While getting ready to represent the congressional district that includes Portland, Hood River, and Mount Hood, Maxine Dexter might have spent the final weeks of the year unwinding with loved ones.
Rather, after winning the 3rd Congressional District in Oregon in November, she carried on with her nearly two decades-long practice of working 10-hour shifts for six days in a row in critical care and caring for patients with lung conditions.
Dexter, a former state representative, has worked for Kaiser Permanente for almost 20 years as a pulmonologist and critical care physician. She made the decision to help her patients and coworkers by working essentially until the end of the year.
Dexter told the Capital Chronicle, “Health care systems aren’t doing very well right now, so they’re not necessarily able to replace me.” Additionally, I believed that I had to get my partners or team through the holidays.
Along with other recently elected members, such as Janelle Bynum, who was elected to the 5th Congressional District seat for Oregon, Dexter, who recently turned 52, was sworn into Congress on Friday. With Republicans controlling the House, Senate, and White House, both women, Democrats who have held the majority in Oregon’s House, enter the partisan battle in Washington, D.C., as minorities.
Over the last two years, which have been characterized by political squabbles but little action, Republicans have also held control of the House. Even while they still have a majority of five seats in the House, observers warn that this could lead to further upheaval.
Dexter, a leftist who supports gun control, a single-payer health care system, and easier access to abortions, stated she will not judge any of her congressional colleagues. “Anyone with whom I can find common ground on an issue, I will work with,” she remarked. She recognized that a progressive like herself may have challenges in the future when asked about the agenda of the upcoming Trump administration and his promises to increase fossil fuel drilling and deport illegal immigrants.
“I’m very worried,” she said. We’re not going in the proper way.
According to her, her two college-age children concur and don’t trust the government. She chose to run in part because of that.
She attended freshmen orientation seminars, looked over regulations and procedures, and rented an apartment close to the Capitol to get ready for her new life. Additionally, she contacted other medical professionals in Congress, such as obstetrician Rep. Kelly Morrison of Minnesota, and conferred with other Democratic representatives in Oregon, including Reps. Suzanne Bonamici, Val Hoyle, Andrea Salinas, and retiring Rep. Earl Blumenauer, 76, who served in Oregon’s 3rd District for almost thirty years.
To make Dexter’s move easier, he and his team collaborated closely with her.
Blumenauer told the Capital Chronicle that she is a very rapid learner. I’m not sure if I’ve ever witnessed a new congresswoman become as involved and involved as Maxine. I am incredibly amazed.
In the early days of her first 2020 campaign for the Oregon House, Maxine Dexter, pictured in the blue cap at the middle, poses with chilly and wet supporters.
modest upbringing
Congress was not Dexter’s destiny. She was raised in a working-class household in Bothell, Washington, which is roughly 20 miles northeast of Seattle, alongside her brother. Her father barely made ends meet by selling auto parts. Her parents split, and their home life was chaotic.
She had no role models to follow in politics or medicine. No one in her family had a college degree, and there were no books in her house. Dexter’s familial situation, however, equipped her for a career in medicine. According to Dexter, her grandmother, who had diabetes and underwent multiple amputations, taught her how to care for patients, and her mother, who battled serious problems, taught her about mental illness. Dexter accepted the responsibility of caring for her grandmother’s wounds as a nurse.
She was placed in gifted student classes at school after making an impression on her teachers. She was first introduced to the concept of college by one of her favorite professors, who also inquired about her career goals.
After caring for her grandma, she made the decision that she wanted to become a doctor and help people.
She started working at Albertsons when she was sixteen, first as a baker, then as a checker, and lastly as a manager. Additionally, she became a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which advocates for workers in supermarkets.
Her income assisted in covering her tuition at the University of Washington in Seattle. Despite being a pre-med student, she realized she wouldn’t have much time for liberal arts in medical school, so she studied political science and media as an undergraduate. She contributed to the school newspaper as a sportswriter and even did some freelance work for the Seattle Times. As a student, she was also able to purchase the New York Times for $1 a week, which encouraged her to read it extensively.
Like many others, her college years were a period of self-discovery.
At the University of Washington, Dexter remarked, “It felt like the entire world was open to me.” There were a ton of fascinating topics to research.
She completed an internship at the Ford Foundation that paved the way for her career because she was interested in the political system, constitutional law, and health policy.
Dexter stated, “I knew I was going to work on health policy someday.”
At university, Dexter also found love.
She graduated from the University of Washington with a medical degree, as did her husband. He started working at Kaiser Permanente in Portland as a primary care physician. She loves responding to emergencies, which is why she obtained a postgraduate fellowship in pulmonary and critical care at the University of Colorado in Denver.
According to Dexter, I’ve always enjoyed being quick-witted and the first to step in during an emergency.
She has cared for numerous patients who have experienced hardship in their life and has witnessed people in their worst moments as a doctor. Some have been forced to choose between paying for child care or their prescription drugs.
Ultimately, we must build a society in which individuals can lead stable, respectable lives while working full-time, Dexter stated.
For Oregon’s 3rd Congressional District, State Representative Maxine Dexter won the Democratic primary in May 2024, guaranteeing her a seat in the fall election.The Maxine Dexter campaign
Two projects
Following over ten years of patient care, Dexter ran in 2020 for a seat in the Oregon House in northwest Portland, which had been occupied for almost twenty years by then-retiring Democratic Representative Mitch Greenlick, a former research director at Kaiser Permanente and professor at Oregon Health & Science University. After Greenlick passed away while in office, Dexter was sworn in that June after winning the primary.
Dexter supported a variety of Democratic causes throughout his nearly two stints in the state House, including reforming the pharmaceutical business, expanding Medicaid benefits to all low-income immigrants, and promoting safe gun storage and a ban on undetectable ghost weapons.
A $100 million drought and water security program in 2023 and a right to repair statute that went into effect on Wednesday are two bipartisan packages she worked on. It is anticipated that both laws would make it easier and less expensive for people to replace their devices.
However, she is most proud of two projects. One is from a 2022 patient. A young woman overdosed on what she believed to be a painkiller but was actually fentanyl. According to Dexter’s website, she spent the entire night attempting to save the woman’s life.
She said that I was the one who had to convey the devastating news to their mother, friends, and extended family. I understood that anyone’s children, including mine, may experience this catastrophe. I had to do something.
The following year she championed the passage of a package aimed at saving people from overdoses by making the opioid reversal drug, naloxone, more available in restaurants, stores, police departments and schools and other public buildings.
The other accomplishment she cites was also in 2023, when Dexter chaired the housing committee. Dexter played a central role in putting together a$200 millionhousing and homelessness package pushed by Gov. Tina Kotek that included rent assistance and money for shelter beds and to get 1,200 homeless people into housing.
A fellow Democrat, state Sen. Kate Lieber, remembered being impressed watching Dexter tackle a new issue, delve into the complexities and shepherd it through.
She did a really great job, especially digging into something that she did not have any familiarity with, Lieber said.
Dexter also helped pass last year s $376 million housing package with money for shelters, renters and housing.
In Congress, she said she ll support many of the same issues, but she hopes to move the needle on lowering emissions and expanding use of clean energy to improve air quality, something that affects people with lung disease in particular, and she wants to improve the country s health care system by working toward an affordable, single-payer system that includes comprehensive behavioral health, vision, dental and prescription drug coverage.
Maxine Dexter takes part in a TV interview at the Democratic Party of Oregon election night party in Portland on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. Dexter, a longtime doctor at Kaiser Permanente and former Democratic state lawmaker, replaced Earl Blumenauer as the U.S. representative for Oregon s 3rd Congressional District.Sean Meagher/The Oregonian
As a physician, she s experienced the impact of the high-cost U.S. system on patients, who have motivated her as a lawmaker. She said being a physician also has helped train her to work with other politicians.
(As physicians), we take care of people. We don t take care of Democrats and Republicans, she said. We care for them no matter who they are.
In the Legislature, she said she developed close working relationships with Rep. Jeff Helfrich, a Hood River Republican who was on the housing committee, and former Rep. Daniel Bonham, who now represents The Dalles in the Senate. Both are in the 3rd District and supported her candidacy as did others.
There s a really long list of Republican colleagues who really encouraged me to run because I have developed trust with my colleagues, she said. We don t talk about abortion. We don t talk about guns. Like there are certain things that you re just never going to agree on.
Dexter doesn t always agree with fellow Democrats, either. Rep. Dacia Grayber, D-Beaverton, said she sometimes disagreed with Dexter and the two talked it out.
She s not afraid to have the hard conversations, Grayber said. I think that s one of the most special things about Maxine.
Dexter said being a physician gives lawmakers a superpower because they have stories of patients to tell about a range of social issues, bringing a face and humanity to the issue.
Eventually, she d like to tell those stories on the powerful Energy and Commerce committee, which has jurisdiction over health care, the environment and energy issues. But for her first term, she s asked for Veterans Affairs and Natural Resources. The former is relatively bipartisan, she said, and includes oversight of veterans health care, while the latter, though partisan, has jurisdiction over federal lands, tribal affairs and the Environmental Protection Agency.
She said it s relevant to the environmental goals she hopes to achieve over time, and time could be on her side. Blumenauer served the Democratic district for 14 terms and likely would have won reelection if he had run again.
Blumenauer is optimistic about Dexter s future and so are Democrats in the state Legislature.
I think she s perfect for Congress, Lieber said. She s sort of dogged in her pursuit of the issues, which, I think especially for Congress, you need somebody who is just going to be just really pointed in one direction and continues to walk down the path even with obstacles. I would say Maxine is really good at that.
— Lynne Terry, Oregon Capital Chronicle
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