OR-06 Congressional Election
I aim to provide a brief overview of the 2022 US House of Representatives election in Oregon’s 6th congressional district (OR-06), which some EAs have expressed interest in due to Carrick Flynn’s candidacy. I am not affiliated with, nor do I claim to endorse any candidate in this election.
Background
In 2022, OR-06 will elect their congressperson to the US House of Representatives for a 2 year term. The Democratic and Republican primaries will occur on May 17th, 2022, and the general election will occur on November 8th, 2022. Oregon had previously been allotted 5 congressional districts, but it gained a seat from reapportionment following the 2020 census. OR-06 is a newly-created district with no incumbent [1] (thus no candidate with incumbency advantage), and serves portions of the Portland/Salem metropolitan areas, and rural communities in Yamhill and Polk County.
Primary Election
Barring Flynn, there are currently 8 other candidates in the Democratic primary: two self-financed crypto investors, two members of the Oregon House of Representatives, a commissioner on the county board which represents Portland, a Oregon Medical Board member, a progressive organizer and former candidate in OR-01, and a candidate I could not find public campaign information for. As Zach Stein-Perlman suggests, Flynn may have difficulty winning in a pool of candidates with with endorsements, name recognition, and electoral experience.
Campaign finance figures prior to December 2021 are listed on Ballotpedia—Flynn is not included as he did not file his candidacy until January 21st, 2022. However, Flynn has reported raising $430,000 in the his campaign’s first ten days, and received $1.36 million from Sam Bankman-Fried’s Protect the Future PAC in February 2022. Primary elections can also be highly volatile, due to being poorly-polled and having more candidates than general elections. I couldn’t find any polling for this primary election either.
General Election
At of March 22nd, 2022, Metaculus has Flynn winning the primary at 40% and the general election at 30%, suggesting a 75% probability of winning the general conditional on winning the primary. Indeed, the University of Virginia Center for Politics, Cook Political Report, and Inside Elections all characterize this race as Likely Democratic. However, OR-06 doesn’t have an incumbent or clear frontrunner in either primary, so electoral rating organizations can’t strongly consider candidate quality to judge general election outcomes.
Empirically, the Democratic Party won OR-06 by 13 points in the 2020 presidential election[2], and FiveThirtyEight reports that OR-06 has a partisan lean of D+7, indicating that it has historically voted 7 points more Democratic than the country as a whole. General election results could also be conditional on candidate quality and the broader midterm political environment.
OR-06 contains more than half of the old OR-05, but the incumbent representative is running in the newly drawn OR-05 instead. ↩︎
Not Quite Vegetarian
On my first day of college—August 18th, 2021 - I decided to strive towards becoming vegetarian, primarily for animal welfare reasons. Before college, I consumed around a median American quantity of meat, but I decided to make this change because Berkeley has more accessible vegetarian options compared to home. Since then, I’ve avoided meat for roughly 90% of meals.
Thoughts:
Reducing my meat consumption has been surprisingly manageable so far—I’ve never craved the meat options at the dining hall because the food isn’t great overall. In addition, I can order/cook my own food in college instead of eating the same meal as my family back home, so I have higher agency over what I eat. In January 2022, I was fortunate to eat great catered vegan food at MLAB, which made being vegetarian much easier at that time.
I wonder how much my reduction in meat consumption actually decreases meat production, and which actions are higher-impact than others; for example, unsure if eating vegetarian at my dining hall matters if they order the same amount of vegetarian/non-vegetarian food regardless of demand or throw away unserved leftovers.
It’s not clear to me whether being vegetarian is effectively altruistic compared to other actions one could take, and I’m not sure if being vegetarian is more expensive than eating meat.
Example: I went to an EA retreat which catered vegetarian burgers that cost >$10 each. I’m curious whether it would be better to eat McDonalds and donating the difference to ACE-recommended charities.
This food impacts calculator by VilleSokk suggests that both caged and cage-free eggs both have higher animal welfare/carbon emissions impact per calorie than pork. Could some vegetarian diets increase harm by offsetting protein from meat with eggs?
I’m somewhat worried about being vegetarian next year, as I’ll be cooking and meal-prepping with my non-vegetarian flatmates. It’s probably significantly more difficult to be vegetarian while living in or cooking for a non-vegetarian household, as buying/cooking separate meals for each other sounds challenging.
I consumed some meat with family during Thanksgiving and the first two weeks of winter break, and with friends on Chinese New Year. I haven’t eaten much Chinese food outside of large gatherings as it seems more difficult to remain vegetarian.
Food is shared in Chinese restaurants, in contrast to other situations where individuals buy their own plate of food; though its higher impact to get a whole table to eat vegetarian, it’s also significantly harder than just ordering vegetarian for oneself.
At festive Chinese meals, many dishes can have small amounts of meat (e.g. tofu with shredded meat).