Two Latina women vie for House seat in district targeted by immigration raids

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A Republican mental health clinician and a one-term Democratic House representative are both hoping their identities as the daughters of Mexican immigrants will appeal to voters in the Oregon House district with the highest share of Hispanic residents. 

Republican Noemi Legaspi is challenging incumbent Rep. Lesly Muñoz, a Democrat and labor organizer, to represent House District 22, spanning  a stretch of the Willamette Valley that includes Woodburn, Gervais, parts of Salem and rural Marion County. 

It’s expected to be a tight race in a district where more than half of the 39,000 registered voters are nonaffiliated. Among the rest, one quarter are Democrats and 19% are Republicans. In her first campaign in 2024, Muñoz narrowly beat the incumbent Republican, Tracy Cramer, by less than one percentage point, or 161 votes.

More than half of the district’s population is also Hispanic, and Woodburn, where both the candidates live, has had the most federal arrests per capita in Oregon since the launch of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, according to the Deportation Data Project.

Both women’s campaigns center around their identities as the daughters of Mexican immigrants, though only Muñoz explicitly supports Oregon’s sanctuary law and is actively outspoken against federal immigration enforcement efforts in her district. 

Legaspi, who has been endorsed by several law enforcement associations, said she supports better coordination between local law enforcement and federal immigration agencies to “keep families and communities safe.” As the former chair of the Woodburn School District, she abstained from a vote in March 2025 supporting a resolution expressing support for the privacy and rights of immigrant students, the Oregonian reported. 

Muñoz declined an interview and Legaspi did not respond to multiple calls and emails requesting an interview. However, both candidates did respond to the Capital Chronicle’s voter guide questions. 

Muñoz has made investing more in public schools, expanding access to healthcare and abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency her top priorities. 

“I believe in multiracial solidarity, fully funding public education, healthcare for all, affordable housing, abolishing ICE and building communities for people, not data centers that extract our resources,” Muñoz said in her written response to the voter guide. 

To improve outcomes for Oregon students, Muñoz said she’d support sending more money to public universities and community colleges and boosting technical education programs. When it comes to healthcare, she said she’d defend funding for the Oregon Health Plan and the Healthier Oregon program, which provides health insurance to people regardless of immigration status. 

Muñoz’s campaign is backed by the state’s most prominent labor unions for caregivers, educators, nurses and farmworkers. 

She’s also backed by the Salem chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, a local group that pushes for policies to help the working class, including efforts to prevent data center development. Hundreds of volunteers from the group have canvassed for her campaign. 

Munoz, like the Democratic Socialists of America, said she supports more regulations for artificial intelligence and the data center industry. 

Legaspi said she’s running to represent working families, saying the cost of living is the biggest issue she sees people in her district facing. If elected, she said she’d oppose tax and fee increases that disproportionately affect working families. 

“I am tired of paying more and getting less from our government,” she wrote.

Legaspi said her top budget priorities would be education, public safety, behavioral health and addiction treatment, as well as services for seniors and people with disabilities and wildfire prevention and recovery.

“We are spending a lot of money on homelessness and housing services that have failed to deliver results,” she wrote. “We need to seriously consider reprioritizing that spending on things that will actually get people off the streets and off drugs.”

Legaspi said Oregonians should welcome the benefits that data centers bring, such as investment, jobs and tax revenue. However, she said supports stronger transparency requirements for data centers, such as clear reporting on energy and water use, jobs created, wages paid and impacts to local infrastructure. 

Her campaign has received more than $93,000 from the Bring Balance to Salem PAC, whose largest contributors include Nike cofounder Phil Knight and Sierra Pacific Industries, among the largest timber companies in the country. At least $41,000 of that was spent to hire Blitz Canvassing, a controversial canvassing company Elon Musk hired two years ago to target voters in swing districts.

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Courtesy of Oregon Capital Chronicle