In rural Eastern Oregon, a union true-believer is running for U.S. Congress. And she’s a lifelong Republican.
Andrea Carr is challenging three-term incumbent Republican Cliff Bentz in Oregon’s Second Congressional District, which stretches over the eastern two-thirds of the state.
“I’m just a working class mom and a wife and a union sibling, and I feel like we need to have representation,” Carr told the Labor Press. “You know, the 1% have had their had their time in the sun, and it’s time for us to get back to making decisions that are going to be better for the working class.”
Carr, 61, lives in the tiny town of Chiloquin, half an hour north of Klamath Falls. There she works as a full-time caregiver for her 33-year-old daughter, who has autism and can’t take care of herself. It’s a job that’s paid for by Medicaid, and as a home care worker, she’s represented by Service Employees International Union Local 503. In the last several years, she started to get involved in her union. Today she serves on the union’s political committee and on the home care bargaining committee.
Carr calls herself a progressive Republican and disagrees with what she described as the Republican party’s shift to the far right.
“I mean, everybody has run to the right side of the ship, and we’re listing. We need to even the keel.”
Carr says Bentz has shown by his votes that he’s turned his back on working class people in his district. In 2023, he voted against the Social Security Fairness Act — a bill that passed with broad bipartisan support that restored Social Security benefits to about 2.5 million teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other state and local public employees.
But more than anything, she faults Bentz for his July 2025 vote for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which is meant to cut spending on Medicaid and food stamps by expanding work requirements and paperwork and shifting costs to states. Bentz’ district has the highest Medicaid enrollment of any of Oregon’s six congressional districts: Fully 42% of the population is enrolled. When SEIU mounted a big campaign against the bill, Carr and her daughter confronted Bentz about it at a town hall and traveled to Washington DC to protest the bill.
Carr’s campaign for Congress is considered a long shot. Bentz has a $1.3 million campaign war chest, and Carr is not focused on raising money. But she has the endorsement of the Oregon Labor Federation (AFL-CIO) and the Oregon Working Families Party. Carr said she’s looking for support wherever she can find it, whether it’s from fellow Republicans who are getting the word out, or from Democrats who register in order to take part in the Republican primary.
“It was the working class that built this country, and it’s the working class that can rebuild our country,” Carr says.
