Oregon Voices Podcast: Episode 15 - Dawn Rasmussen, Democratic Candidate, Oregon's 2nd Congressional District

Send us Fan MailDawn Rasmussen has driven nearly 9,600 miles through Oregon's 2nd Congressional District, the largest district in the state and one of the largest in the entire country, covering nearly two thirds of Oregon's landmass. She lives in The Dalles, runs a small business helping people negotiate their worth, and has spent 18 years watching what happens when the economy breaks people and no one in power is paying attention. She is not running because politics called to her. She is running because she watched people get broken by a system that was supposed to serve them and decided she was done watching.The district she is running to represent is the most impoverished section of Oregon, where roughly 40 percent of residents rely on Medicare, Medicaid, or SNAP benefits, where 14 of 37 Oregon hospitals are suffering cutbacks, where farmers in Baker City are buying helicopter insurance because there is no trauma care, where cherry growers in The Dalles are questioning whether they can survive another season, and where six Google data centers are drawing 550 million gallons of water a year from an aquifer Dawn lives on. Her opponent, incumbent Cliff Bentz, has held no town halls and brought in no special project funding for the district while neighboring representatives have delivered tens of millions of dollars to their communities.This conversation, recorded at Capital Community Media in Salem, Oregon, features special co-host Oregon State Representative Lesly Munoz of House District 22 and covers what it actually costs to campaign across eastern and southern Oregon, what the Greater Idaho movement is really telling us about who feels forgotten, how renewable energy projects are being swallowed by data center demand instead of going to the grid, and what Dawn means when she calls this her moment of active resistance.Thanks for listening to the Oregon Voices Podcast!If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe so you never miss a conversation. Sharing the show with others helps these stories travel farther.YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@oregonvoicespodcastInstagram: https://instagram.com/oregonvoicespodcastBuzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2550069/episodes/18811599Oregon Campaign Finance Watch: https://orcampaigns.lovable.app/