Multnomah County Commissioner Susheela Jayapal on Wednesday became the first major candidate to launch a bid to succeed retiring Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer in the safely blue 3rd District around Portland. Local law required Jayapal, who is the older sister of Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal, to resign her post to run for Congress, which she did just before entering the race.
Both Jayapal siblings were born in India and emigrated as teenagers, though the congresswoman began her political career a few years earlier by winning a state Senate seat in the Seattle area in 2014 before earning a promotion to Washington, D.C., two years later. Susheela Jayapal, by contrast, worked as general counsel to Adidas America and for nonprofits before successfully running for the county commission in 2018. That initial victory made her the first Indian American to hold an elected county post in Oregon, and she’d likewise be the first Indian American to serve the state in Congress.
The sisters sat down for a joint interview with HuffPost this week, with the now-former commissioner declaring, “I cannot imagine being on this path without Pramila and I can’t wait to work with her―and we’re gonna irritate each other along the way.” They’d be only the second set of sisters to serve together in Congress, following in the footsteps of a pair of California Democrats, Reps. Loretta and Linda Sánchez. Loretta Sánchez left the House to wage an unsuccessful 2016 Senate bid against none other than Kamala Harris, while Linda Sánchez continues to represent part of the Los Angeles area.
The Jayapals, however, would together make history as the first two sisters to serve in Congress simultaneously while representing different states. Several sets of brothers have done so in the past, most notably Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy and New York Sen. Robert Kennedy, from 1965 until the latter’s assassination in 1968.
The University of Minnesota’s Eric Ostermeier also tells us that a trio of brothers served together in the House while representing three different states from 1855 to 1861: Cadwallader Washburn of Wisconsin, Israel Washburn of Maine, and Eliju Washburn of Illinois, who would become one of the most prominent Republicans in Congress during the Civil War and Reconstruction. A fourth brother, William Drew Washburn, later won a House seat in Minnesota in 1878, though none of his siblings were still in office by that point.
However, Susheela Jayapal will need to get through a competitive primary before she can join her sister in the nation’s capital. State Rep. Travis Nelson, who is currently the only Black man in the state House, told Oregon Public Broadcasting last week he’d be interested in running should Blumenauer retire. Former Multnomah County Board of Commissioners Chair Deborah Kafoury hasn’t ruled out getting in herself, while there’s also speculation that Gresham City Councilor Eddy Morales could wage his own bid.
Susheela Jayapal will also be seeking office under a different election system than her sister did in 2016, when she ran to succeed another longtime Democratic member, Jim McDermott, in a dark blue seat. Pramila Jayapal, who is the younger sibling by three years, faced off against eight other candidates in that year’s top-two primary, taking 42% to 21% for state Rep. Brady Walkinshaw, a fellow Democrat. She went on to defeat Walkinshaw 56-44 in the general election a few months later. In Oregon, however, only a simple plurality is needed to win a party’s nomination, and whoever secures the nod in May’s primary will have no trouble in the general election for a seat that favored Joe Biden 73-25.
