and the Russell 2000 index of small stocks was down 1.1%. It's a turnaround from the election's immediate aftermath, when the thought was that an “America First” president would mean benefit companies that do business domestically over big multinationals that could be hurt by tariffs and trade wars.
Even though Republicans have swept control of the White House, Senate and House of Representatives, which could give them more leeway to push through their policies, “promises made on the campaign trail may not be implemented immediately, with final legislation likely to be a pared-down version of the original proposals,” according to Solita Marcelli, chief investment officer, Americas, at UBS Global Wealth Management.
Helping to keep Wall Street's losses in check was The Walt Disney Co., which jumped 6.1% after the entertainment giant reported stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. CEO Robert Iger credited improved profits at its streaming businesses and strong box-office results for its movies, including “Inside Out 2” and “Deadpool & Wolverine,” among other things.
Tapestry shares climbed 12.3% after the luxury fashion company said it’s terminating its merger with Capri, another luxury brand owner. The companies agreed to an $8.5 billion deal last year to unite the makers of Coach and Michael Kors handbags, but the tie-up faced numerous challenges, including a lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission to block the deal on antitrust grounds.
Capri shares rose 4.9% after erasing a morning loss.
Stocks were also feeling the effects of swinging yields in the bond market following the latest update on inflation. Prices paid at the U.S. wholesale level were 2.4% higher in October from a year earlier. That was an acceleration from September’s 1.9% inflation rate and a worse jump than economists expected.
A separate report, meanwhile, suggested the U.S. job market remains solid. Fewer U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week in the latest signal that layoffs aren’t taking off.
Treasury yields initially jumped following the reports, as traders trimmed their expectations a bit for a coming cut to interest rates by the Federal Reserve at its meeting next month. But yields later regressed, and the yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 4.42% from 4.45% late Wednesday.
The Fed began cutting rates from their two-decade high in September to offer support for the job market, hoping to keep it humming after bringing inflation nearly all the way down to its target of 2%. Prior forecasts published by the Fed implied it could keep cutting rates through next year.
But Trump’s victory may have scrambled such plans. Economists say his preferences for lower tax rates, higher tariffs and less regulation could ultimately lead to higher U.S. government debt and inflation, along with faster economic growth.
While lower interest rates can give a boost to the economy and to prices for investments, they can also give inflation more fuel.
In stock markets abroad, European indexes were higher, including a 1.4% jump for Germany’s DAX. Asian markets were mixed, meanwhile. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 2%, but South Korea’s Kospi added 0.1%.
AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
People pass the New York Stock Exchange, right, on Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan)
FILE - A sign marking the intersection of Broadway and Wall Street is shown in New York's Financial District on Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)
Currency traders work at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
A currency trader passes by a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
Currency traders work at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
