Cliff Bentz On Track for Reelection With 62% of Vote in Oregon’s 2nd District

Oregon — Republican U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz is on track to win reelection in Oregon’s 2nd Congressional District, holding a substantial lead over Democratic and Independent nominee Chris Beck in the current election tally.

Bentz has received 187,874 votes, or 61.56%, compared with Beck’s 116,874 votes, or 38.30%. Another 440 votes, accounting for 0.14%, went to write-in candidates.

With 305,188 votes tallied, Bentz leads Beck by 71,000 votes, a margin of 23.26 percentage points. The incumbent has secured more than three out of every five votes counted.

First elected to Congress in November 2020, Bentz previously served in both chambers of the Oregon Legislature. He was appointed to the Oregon House in 2008 and subsequently won election before moving to the Oregon Senate through an appointment in 2018. He resigned from the Senate in January 2020 to campaign full-time for Congress.

A third-generation Oregonian raised on his family’s cattle ranches in Harney County, Bentz graduated from Eastern Oregon State College and Lewis & Clark Law School. He joined an Ontario law firm in 1977, later becoming a partner and specializing in ranch reorganizations and water law.

His public service also includes eight years on the Oregon Water Resources Commission, where he served as a member and chair, and leadership roles on the Ontario school board.

Bentz’s recent legislative proposals include the bipartisan IMD CARE Act, introduced with Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman of New York. The bill would give states an additional Medicaid coverage option for people with serious mental illness receiving care in psychiatric facilities with more than 16 beds.

He also introduced the Public Access to HHS Health Data Act, which would require the Department of Health and Human Services to establish a centralized online repository of its publicly available datasets. The proposal would require those datasets to be machine-readable.

The current returns position Bentz to retain his seat representing a district spanning northern, eastern, central and southern Oregon. The figures remain subject to change as additional ballots are processed and election officials complete certification.