What does the primary’s biggest legislative upset say about the state of Oregon politics?

The ejection of a longtime Democratic lawmaker has turned heads in Salem like few other results from last week’s primary election.

Challenger Myrna Muñoz, a state employee and democratic socialist, upset state Sen. Janeen Sollman in a race for a Hillsboro Senate seat that wound up being a referendum on data centers.

The result stunned Sollman’s colleagues, who had rallied behind her. And it has emboldened the Working Families Party, Democratic Socialists of America, and other groups that helped propel Muñoz and another left-wing Washington County legislative candidate, Tammy Carpenter, to victory.

But there’s disagreement on what those outcomes actually mean.

Leftist political groups believe they’ve found a replicable path to increasing their influence. A third of Portland City Council members are DSA members. Now the group’s ranks within the Legislature are growing as well.

“You see this across the country,” said Annie Naranjo-Rivera, state director for the Working Families Party, who assisted with Muñoz’s campaign. “People are just tired of politicians who are beholden to corporations and don’t have the time of day to listen to working people.”

Public sector unions who typically support incumbent Democrats — but came out in force against Sollman — offer a similar sentiment.

“Our members want to support and elect people who support working people. Period. That is all they want,” said Felisa Hagins, director of the Oregon state council for the Service Employees International Union, which backed Muñoz.

But sitting Democratic lawmakers and political consultants were more apt to see Sollman’s loss not as a political bellwether, but as a pointed display of political retribution.

Those who spoke to OPB said the senator had crossed too many influential groups within Oregon’s progressive coalition, several of which actively opposed her reelection with money and volunteers. Some speculated that the race will make it less likely lawmakers buck unions in the future.

What is indisputable is that Sollman’s defeat is a striking rarity. Not since 2018 has an incumbent Democratic lawmaker lost to a challenger from within their own party.

In that bygone race, state Sen. Rod Monroe was defeated by a Democratic state representative, Shemia Fagan, after running afoul of a laundry list of interest groups. Many of the same entities lined up against Sollman this time around.

The SEIU opposed Sollman’s reelection for a number of reasons, Hagins said. One that is hard to ignore: the senator’s vote against a 2025 bill that made Oregon the only state to allow striking public employees to receive unemployment pay.

Sollman has said she received an explicit threat that labor groups would seek payback if she opposed the bill, which many of her constituents opposed. In a Thursday interview, she largely blamed the vote for her election loss.

“I said at the time I will not be intimidated. I will not be told how to vote,” Sollman told OPB, saying she does not regret opposing a bill she believes will force taxpayers to foot the bill for labor strife. “You want critical thinkers in our classrooms and our workplaces? You should expect nothing less in the Capitol.”

The SEIU wound up contributing around $150,000 to Muñoz, who, as an employee of the Oregon Department of Education, is an SEIU member. The union dispatched nearly 100 volunteers to knock on doors for the candidate, Hagins said.

The vote on strike pay wasn’t Sollman’s only perceived transgression.

The Oregon Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, was angered by a proposal Sollman floated this year to rejigger how the state funds schools. The OEA donated more than $76,000 to Muñoz, much of it in the form of paid canvassing on her behalf.

Another politically influential group, the Oregon League of Conservation Voters, had long viewed Sollman as an impediment in her role as chair of the Senate Energy and Environment Committee. The environmental organization bristled at Senate Bill 1586, the senator’s unsuccessful effort this year to open hundreds of acres of farmland near Hillsboro to industrial development in order to boost the state’s tech industry.

“​​Unfortunately, Sen. Sollman was often a challenge to more progress on clean energy, climate justice and utility accountability,” Lindsey Scholten, the OLCV’s executive director, said Thursday.

Whatever their motivations for backing Muñoz, virtually everyone agrees the growing national backlash against data centers was Sollman’s ultimate undoing.

While knocking on doors and phoning voters, opponents portrayed the senator as a corporate shill who was eager to open up farmland for uses that might include the massive, energy-intensive facilities that don’t employ many workers.

Sollman, who served as a school board member and state representative before joining the Senate in 2022, says that is wrong. Her proposal to bring more land into Hillsboro would have prevented “stand-alone” data centers not tied to some other facility.

“They were saying I was going to turn 1,700 acres of rich farmland, and turn them into data centers,” Sollman said, pointing out that her opponent’s sister, Democratic state Rep. Lesly Muñoz, initially signed on to co-sponsor SB 1586. “It’s a totally unfair characterization of my record.”

Sollman argues she was listening closely to community opposition about data center expansion. While she initially proposed strengthening a state program that allows property tax breaks for large projects like data centers, she ultimately backed off the idea. Sollman even voted against an economic development bill introduced by Gov. Tina Kotek, she said, over similar concerns.

Muñoz, meanwhile, made opposition to data centers a centerpiece of her campaign, though critics were quick to note her husband works for Currie & Brown, a project management firm that helps build the facilities. Muñoz and other left-wing Democrats in Washington County launched an online petition opposing data center expansion and called for an end to the lucrative property tax breaks the facilities receive.

That effort included Carpenter, a doctor who is closely affiliated with the DSA, and who defeated Beaverton City Councilor Ashley Hartmeier-Prigg in the race for an open Washington County state House seat.

“The public was told these giveaways were about jobs,” Muñoz said in a press release. “They are not. They are about giving massive, long-term tax breaks to some of the wealthiest corporations in the world while working families are left to absorb the cost.”

Muñoz was unavailable to discuss the race this week, her campaign said.

Senate Democrats’ political action committee poured more than $200,000 into defending Sollman, and individual lawmakers kicked in additional money.

It wasn’t enough. While early returns showed Sollman ahead on election night, later ballots flipped the race to Muñoz. As of the latest results, the challenger was leading by nearly 800 votes.

Muñoz now faces Republican candidate Harold Hutchison in the general election for Senate District 15. Registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by more than 11,000 in the district, and the seat is considered safe for Democrats.

Muñoz’s victory against a well-connected and experienced Democrat has given a lift to left-wing groups, who believe they can repeat the success in the future.

“We were outspent two-to-one,” said Naranjo-Rivera, the Working Families Party figure who assisted Muñoz. “There were major corporations and heavy hitters that threw down very heavily here. If we can overcome that, we can absolutely do this again.”

The playbook didn’t work everywhere, though. Another insurgent candidate, middle school teacher John “Waz” Wasielewski, failed in his attempt to unseat state Rep. Daniel Nguyen, D-Portland.

Wasielewski had support from some of the same groups that backed Muñoz – but not all. The Oregon Education Association supported him, along with trial lawyers.

But SEIU stuck with Nguyen, who voted for SB 916, the bill to give striking workers unemployment pay. So did another large union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 75.

As of the latest returns, Nguyen had claimed more than 72% of the vote.

Sollman said Thursday the message of her race is clear: buck powerful political interests at your peril.

“Our environment now is: ‘Our way or the highway,’” she said. “It is Trump tactics.”

Sollman is not the only Democrat who opposed SB 916. State Sen. Jeff Golden, an Ashland Democrat not seeking reelection, did too.

Golden said Thursday he was never threatened by labor groups over his vote. But he said he had little doubt Sollman’s position played a role in her political demise.

“It appears that motivated some unions to primary her,” Golden said, noting he wasn’t privy to all the reasons SEIU and other labor groups went after Sollman. “I don’t think that’s healthy.”