Some Oregon Democrats get an unlikely primary foe: Their party’s top boosters

At a party to launch her insurgent bid against a fellow Democrat last month, state Senate candidate Myrna Muñoz grabbed a microphone and shouted out to union supporters in the crowd.

“I know SEIU’s in the house,” Muñoz said to cheers. “And OEA?” More cheers.

The callout amounted to campaign boilerplate, easy to ignore. But in an election year when many Democrats like Muñoz see little to fear from Republicans, it says something about the restive state of Oregon’s progressive coalition.

Muñoz is one of two Democratic candidates this year working to eject sitting Democratic lawmakers with help from some of the party’s most powerful supporters.

Service Employees International Union Local 503, the Oregon Education Association, and the Oregon AFL-CIO, three of the state’s largest and most active labor groups, are endorsing Muñoz as she runs against state Sen. Janeen Sollman, D-Hillsboro. Environmental groups like the Oregon League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club have signed on, too.

The show of support for a challenger – particularly an unknown like Muñoz – is a rarity in Oregon, where progressive groups in the union, environmental and social equity realm typically rally around Democratic incumbents. In the chaotic politics of 2026, though, some of those organizations say they’re no longer content with a Democratic supermajority they view as ineffective.

“Take this as a clear sign: Just because we have supported a candidate before, that does not guarantee their support in every election,” said OEA President Enrique Farrera, whose union is also declining to endorse Gov. Tina Kotek’s reelection as a way to show displeasure ahead of the May primary. “Elections are about choices.”

Sollman’s reelection bid isn’t the only race bucking the typical script.

State Rep. Daniel Nguyen’s campaign this year is complicated by a challenge from John “Waz” Wasielewski, a Lake Oswego teacher supported by OEA, the American Federation of Teachers, and Basic Rights Oregon, among others.

The races pit left-wing challengers against a more centrist contingent of the party. Nguyen and Sollman are moderate Democrats who support targeted tax breaks to business that they believe can help improve the state’s flagging economy.

Both incumbents have been on progressive groups’ radar for months. Labor organizations briefly ran unflattering social media ads against them and other lawmakers, after they emerged as possible impediments to a plan to block federal tax cuts that were expected to eat into Oregon’s budget.

The primary contests have become a persistent source of chatter in Democratic circles, as the party establishment tries to figure out whether labor and advocacy groups are prepared to spend enough to unseat Nguyen and Sollman, or simply trying to send a message.

“Incumbents across the board are part of the problem,” said Felisa Hagins, director of the SEIU Oregon State Council, summarizing a sentiment she hears from her members about both local and national politics. “People are looking for candidates to have a higher standard than just being generally with one party or another.”

It’s not uncommon for incumbent lawmakers in either party to face primary challenges. Credible challenges are more rare.

In Republican primaries, the opposition of anti-abortion groups like Oregon Right to Life can tank an incumbent – as it did for former state Rep. Charlie Conrad, R-Dexter, in 2024.

But in Democratic primaries, challengers rarely bring the backing of politically sophisticated advocacy groups that are cornerstones of the party machine.

Muñoz, 50, is a former teacher who currently works for the Oregon Department of Education and is a member of SEIU Local 503 and of the Democratic Socialists of America. Her sister, state Rep. Lesly Muñoz, D-Woodburn, won a dramatic race in 2024 that wound up sealing Democrats’ three-fifth supermajority in the House.

Muñoz says she never expected to run for office. She even supported Sollman in the past.

That began to change last year, when Sollman was one of just two Democrats to oppose a labor-backed bill that made Oregon the first state in the country to grant unemployment pay to striking public employees.

“I didn’t feel supported by my senator,” Muñoz, a Forest Grove resident, said in an interview with OPB.

During this year’s legislative session, Sollman, a longtime education advocate and volunteer in Hillsboro, angered teachers’ unions with a bill that would have altered the state’s Quality Education Model, used to determine how much money is required to adequately fund schools.

That model is broadly criticized as outdated, but labor groups said they were left out of the discussion. The bill ultimately failed.

Sollman also got blowback for a bill that would have opened up hundreds of acres of farmland near Hillsboro to industrial development. She and other backers argued the idea was necessary to allow the state’s semiconductor and advanced manufacturing industries to grow. Opponents, including environmental groups and land-use hawks, saw a move that would have paved the way for power- and water-hungry data centers.

That bill also died, but for Sollman’s critics, the damage had been done.

“I started digging and found myself supported in the community and finding allies everywhere that wanted me to run,” said Muñoz.

Sollman says her votes and policy proposals are for her constituents, not specific Democrat-leaning groups.

“I’m not a rubber stamp,” she said. “I’m an independent thinker for my district and for my community and I think that’s what they elect me to do.”

The lawmaker – who started her legislative career in the state House in 2017 before moving to the Senate in 2022 – told OPB she’s noticed a shift in her party during President Donald Trump’s second term.

“We used to be able to disagree on tough issues,” she said. “Whether this is coming from a Trump-type atmosphere or not, it has felt to me like I have had situations where it’s more of an ‘our way or the highway,’ now.”

Meanwhile, there’s another notable challenge on the Democratic slate.

Wasielewski, 29, is a middle school teacher who has sweated out budget cuts in Lake Oswego. He told OPB he decided to challenge Nguyen, in part, because he viewed the moderate two-term lawmaker as a hurdle to steering more state funding to schools.

“My number one priority is schools,” Wasielewski said. “The conversation that needs to happen in the background is comprehensive revenue reform.”

Nguyen did not respond to an interview request for this story.

For all the notable support he’s touting, Wasielewski hasn’t convinced two of the weightier members of the Democratic coalition. SEIU hasn’t endorsed in the race. And AFSCME Local 75 is backing Nguyen. It hasn’t taken a position on Sollman’s reelection.

Joe Baessler, AFSCME Local 75’s executive director, said his members have the same concerns as other unions about the Salem status quo. As lawmakers grapple with tight budgets, labor’s policy priorities have at times fallen by the wayside, he said.

But Baessler added: “I think we’re just in a place of: Firing someone from their job is a hard thing to do.”

There aren’t many recent examples of the kind of challenges Muñoz and Wasielewski are posing this year. In Muñoz’s case, the closest may be 2018, when then-state Rep. Shemia Fagan challenged and defeated longtime state Sen. Rod Monroe in the primary.

Like Muñoz, Fagan had union support. Also like Muñoz, she was riding the momentum of an unpopular move by her incumbent opponent. In 2017, Monroe played a role in killing a bill to expand renters’ rights that earned him the ire of some advocates.

But Fagan, then an attorney, also had financial backing from the Oregon Trial Lawyers Association. Between the lawyers and labor groups, she raised nearly $350,000 for the May primary and cruised to victory.

To date, neither Muñoz nor Wasielewski has reported big fundraising hauls.

Muñoz had recorded less than $40,000 in donations as of Tuesday, compared to more than $240,000 sitting in Sollman’s campaign account. Wasielewski had reported less than $33,500, less than half of what Nguyen has on hand.

“If this is a money contest, this is over,” Muñoz said last week. “Defending our community is why I think we have a chance. We’re starting our door knocking this Sunday and we’re not going to stop until May 19th.”

While the incumbents are keeping a close eye on money, some believe the labor-backed challenges may wind up looking like another notable race. In 2020, a Tigard-Tualatin School Board member named Ben Bowman challenged state Sen. Ginny Burdick, D-Portland, in the Democratic primary.

Bowman brought backing from the OEA and Portland Association of Teachers to his race, but that support was more geared toward sending a message than actually bouncing Burdick. The longtime lawmaker handily outraised Bowman and won almost 70% of the vote.

Such an outcome might not be so discouraging to Muñoz and Wasielewski.

Two years after his defeat, Bowman won a race for a newly redrawn state House seat. Today he serves as the chamber’s majority leader.