U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz, who represents the sprawling 2nd Congressional District that takes in Jackson and Josephine counties, is seeking a third term in Congress. An incumbent Republican in an overwhelmingly Republican district, it’s Bentz’s election to lose.

Bentz is being challenged for his party’s nomination by the mayor of Prineville, Jason Beebe, who lost two years ago when he sought the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate.

Two Democrats are seeking their party’s nomination: Daniel W. Ruby, executive director of the Rogue Community College Foundation, who entered politics last year when he was elected to the Ashland School Board; and Steve W. Liable of Grants Pass, a children’s book author and retired U.S. Air Force captain who unsuccessfully sought his party’s nomination in 2022 to represent the 4th Congressional District.

This story focuses on Bentz, a 72-year-old career lawyer and former longtime state legislator (2008-20) from Ontario, which is located along the Snake River on the Oregon-Idaho border. Bentz first won his party’s nomination for the U.S. House four years ago, when Republican Rep. Greg Walden stepped down after more than 20 years in Congress. Bentz and his wife, Lindsay, a retired veterinarian, have two children.

Because 2024 is a presidential election year, presidential politics are near the top of the list of issues of concern for Bentz and his constituents.

“Over the last year I have been repeatedly asked who I would support for president,” Bentz wrote in a January social media post. “I have consistently answered that I would support a Republican who is familiar with and supportive of conservative positions and who can win both the Primary and General Elections.”

Since then, former President Donald Trump has become the presumptive Republican nominee.

“I am once again endorsing Donald Trump for president,” Bentz stated.

Bentz’s district takes in 20 counties, all east of the Cascade Mountains except for Jackson and Josephine counties. He sits on House committees for the judiciary and natural resources and chairs a subcommittee on Water, Oceans and Fisheries. As an attorney, water law was one of his specialities.

Key issues for Bentz include his opposition to the removal of dams on the Klamath and Snake rivers, the expansion of national monuments in Oregon and Biden Administration policies along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Dam removal

Bentz opposes the ongoing removal of dams on the Klamath River and the possible removal of dams on the Snake River, saying that improved conditions for threatened and endangered salmon don’t warrant the loss of hydroelectricity and, in the case of the Snake River dams, irrigation water.

“The Pacific Northwest’s intricate dam system is vital to the survival of our communities, our livelihoods and the transportation of our crops,” Bentz wrote on his campaign website, referring to dams on the Snake River. “As a society we must balance the economic and environmental priorities, but not at the expense of entire communities.”

Bentz said in February that the problem with diminishing salmon populations on the Klamath River is ocean conditions, not fish-blocking dams. Removal of the dams there will open hundreds of miles of habitat to migrating fish, including endangered salmon.

“Habitat is not the issue,” Bentz said in a video posted to his social media page. “There are hundreds of miles of unused habitat.”

National monuments

Bentz and 28 fellow congressmen in December petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court in an unsuccessful attempt to overturn the 2017 expansion of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in Jackson and Siskiyou counties, contending that the expansion was presidential overreach.

“This blatant disregard for the will of the people is an affront to the Constitution,” Bentz said at the time.

However, the court on March 25 declined to take up the case, leaving in place the decision of two appeals courts to allow the expansion to stay in place. Two of the nine justices wanted to hear the case.

Bentz also opposes the creation of a national monument to protect the Owyhee Canyonlands in Malheur County in Southeastern Oregon. An Ontario-based group, Friends of the Owyhee Canyonlands, is urging Biden to create the monument this year to protect 1.1 million acres. Bentz in a November press release said Portland-based environmental groups were behind the proposal.

“We must have (a) management process that is based on the people who live, work, appreciate and recreate in Malheur County,” he wrote.

Border security

On another key issue, Bentz has been outspoken against the border security policies of President Joe Biden and has supported the impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas, who as Homeland Security secretary oversees border security and asylum. After Bentz and the Republican-controlled House voted in February to impeach Mayorkas, the Democrat-controlled Senate dismissed the case on April 17.

In a related matter, Bentz in a March update to constituents wrote that he supported House Resolution 1065, which among other things calls for the end of a longtime “catch-and-release” policy that allows people accused of immigration violations to be released while their cases remain pending. The longtime policy was in effect during the Trump years.

He also supports Trump’s proposal to building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

Key votes and positions

Among the key votes cast last year by Bentz was a party-line vote to continue investigations into whether there was sufficient grounds for the House to impeach Biden.

The president responded by saying, “Instead of doing their job on the urgent work that needs to be done, they are choosing to waste time on this baseless political stunt,” according to the Associated Press.

On his campaign website, Bentz vowed to protect gun rights, called the National Environmental Policy Act “a litigation nightmare” and said that the federal government was guilty of “gross mismanagement of our federal forests and the horrific fires that result.” He also wrote that he strongly opposes government-run health care and is pro-life.

Asked about his top accomplishments in office, Bentz said via email last week that they included his appointment as subcommittee chairman, where he was able to work to protect Snake River dams, work to lessen federal protections for gray wolves and push back on a proposal to limit the ability of national wildlife refuge managers to use practices such as predator control and grazing unless environmental impacts are fully studied.

Other accomplishments, he said, include helping Kingsley Field in Klamath Falls receive F-35A Lightning II jets, help more than 5,000 constituents navigate federal agencies and work to protect ratepayers in irrigation districts, utility districts and electric co-ops.

More information

Bentz grew up on his family’s cattle ranch in Harney County until age 14 after which he graduated from a Catholic high school in Salem, college in La Grande and law school in Portland. He said he read a lot as a young person about the importance of government.

“I thought when I was 14 that I would get into Congress some day,” he said in February during an in-person and online question-and-answer roundtable with journalists. “I realized it would require a lot of study and a lot of work, and so I kind of focused on that and eventually I made it here.”

“And so, over the years, I became a lawyer because I realized that would help me make it into Congress, and then I practiced for 30 years, focusing on family, ranch and farm and water law. And I did all of that in anticipation of someday, perhaps having this opportunity, this privilege to serve everybody at a national level.”

He waited until Walden, now a Washington, D.C., consultant, left office. Walden for Congress has contributed $2,000 to Bentz this year, according to a federal campaign filing by Bentz.

Other campaign contributors in the first quarter of this year include $1,000 each from Patricia Smullin, president of California Oregon Broadcasting Inc. (KOBI); John Dailey, chief financial officer of Harry & David; Matt Stephenson, CEO of Rogue Federal Credit Union; Amazon; ExxonMobil; Pacific Power; TC Energy; Union Pacific; Visa; and Walmart.

Other contributions include $2,500 from Fox Corporation PAC, $5,000 from Charter Communications and $5,000 from the National Association of Broadcasters.

Bentz last held a local town hall in August at the Jackson County Expo, where more than 100 people turned out. Among the subjects he discussed was bipartisanship.

“It depends on the issue,” he said. “Some issues Democrats are happy to talk about and other issues they won’t talk about at all. When the situation allows, I’m happy to work with the Democrats.”

Republicans have a thin majority in the House, but a minority in the Senate, making passage of legislation difficult.

“Thus it takes just two Republicans to stop any Republican bill,” Bentz wrote in his March update. “But even if we obtain unanimous agreement, the bill must still get through a Democrat-controlled Senate and across President Biden’s desk. It’s been my observation that the odds of having less than two Republicans out of our Republican conference of 218 not object to a bill of any sort are extremely low.”

A resignation later that week cut the margin to one.

While the balance of power in the House is close, registered Republicans far outnumber Democrats in the 2nd Congressional District, 178,971 to 103,818, according to the latest figures from the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office. That’s changed from four years ago, before redistricting, when the margin was closer: 193,393 to 148,097. Nonaffiliated voters in the district currently number 198,778.

In his March update, Bentz commented on Biden’s State of the Union Address, delivered March 7 to Congress, which he characterized as divisive:

“The President spent the first part of his speech reviewing his first two years in office, and the rest reciting the standard Democrat litany of taxes he would raise and money he would give away. Exactly how he would actually accomplish either without controlling both the House and the Senate was not mentioned.”

“In summary, what I saw was someone who thinks that by shouting, blaming, lecturing, and promising, he could convince the country that he should and could be president for another 4 years.”

2nd Congressional District candidates

Besides incumbent Cliff Bentz of Ontario, three other candidates are running to represent Oregon’s 2nd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Registered Republicans vastly outnumber Democrats in the district, 178,971-103,818, as of April, according to the Oregon Secretary of State.

Two years ago, Bentz won a second term to represent the district by a margin of 67.5% to 32.4% over retired U.S. Army doctor Joseph Yetter of Azalea. Bentz is now seeking a third term. The primary election is May 21.

Besides Bentz, the other candidates include the mayor of Prineville, an author from Grants Pass and a college foundation administrator from Ashland:

• Republican Jason Beebe was elected mayor of Prineville in 2020, is an instructor for a data center training organization and served in the U.S. Army and National Guard 2003-15. He ran for U.S. senator in 2022, taking 11.3% of the vote in the primary, but lost to Jo Rae Perkins of Albany, who lost to Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden in the general election.

“I will not be an establishment Republican,” Beebe states on his campaign website, beebefororegon.com. “I am a concerned citizen of Oregon who knows that our current representation is not doing the job we expect.”

His priorities include securing the border and “stopping immigration.”

• Democrat Daniel W. Ruby of Ashland has been executive director of the Rogue Community College Foundation and a member of the Ashland School Board since last year. He has a master’s degree in secondary education and lists education, housing and behavioral health as priorities.

“We’re often forgotten in rural Oregon, and the approaches that politicians in Salem and DC come up with don’t fit the small towns and rural communities of Southern, Central, and Eastern Oregon,” Ruby states on his campaign website, ruby4or.com.

• Democrat Steve W. Laible of Grants Pass is a children’s book author, is retired from the U.S. Air Force and has a master’s degree in business management. In the 2022 Democratic Party primary for a seat in the Oregon House, he garnered 0.3% of the vote.

“We simply MUST STOP anointing aristocrats, bigots & bullies, obstructionists, and conspiracy theorists, as our rulers,” Laible states on his campaign website, kodelparty.us.

Ballots for the May 21 Oregon primary will be mailed to Southern Oregon voters May 3.