Two years ago, Oregon’s tightest congressional race was fought in Oregon’s 5th District.

This year, the story has changed.

2010’s race between Democrat Kurt Schrader and Republican Scott Bruun took over TV airwaves with advertising in a relatively close contest that eventually ended with Schrader winning 51 percent to 46 percent, giving him a second congressional term.

Now, political analysts are projecting an easier win for Schrader. Schrader has raised about $1.1 million, compared to Republican challenger Fred Thompson’s $5,635.

A Salem resident, Thompson has gotten no money from the national Republican Party, which usually only invests in races it expects to be competitive.

Oregon’s 5th Congressional District received a “Safe Democrat” rating from the Rothenberg Political Report, an independent nonpartisan political newsletter. The rating is based on a composite of previous voting patterns, demographic information, fundraising, and candidate analysis.

“2010 was probably the Republicans’ best opportunity in a while, with the Republican wave,” said Nathan Gonzales, Rothenberg’s political editor. “They missed that chance.”

That idea was echoed by David Wasserman, House editor for the Cook Report, another independent nonpartisan political analyzer. “Republicans fought tooth and nail for this district in 2010 and came up short,” he said. “It seems Kurt Schrader has put this seat away.”

Polls showed the 2010 race was tighter than Schrader’s eventual victory margin.

“By the numbers,” said Gonzales, the district should be closer. But “(former U.S. Rep. Darlene) Hooley did a good job of maintaining a profile outside of the national Democratic Party,” he said, which helped her appeal to the political center.

Like Hooley, Schrader has a record as a moderate. He broke with his party in votes more frequently than 63 percent of his fellow Democrats, and he is a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of moderate Democrats.

Redistricted, but little impact

Boundaries of the 5th District have been redrawn since the 2010 race, cutting out large parts of Multnomah County. Now, it only includes small areas of Southwest Portland and the Mount Scott area. It also includes Oregon City and most of the rest of Clackamas County, plus the Salem area and the Central Oregon Coast.

Redistricting was expected to make the seat more competitive and less comfortable for Democrats. Before redistricting, Cook Political Report gave the district a Cook Partisan Voting Index score of D+1, meaning a generic Democratic presidential candidate could expect to score 1 percentage point higher there than the national average.

After the 2011 redistricting process, this score shifted to “even,” meaning the national average vote between generic Republican and Democratic presidential candidates would be reflected in the 5th District.

“The redistricting is entirely to account for the change,” said Wasserman.

However, the overall shift of the district toward Republicans does not seem to be playing out in the Congressional race.

Schrader’s moderate reputation and his victories in past state Senate races have helped him to continue successfully despite the rightward shift brought about by redistricting, said Gonzales.

“I think it’s a mixture of the Democrats doing a good job of staying connected to the district, and the Republicans struggling to find a good candidate,” he said.

Aside from the redistricting process, the general trend has been in the opposite direction.

“Over time, the district has gotten more Democratic,” said Wasserman.

Making a dent

Beyond policy differences, Schrader and Thompson differ in how they portray the race itself.

Schrader presents himself as independent of both parties. Discussing the federal deficit on July 5, he told a Clackamas Rotary Club audience: “It’s not because Obama’s a bad guy; it’s not because George Bush is a bad guy. It’s just the numbers.” (Clackamas Rotary Club emphasizes that its events are not campaign stops.)

Schrader says that instead of this election being a referendum on the nation’s course as a whole, voters in the Congressional race will focus on the candidates.

“They’re going to vote on which candidate is the most real, and which they can relate to at the end of the day,” he said. “It’s not about which party.”

Before he was elected to the 5th District position, Schrader was a state Senator. He had been in the Oregon Legislature since 1997. He’s a veterinarian and a farmer from Canby.

Thompson is a small-business owner who says he had run companies that convert agricultural waste into building materials. His government experience consists of serving on the Junction City School Board budget committee for a year in the mid-1980s.

Thompson is also reluctant to associate himself too closely with either party.

“I’m not thrilled with the Republican Party and I’m not thrilled certainly with the Democrat Party,” he said. “We need someone who’s not an ideologue.”

But he identifies Schrader more by his Democratic status, and he says the race will focus more on party than Schrader believes.

“I think right now ... the Democrats have pretty much had their way in the first two years of Obama and Schrader’s terms,” he said. “They’ve had their way and gotten what they wanted ... and people aren’t happy with that.”

Scott Bruun, however, thinks Thompson will need more help to make a dent in Schrader’s political fundraising armor.

“If (Thompson) is going to win the race, he’s going to need to raise money,” Bruun said.

Bruun estimates that Thompson needs at least $750,000 to compete.

“Even that would be a grossly underfunded campaign,” Bruun said. “But it would get him on the radar.”

Bruun also says that when Schrader ran in 2010, he had been in the majority, meaning he had to take some votes with his party that may have been unpopular. Bruun focused his campaign on criticizing these votes.

Now, Bruun said, “he’s in the minority, so he can take some moderate, even conservative votes.” That could “leave him less vulnerable to the kind of campaign I ran against him.”

Thompson says his comparative lack of funding is not necessarily evidence of a weaker candidacy.

“(Schrader has) got a lot of special-interest money, he’s got a lot of PAC (Political Action Committee) money,” he said. “He has the machine behind him, and I don’t.”

About 56 percent of Schrader’s money, $595,269, has come from PACs; $439,904 has come from individual contributions, totaling 41 percent.

All of Thompson’s $5,635 has come from individual contributions.