Maxine Dexter could have spent the last few weeks of the year relaxing with her loved ones as she prepares to represent the Congressional district that spans Portland, Hood River and Mt.
Instead, after securing victory in Oregon’s 3rd Congressional District in November, she continued what she had been doing for nearly two decades. He worked 10 hours straight for six days in the intensive care unit, caring for patients with lung disease.
Dexter, a former state representative, has worked as a critical care physician and pulmonologist at Kaiser Permanente for nearly 20 years. She chose to work most of the year until the end of the year to support her patients and colleagues.
“The health care system isn’t working very well right now, so they can’t necessarily replace me,” Dexter told the Capital Chronicle. “And I felt like I needed to get my team and partners through the holidays.”
Dexter, who just turned 52, is scheduled to be sworn into Congress on Friday along with other newly elected members of Congress, including Janelle Bynum, who won Oregon’s 5th Congressional District seat. Both men are Democrats who have held the majority in the Oregon House of Representatives, but they will be joining a minority partisan race in Washington, D.C., while Republicans hold majorities in the House, Senate and White House.
Republicans have controlled the House for the past two years, a period that has seen political fights but little action. Although he will retain power in the lower house, he holds a majority of just five seats, which could mean further turmoil, analysts said.
Dexter, a progressive who supports loosening access to abortion, enacting gun control and moving to a single-payer health care system, said he would not prejudge his colleagues in Congress. She said she is willing to work with anyone who can find common ground on the issue. But when asked about the incoming Trump administration’s agenda and its pledges to deport illegal immigrants and expand fossil fuel drilling, she said that there is a potentially difficult road ahead for progressives like herself. admitted that it was.
“I’m very worried,” she said. “We’re not heading in the right direction.”
Her two children, both in college, agree, but say they don’t really trust the government. That’s one of the reasons she decided to run.
To prepare for her new life, she rented an apartment within walking distance of the Capitol, attended orientation sessions with other new students, and thoroughly researched policies and procedures. She also reached out to other doctors in Congress, including Rep. Kelly Morrison of Minnesota, an obstetrician-gynecologist, and other Democrats in Oregon, Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, Rep. Val Hoyle, and Rep. Andrea・Consulted with Rep. Salinas and other retiring members. Rep. Earl Blumenauer76, has represented Oregon’s 3rd District for nearly 30 years.
He and his staff have worked closely with Dexter to ease her transition.
“She’s a very quick learner,” Blumenauer told the Capital Chronicle. “I have never seen a new councilor work as quickly and thoroughly as Maxine. I couldn’t be more impressed.”
modest background
Dexter was not scheduled to appear in Congress. She grew up with her siblings in a working-class family in Bothell, Washington, about 20 miles northeast of Seattle. Her father barely made ends meet selling car parts. Their home life was turbulent and their parents divorced.
She had no role models to pursue medicine or politics. There were no books in her home, and no one in her family had a college degree. But Dexter’s home life prepared her to become a doctor. Dexter said she learned about mental illness from her mother, who struggled with serious issues, and how to care for patients from her grandmother, who had diabetes and had multiple amputations. Dexter accepted his role as a nurse, tending to his grandmother’s wounds.
At school, she impressed the teachers and was assigned to a class for gifted students. One of her favorite teachers introduced her to the idea of college and asked her what she wanted to become.
She decided she wanted to care for people the way she cared for her grandmother, so she became a doctor.
At age 16, she got a job at Albertsons, first working in the bakery, then as a checker, and finally as a manager. She also joined the International Food and Commercial Workers Union, which represents grocery store workers.
Her earnings helped pay for her education at the University of Washington in Seattle. Although she was a master’s degree student, she knew that medical school would leave her with little time to study liberal arts, so she studied journalism and political science during her undergraduate years. She worked as a sportswriter for her school newspaper and even contributed freelance articles to the Seattle Times. She was also a voracious reader of the New York Times, which she was able to purchase for $1 a week as a student.
Like many students, her college years were a time of discovery.
“At the University of Washington, it was like the whole world was open to me,” Dexter said. “There were a lot of really interesting things.”
She is interested in political systems, constitutional law, and health policy, and did an internship on this subject at the Ford Foundation, which laid the foundation for her future career path.
“I thought I would work on health policy someday,” Dexter said.
Dexter also fell in love in college.
She and her husband both received medical degrees from the University of Washington. He became a primary care physician and currently works at Kaiser Permanente in Portland. Her love of responding to emergencies led her to pursue a graduate fellowship in respiratory and critical care at the University of Colorado Denver.
“I’ve always been someone who likes to think on my feet and be the person to help in times of crisis,” Dexter said.
As a doctor, she has seen people at their worst and cared for many patients who have struggled in life. Some people have to decide between buying medicine or paying for childcare.
“At the end of the day, we have to create a society where people can work full-time and still live dignified and stable lives,” Dexter said.
Two initiatives
After caring for patients for more than a decade, Dexter, a former Kaiser Permanente research director and University of Oregon professor, won the Oregon House of Representatives in 2020, a seat held for nearly 20 years by then-retired Democratic Congressman Mitch Greenlick. He ran for a seat in Northwest Portland. College of Health Sciences. Dexter won the primary and was sworn into office in June of the same year after Greenlick died in office.
Mr. Dexter served nearly two terms in the state House of Representatives and has supported a wide range of Democratic Party policies, from safe gun storage and a ban on undetectable ghost guns to reforming the pharmaceutical industry and expanding Medicaid benefits to all low-income immigrants. supported the agenda.
She also announced support for the bipartisan Right to Repair Act, which goes into effect on Wednesday and is expected to make it easier and cheaper for consumers to repair their devices. I also worked on the packaging.
But there are two initiatives she is most proud of. One is from a patient in 2022. A young woman took what she thought was a painkiller, but overdosed when it turned out to be fentanyl. Dexter said on his website that he worked through the night to save the woman’s life.
“I was the one who had to break the heartbreaking news to their mothers, friends and relatives,” she said. “I realized this was a tragedy that could happen to anyone’s child, even my own. I had to take action.”
The following year, she helped pass a package aimed at saving people from overdoses by making the opioid recovery drug naloxone more available in restaurants, stores, police stations, schools, and other public facilities. defended.
Another accomplishment she cited was in 2023, when Dexter served as chair of the housing committee. Dexter is 200 million dollars Gov. Tina Kotek’s housing and homelessness package includes rent assistance, shelter beds and housing for 1,200 homeless people.
State Sen. Kate Lieber, a fellow Democrat, remembers being impressed by Dexter’s ability to take on new problems and dig through complexities to find solutions.
“She did a really great job, especially digging into things that were completely unfamiliar to her,” Lieber said.
Dexter also helped pass last year’s $376 million housing package, providing funding for shelters, renters and housing.
She told Congress she supports many of the same issues, but has made a big push toward reducing emissions and increasing the use of clean energy to improve air quality, which particularly affects people with lung diseases. He said he was thinking of cutting it. Improving the nation’s health care system by working toward an affordable, single-payer system that includes comprehensive behavioral health, vision, dental, and prescription drug coverage.
As a doctor, she has experienced the impact of America’s high-cost system on patients, which motivates her as a lawmaker. She said being a doctor also helps train her to work with other politicians.
“(As doctors) we take care of people. We don’t care about Democrats and Republicans,” she said. “We value them no matter who they are.”
In Congress, he said he worked closely with U.S. Rep. Jeff Helfrich, a Hood River Republican who served on the Housing Committee, and former U.S. Rep. Daniel Bonham, who now represents Dulles in the Senate. Both represent the 3rd Congressional District and supported her candidacy, as did other council members.
“I have a long list of Republican colleagues who have really encouraged me to run because I have built trust with them,” she said. “We don’t talk about abortion. We don’t talk about guns. Just like there are things we can never agree on.”
Dexter doesn’t necessarily agree with Democrats, either. Rep. Dasia Graber, D-Beaverton, said she and Dexter sometimes disagreed and the two talked it out.
“She’s not afraid to have difficult conversations,” Graeber said. “I think that’s one of the most special things about Maxine.”
Dexter said being a doctor gives the congressman “superpowers.” Because legislators have patient stories to tell about a wide range of social issues and can bring face and humanity to these issues.
Ultimately, he hopes to tell those stories on the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over health, environmental and energy issues. But in her first term, she has been asked to run Veterans Affairs and Natural Resources. He said the former is relatively bipartisan and includes oversight of veterans’ health care, while the latter is partisan but has jurisdiction over federal lands, tribal affairs and the Environmental Protection Agency. That’s what it means.
She said it’s related to environmental goals you want to achieve over time, and time may be on your side. Blumenauer is a 14-term Democrat and likely would have won reelection had he run again.
Blumenauer is optimistic about Dexter’s future, and so are Democrats in the state Legislature.
“I think she’s a great fit for Congress,” Lieber said. “She’s kind of tenacious in pursuing issues. I think especially for Congress, you need someone who just keeps going in one direction and stays on the path no matter the obstacles. Maxine really does that. I think you’re good at it.”
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