Oregon voters have four choices in the 2026 U.S. Senate election: Democratic incumbent Jeff Merkley, Republican state Senator David Brock Smith, Libertarian Gary Dye, and Chris Henry, who is running with the Progressive and Pacific Green parties. The election is November 3.
The race presents a somewhat different problem for CIVPAC than some of the other Senate contests we have reviewed. Merkley has a long record and several positions that overlap substantially with ours, particularly on foreign policy and institutional questions. But he is also well to our left on a number of economic issues. Brock Smith is closer to us on some questions involving taxes, spending and regulation, but raises important questions on climate change, the 2020 election, voting procedures and independence from President Trump. The two minor-party candidates offer still different alternatives, but their programs also include substantial departures from our views.
Jeff Merkley
Jeff Merkley has represented Oregon in the Senate since 2009 and currently serves as a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee.
Foreign policy is one of the areas where we find considerable agreement. Merkley strongly supports continued assistance to Ukraine and additional sanctions intended to reduce Russia’s ability to finance its invasion. In August he argued that the United States has a responsibility to support Ukraine in resisting Russian aggression.
He has also been one of the stronger congressional advocates for restoring Congress’s constitutional role in decisions involving war. During the current conflict with Iran, Merkley has sponsored and supported War Powers resolutions intended to require congressional authorization for continued hostilities. CIVPAC has repeatedly argued that decisions involving prolonged military action should not simply be left to unilateral presidential discretion.
On Israel and Palestine, Merkley has been sharply critical of the Netanyahu government’s conduct in Gaza while continuing to support Israel’s security and a two-state solution. In 2025 he introduced a resolution calling for recognition of a demilitarized Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel. That is broadly compatible with CIVPAC’s view that criticism of the Netanyahu government need not imply hostility toward Israel or rejection of Israel’s right to exist.
Merkley also places considerable emphasis on election integrity and voting access and resistance to attempts to overturn lawful election results. These are institutional concerns to which we also give substantial weight.
The disagreements are primarily economic.
Merkley supports Medicare for All, although he has also sponsored a less sweeping Medicare buy-in proposal that would allow individuals and employers to buy into Medicare while retaining private insurance. CIVPAC favors universal coverage but prefers competing private plans subject to strong federal rules and limits on the government’s long-term per-capita financial exposure.
He is also substantially more supportive of organized labor than we are. Merkley supports higher statutory minimum wages and stronger union powers and is a cosponsor of legislation that would repeal state right-to-work laws. CIVPAC supports the right of workers to organize but also supports worker choice and the continued authority of states to adopt right-to-work laws.
Tax policy produces another significant disagreement. Merkley supports the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act, which would impose an annual federal tax on net wealth above $50 million. CIVPAC favors progressive taxation but has opposed annual wealth taxes because of concerns about valuation, avoidance, capital allocation and administrative complexity.
We agree with Merkley that climate change requires serious action, but we would approach the problem quite differently. Merkley favors a government-directed transition toward renewable energy and has supported policies aimed at phasing out fossil-fuel electricity and restricting new major fossil-fuel projects. CIVPAC favors a substantial carbon tax with a border adjustment and would generally allow markets to determine which technologies provide the least costly path to lower emissions.
Merkley therefore presents a fairly clear mixture: substantial agreement with CIVPAC on Ukraine, presidential war powers, democratic institutions and much of the broad approach to Israel and Palestine, combined with significant disagreements over health care, labor law, wealth taxation and the appropriate role of government in climate policy.
David Brock Smith
David Brock Smith has a long record in Oregon local and state government. Before joining the state Senate, he served in the Oregon House, on the Curry County Commission, the Port Orford City Council and a local school board. His campaign emphasizes affordability and no new taxes, reduced unnecessary government spending, support for local businesses, public safety, drug and mental-health treatment combined with accountability, and more active management of Oregon’s forests. Several of those themes overlap with CIVPAC’s concern about fiscal discipline, incentives and the costs of poorly designed government programs.
There are, however, several substantial concerns.
Climate change is one of the clearest. Brock Smith has argued that human activity does not contribute to climate change. That is inconsistent both with the scientific evidence and with our view that greenhouse-gas emissions impose significant costs that should be reflected in market prices through a carbon tax.
His conduct following the 2020 election also deserves attention. Brock Smith signed a letter urging Oregon’s attorney general to join Texas’s lawsuit seeking to delay the appointment of presidential electors in four states won by Joe Biden. The Supreme Court rejected the Texas lawsuit. Brock Smith subsequently said that he had already accepted Biden as president-elect and condemned unlawful violence.
That later statement is important, but so is the original decision to support an extraordinary attempt to interfere with certified election results.
Brock Smith has also proposed asking Oregon voters to abandon the state’s universal vote-by-mail system in favor of primarily in-person voting with identification requirements. He has described the proposal as giving Oregonians an opportunity to “reaffirm or deny” vote by mail rather than simply eliminating it by legislative action. We do not regard every disagreement over election procedures as an attack on democracy, but proposals to make voting substantially less convenient should have a clear justification.
His relationship with President Trump raises a broader question.
Brock Smith is clearly supportive of Trump. In its Republican primary endorsement interview, Willamette Week reported that when it asked Brock Smith whether he disagreed with anything Trump had done in his second term, he did not identify an example. We have also heard Brock Smith criticize Democrats for reflexively blaming Trump for Oregon’s problems.
We have not, however, found sufficiently clear positions from Brock Smith on several areas where we have significant disagreements with the administration: tariffs, Ukraine, NATO or the Iran war.
Silence does not necessarily mean agreement. But if Brock Smith disagrees with the president on any of these issues, we have found little public evidence of his willingness to say so. That leaves an important unanswered question about the degree of independence he would bring to the Senate. The absence is particularly noticeable because Brock Smith currently serves on the Oregon Senate Committee on Veterans, Emergency Management, Federal and World Affairs.
On abortion, Brock Smith has long received support from Oregon Right to Life and has supported legislation backed by the organization. His record appears substantially more restrictive than our position, which supports meaningful reproductive choice particularly earlier in pregnancy.
Brock Smith therefore has positions closer to CIVPAC on taxes, spending, regulation and some questions of state and local governance. But climate change, his participation in the 2020 election challenge, voting policy, abortion and the unanswered question of independence from Trump create substantial differences or concerns.
Gary Dye
Gary Dye is the Libertarian candidate. There is considerably less current campaign material available for Dye than for either Merkley or Brock Smith.
The most detailed recent statement we found is Dye’s 2024 Oregon voters’ pamphlet statement from a previous congressional race; a contemporaneous Oregon Capital Chronicle questionnaire contains many of the same positions in Dye’s own words. It advocated reducing the federal government by 10 percent per year until the deficit and debt were eliminated, privatizing education through vouchers, eliminating government-employee unions, converting government pensions to 401(k)-style plans and eliminating subsidies and penalties for industry. Those proposals contain some ideas that overlap with CIVPAC’s preference for markets, competition and fiscal discipline, although several go considerably further than we would.
Foreign policy produces much larger differences. Dye called for bringing U.S. troops home, defending North America only, suspending all foreign aid, closing U.S. embassies, and withdrawing from the United Nations unless all of its members became democracies. CIVPAC believes American alliances and international institutions, imperfect as they are, remain important elements of a stable international order and that they are therefore in America’s self-interest to defend. Our Russia and Ukraine policy reflects that broader view of deterrence and alliance reliability.
Dye’s older platform also contained a number of unconventional proposals, including allowing citizens to sell their U.S. citizenship, creating a new cryptocurrency and converting the Social Security Trust Fund into a sovereign wealth fund.
Because these positions come from a previous campaign, we would want to know which of them Dye continues to support in 2026 before drawing firmer conclusions.
Chris Henry
Chris Henry is the Progressive and Pacific Green candidate. He is a long-time minor-party candidate and activist whose political history has emphasized organized labor, higher wages, Medicare for All, campaign-finance reform and substantial reductions in military spending. Current summaries of his 2026 candidacy identify those issues as continuing priorities.
There are some areas of possible agreement, particularly his concern about the influence of money in politics and access to health care. But his approach to wages, health insurance and economic policy appears considerably more interventionist than CIVPAC’s, and large reductions in U.S. military spending would raise significant questions given our support for NATO and Ukraine and maintaining America’s ability to deter aggression.
We have less current detail on Henry than we would like. Oregon’s official 2026 general-election voters’ pamphlet is scheduled to become available online on September 29, so this portion of the evaluation may be revisited once Henry’s official candidate statement is available. His views would have had to have changed substantially before it would affect our decision.
Where the Evaluation Stands
The four candidates offer quite different combinations of strengths, disagreements and unanswered questions.
Merkley’s record provides substantial areas of agreement on Ukraine, presidential war powers, democratic institutions and parts of Middle East policy, while placing him considerably to CIVPAC’s left on labor law, wealth taxation, health care and climate-policy mechanisms.
Brock Smith is closer to CIVPAC on several economic and regulatory questions, but differs sharply on climate change and abortion and has a more troubling record on the 2020 election. His support for President Trump, combined with the absence of clear positions on several of the administration’s most controversial foreign and trade policies, also leaves an important question about how independently he would act in the Senate.
Dye offers a strongly market-oriented and anti-government program but couples it with a foreign policy that would represent a major retreat from the alliance system and international engagement that CIVPAC regards as important.
Henry approaches economic policy from substantially farther left and appears to favor a significantly reduced U.S. military role abroad. We need more current information before evaluating his 2026 candidacy with the same confidence as the two major-party candidates. However, while more information would improve the evaluation, it is unlikely to change the overall conclusion about Henry.
CIVPAC does not expect a candidate to agree with us on every issue. The question is how the total record balances policy agreement, institutional responsibility, independence of judgment and willingness to confront difficult tradeoffs.
One final question tips the scales in favor of Merkley. The Madisonian system of checks on executive authority works less effectively when members of Congress are unwilling to check a president of their own party. Increasingly, divided government appears necessary to provide that check. This is a problem with both Republicans and Democrats. So for this moment in history we endorse sending Merkley back to the U.S. Senate. It should be noted that if the White House were occupied by a Democrat, especially one well to the left of center, Merkley would probably not receive our endorsement.