Following Iowa, race in Oregon will need to adapt to changes in GOP field

Oregon’s primary election is scheduled to occur on May 15, with only nine other states holding their primaries after that date.

Photo by IowaPolitics.com/Flickr.com

(PORTLAND, Ore.) - Just a day after the presidential caucuses in Iowa, the field of GOP candidates to vie for the votes of Oregonians has narrowed.

Michele Bachmann, a Republican congresswoman from Minnesota, has suspended her presidential campaign. Bachmann was considered in polls this summer to be a front-running candidate here in Oregon after Sarah Palin announced she would not be seeking the presidency.

Bachmann won an early straw poll in Iowa but came in last among GOP candidates in the actual Iowa caucuses Tuesday evening.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney took first place in the caucuses, eight votes ahead of former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum.

Romney has made several fundraising trips to the Beaver State and has raised the most money of all the Republican presidential candidates in the state so far.

Rick Perry, currently the governor of Texas, said he will still be campaigning in South Carolina but that he is going back to Texas to reassess his place in the race.

The Oregon Republican Party is scheduled to hold a debate in March for the remaining presidential GOP candidates, as long as a clear front-runner has not already been chosen by the party.

Oregon’s primary election is scheduled to occur on May 15, with only nine other states holding their primaries after that date.

Despite Republicans seeking the primary nomination in Oregon, the state still leans left in general elections. A SurveyUSA poll released in November shows that Oregonians favor Democratic President Barack Obama over both Romney and former speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich.

In that poll, Obama leads Romney by 8 percent and Gingrich by 14 percent.

In the general election, Oregon holds seven electoral votes. To be elected, a presidential candidate needs to win 270 of the 538 possible votes in the country’s Electoral College.

Special thanks to Oregon Capitol News

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