Cameron Pahl
From Ballotpedia
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Cameron Pahl (Democratic Party) ran for election to the U.S. House to represent Oregon's 5th Congressional District. He did not appear on the ballot for the Democratic primary on May 21, 2024.
Pahl completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2023. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Cameron Pahl was born in Pendleton, Oregon. His career experience includes working as a software engineer.[1]
Elections
2024
See also: Oregon's 5th Congressional District election, 2024
Oregon's 5th Congressional District election, 2024 (May 21 Republican primary)
Oregon's 5th Congressional District election, 2024 (May 21 Democratic primary)
General election
General election for U.S. House Oregon District 5
Janelle Bynum defeated incumbent Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Brett Smith, Sonja Feintech, and Andrea Townsend in the general election for U.S. House Oregon District 5 on November 5, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Janelle Bynum (D) | 47.7 | 191,365 |
 | Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R) | 45.0 | 180,420 | |
 | Brett Smith (Independent Party)  | 4.7 | 18,665 | |
 | Sonja Feintech (L) | 1.5 | 6,193 | |
| Andrea Townsend (Pacific Green Party) | 1.0 | 4,155 | ||
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.1 | 495 | ||
| Total votes: 401,293 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Andrew Aasen (No Party Affiliation)
Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for U.S. House Oregon District 5
Janelle Bynum defeated Jamie McLeod-Skinner in the Democratic primary for U.S. House Oregon District 5 on May 21, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Janelle Bynum | 69.4 | 55,473 |
 | Jamie McLeod-Skinner | 29.9 | 23,905 | |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.6 | 510 | ||
| Total votes: 79,888 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Kevin Easton (D)
- Lynn Peterson (D)
- Cameron Pahl (D)
- Matthew Davie (D)
Republican primary election
Republican primary for U.S. House Oregon District 5
Incumbent Lori Chavez-DeRemer advanced from the Republican primary for U.S. House Oregon District 5 on May 21, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Lori Chavez-DeRemer | 98.2 | 54,458 |
| Other/Write-in votes | 1.8 | 1,009 | ||
| Total votes: 55,467 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Campaign themes
2024
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Cameron Pahl completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2023. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Pahl's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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My name is Cameron Pahl. I'm a software engineer, a part-time researcher, and I'm running for Congress in OR-05. My website is at www.PAHLITICS.com and the slogan is "You Will Not Die of Dysentery," the logo of course is the covered wagon from the Oregon Trail game. Both sides of my family came here on the Oregon Trail and were farmers. My interests include history, art, paleontology, and in my spare time I love to write, do research projects, and be with my family.
- We need the government to protect our farmers, and our people, from climate change.
- We need to raise taxes on billionaires and big corporations to restore financial health to our government.
- We need to end poverty and homelessness, and restore the middle class.
I'm passionate about many subjects. I believe we need a financially responsible federal budget, like we had during FDR's years, and Eisenhower's, too. And we need to eradicate medical debt and student debt, and end subsidies and handouts for huge businesses that don't need the money anyway. I get excited by new ideas, for example I would love the government to be more involved in new technologies that simplify/speed up the home construction process. If we help new homebuilding technologies to mature, I believe it could help us solve housing shortages by replacing traditional stick-built homes, which often take months longer to construct. We still help solar and windfarm businesses, we can do the same with housing. Another subject I care deeply about is related to climate change, specifically water resources. Droughts in the West are expected to become more common and more severe, so we need to build systems to conserve more water now. I think desal plants and new reservoirs should be prioritized immediately, so that in 25 years our farmers will still be able to water their crops. Hundreds of wells have run dry in Bend in the last couple years, this is a serious issue and it is already happening. I also think we should invest in GMO technologies that might allow us to make trees that grow 4 times faster than current trees, this would help capture CO2 much faster, to potentially restore forests, too.
This will be a long list because I love history. My favorite philosopher is Thomas Kuhn, because he had the courage to propose a new paradigm, and trusted his intellectual instincts even when people approached his ideas with hostility. My favorite President is FDR for the same reasons, but also because he had a moral vision for a better American future and he made it. I respect Jon Stewart for his intelligence and his work ethic, I hope I can be as energetic and committed as he is. I like inventors, too, they usually have rich and active mental lives, love new ideas, and have the creativity to implement them. I have deep respect for Bernie Sanders because he is true to himself and his values, and his life purpose. I saw him when he overflowed the Moda Center and it inspired me. I like Teddy Roosevelt because he was eccentric and had a bunch of exotic pets, both of which I relate to, but also because he initiated many important priorities that we still follow today. Nature conservation , antitrust laws. I like Richard Engel, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Doug Bandow, Mondaire Jones, Elissa Slotkin, John Kirby, Stephanie Savell, David Wessel, Keanu Reeves (obvious reasons), Tim Walz, Steven Spielberg, Chief Joseph, Weird Al, Keith Morrison, Thomas Jefferson, Lincoln. Also, I like Dostoyevsky, Darwin and Einstein, not just because they were geniuses with dynamic minds, but also because they remained humble and self reflective as people. I'm leaving out many others, but I tend to look up to leaders with vision, compassion, moral courage, and cosmopolitan intelligence.
Moral courage, cosmopolitan intelligence, curiosity, compassion.
I think the main goal is to make sure that the people of the district have a voice in the government. I see it this way. Laws impact all of us. The good ones and the bad ones. We need to make sure the good ones help us, and the bad ones don't hurt us. So we send a representative to speak for us, to make sure the laws fall down to our communities as softly as possible. One example here: A huge chunk of this district is National Forest, and I want to make sure laws about forests, fires, climate change, and land use management have input from us so our forest towns aren't ignored or damaged. So people won't lose their forestry-related jobs if a statute changes.
I want the next generations to have it easier than we have it now. I want our future kids and grandkids to grow up with optimism, I want them to be confident, and safe. So American prosperity can be shared among our cities, towns, families, and our people. There are many crises against us right now. If I am asked to vote to o one of them... say, canceling student loan debt - and I don't help with any others, I will be proud of contributing to debt relief. Hopefully I can help with many other things too, of course, but my point is that I want my legacy to be helpful to others in a lasting, and foundational way.
I had a paper route for the East Oregonian! My college job was as an assistant land surveyor for the US Forest Service, is pent every summer in the Wallowas and the Blues, but later I worked as a research associate, and now I'm a software engineer.
Tough question. Structures of Scientific Revolutions is one. Jurassic Park is another. Any of the Calvin and Hobbes anthologies.
LBJ was a history teacher before he went into politics. When FDR ran for governor of New York, he listed his profession as "tree planter". Lincoln had almost no formal schooling and served only 1 term in the House of Reps before he went for President. They didn't necessarily have political experience before they jumped in. But, all of them had moral courage. Vision. Intelligence, Compassion. Much more important. Sometimes I think long career politicians have fewer of these qualities a consequence of their experience in government. Not always, but sometimes. It seems like the best leaders of any institution, House of Reps or otherwise, are shaped by their experiences serving others, they have compassion and that is more important than a person's resume. Not only that but sometimes people with long political careers end up doing a pretty bad job.
We have so many.
Domestically, I think we need to end poverty and homelessness. And I think we need to reinforce our national infrastructure to protect us. Storms, floods, fires, and droughts will only get worse in the coming years. They are already hurting us.
We need to rebuild the middle class.
I think the challenges of new technologies will be unlike anything the world has ever experienced. They will stress our society just as much as they will improve it. But there will be friction.
Financially, I think our nation needs to raise revenue. We must reduce the public debt.
I think 2 years is pretty short, but I'm not sure how to measure for the optimum term length, so I'm not sure.
I think term limits could potentially help refresh Congress with new minds, more consistently. It is imperative that a government run by the people can adapt to changes in society with fluidity. But, I think it is difficult for this to happen in our current system. Lots of people in Congress have been there for decades. While it can feel stable, predictable, or even advantageous to have the same people in office for long periods of time, it actually seems, paradoxically, risky to me.The world has just changed so radically, and we're all running to catch up. Before we know it, AI will be everywhere. Social media and other tech monopolies are hungry for us, they don't care if the price is the mental health of our teenagers. Climate change and the national debt are real, pressing crises. Some members of Congress have been there since the early 80's. And some of them are partially responsible for some of these big problems. I don't necessarily trust them to be the best people to fix the problems that they helped to cause. That's one of the supposed benefits of having Presidential term limits, so I think it applies to Congress as well.
A few years ago, I was at the Round Up in Pendleton. I noticed a raffle booth with some hand-painted signs, it stood out a bit. A guy was raffling an antique, heirloom rifle to raise money for his mom's cancer treatment. I felt so bad for him. We need healthcare to be affordable for all of us. No one should need a raffle, or GoFundMe, just to pay for their healthcare.
This is such a tough question. It bothers me when stubbornness of any kind prevents progress. Some lawmakers do this, they can get what they want by being inflexible. Earmarks, special rules just for them, wishlist items. "I'll only vote yes if you allow my business to dump raw sewage into elementary schools." Then at the 11th hour they add the sewage thing to the bill and it passes. But there are other cases where I think being inflexible is necessary - especially when it comes to moral economic issues. Legislators have tried to design policies too govern healthcare and pharmaceutical industries, but they often do this by compromising... with healthcare companies. There are more than 1500 lobbyists just for pharmaceutical companies - more people than there are in all of Congress. Compromising with them and allowing them to influence legislation is one of the main reasons we have such a poor healthcare system here. We should not be compromising with them at all.
We need to raise more revenue to restore our country's financial health. We raised taxes to get us out of the Depression, to pay for WW2, after the Civil War, lots of stuff. Because we had to. I support a wealth tax on billionaires, I support fully funding the IRS, I believe in ending offshore tax havens. If the government does nothing, we could be spending $6 trillion just on our debt's interest each year by 2050. That type of debt obligation will crush us. We won't be able to afford the military, the Forest Service, Medicare, Social Security, roads, infrastructure. We need to raise revenue. Otherwise the programs we rely on could go away.
I think the House should use its investigative powers to check the other 2 branches of government, and to understand complex issues in order to write good laws.
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Campaign finance summary
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See also
2024 Elections
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on June 3, 2023
Senators
Jeff Merkley (D)
Ron Wyden (D)
Representatives
District 1
Suzanne Bonamici (D)
District 2
Cliff Bentz (R)
District 3
Maxine Dexter (D)
District 4
Val Hoyle (D)
District 5
Janelle Bynum (D)
District 6
Andrea Salinas (D)
Democratic Party (7)
Republican Party (1)
