After losses in 2024, two candidates in Marion County battle for Oregon Senate seat

The race to take over the seat of outgoing state Sen. Kim Thatcher, R-Keizer, who is barred from seeking reelection under Oregon law, is pitting a former Republican House lawmaker against a former Salem city councilor who both lost their previous legislative races in 2024.

Thatcher has been in the Senate since 2015, first representing the state’s 13th Senate District before being redistricted into the 11th Senate District in 2023. It includes portions of Marion County from northern Salem to Woodburn.

She is one of multiple Republican Senators who cannot run for reelection in November after participating in a six-week walkout in 2023 over Democratic bills. Voters in 2022 approved a state law preventing lawmakers who rack up 10 or more unexcused absences from running for their seats again in the next election.

That leaves former Salem city councilor Virginia Stapleton, a Democrat who unsuccessfully challenged Rep. Kevin Mannix, R-Salem, in 2024, and former Rep. Tracy Cramer, a Republican from Gervais, competing for the seat. Stapleton lost her race in 2024 to Mannix by more than three percentage points, but she argues that she has a new opportunity to represent the Senate district.

“We’re all just worried about you know keeping a roof over our heads and food on the table, which is understandable,” Stapleton told the Capital Chronicle. “(It’s) also terrifying to realize that we have yet again kind of walked back from really dealing with the big things that government needs to be dealing with, and instead we’re doing ideological battles.”

Cramer, who has Thatcher’s endorsement, served in the Oregon House from 2023 to 2025, but lost to Rep. Lesly Muñoz, D-Wooburn, in a hard-fought 2024 race that allowed Democrats to secure a legislative supermajority in the chamber. Cramer declined to be interviewed by the Capital Chronicle, but provided a statement through her campaign consultant David Kilada. 

“The cost of living is on the ballot. Families here are paying more for groceries, gas, rent, and utility bills, and I’m running to make life more affordable, not more expensive, with a record to match it,” she said.

The district has about 4,000 more registered voters who are Democrats than Republicans, but non-affiliated voters make up the bulk of registered voters, with more than 39,000 registered as nonaffiliated in comparison to more than 22,000 Democratic voters and more than 18,500 Republican voters, according to state registration data from October.

Stapleton focuses on affordability, healthcare, climate

Stapleton described herself as a lifelong Oregonian whose parents are originally from Keizer. She lived there until she was 5-years old, when she moved to a farm in West Salem. After getting married, she bought her first home in Northeast Salem and has lived in the city since. 

Since her last race in 2024, Stapleton said she has gotten to know more about the other areas included in the 11th Senate District, such as Woodburn, which has been a key target of the federal government’s aggressive immigration crackdown. She said her team was “out in the field” at the same time federal immigration officials were active in the area and she got to see how the community responded. 

“There was a lot of protests and a lot of rallies and a lot of people really like experiencing this real shock to their system, just a disbelief that their federal government was treating citizens and non-citizens alike in a way that really lacked dignity and care, and they were terrified,” she said.

The biggest issues she said she has heard about from voters are around  affordability, such as high grocery bills and rising healthcare costs. She is a supporter of universal healthcare for Oregonians and asking voters to approve such a change. 

She also points to her website which notes that she supports a three-year moratorium on rent increases, and increasing the threshold for Oregon’s corporate activity tax while making up for the cost by taxing data centers and high-earning businesses.

“The cost of housing, the cost of rent, the cost of interest right now, and linked in with that, of course, is the ongoing crisis of homelessness,” she said. “It all gets bundled up into this massive frustration that life is just not affordable anymore, and so that is far and away the number one thing I’m hearing from folks.”

Cramer points to affordability, ‘common-sense’ politics

In response to the Capital Chronicle’s voter guide questionnaire, Cramer said the cost of living and healthcare are the biggest issues she hopes to address if elected. Kilada told the Capital Chronicle that she and her husband rent their home in Gervais “next to where Tracy grew up.” 

Until a Capital Chronicle inquiry, Cramer didn’t disclose her rental property in Klamath County that advertises itself as an Airbnb, bringing in $23,000 in annual revenue, on her statements of economic interest submitted to the Oregon Government Ethics Commission. 

Kilada attributed the omission to an “oversight” and said Cramer has since updated her statement to include the property, which she and her husband have owned since 2023, local records show.

“Tracy and her husband Jake own the house near Lake of the Woods,” he wrote in an email. “They bought it in 2023, it’s the only property they own. They spend so little time there as they are engaged in their local community so they decided to Airbnb it.”

In her responses to the Capital Chronicle voter guide questionnaire, Cramer said she opposed taxes that voters have rejected at the ballot box, a subtle nod to the gas tax and fee increases that voters defeated on the May primary ballot.

She said she was running because of rising costs for working families and concerns over public safety and “a government that too often works against them instead of for them.”

“As a mom, small business owner, and lifelong Marion County resident, I’ve seen how out-of-touch policies hurt our communities,” she wrote. “I want to bring practical, common-sense leadership to Salem that puts families, farmers, and public safety first.”

She said she would work to lower taxes and regulations, support law enforcement to hold violent criminals accountable and focus on treatment and accountability for addiction and homelessness. She said she would hope to serve on committees regarding healthcare, labor, business, and natural resources or agriculture.