Some constituents call him a RINO, while others are starting to trust him

Mia Maldonado/Oregon Capital Chronicle##Rep. Cyrus Javadi, R-Tillamook, in Pacific City last week.

By MIA MALDONADO
Of the Oregon Capital Chronicle

Backstabber. Leftist. RINO — short for “Republican in name only.” These are just a few of the labels given to Rep. Cyrus Javadi on his Facebook posts.

The Tillamook Republican is in his second term in the Oregon House of Representatives, representing a politically split region along the north coast. While Columbia and Tillamook counties lean Republican, Clatsop County leans Democratic.

The dentist and member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has taken stances on LGBTQ rights, immigration and welfare that set him apart from many in his party. He voted in favor of legislation honoring drag performers. He condemned federal immigration enforcement on social media for “tearing families apart in front of their kids,” and he criticized Congressional Republicans’ “big beautiful bill” and its impacts to Oregonians on Medicaid and food assistance. Yet, he supports gun rights and has sponsored legislation to limit abortion access — stances that some of his Democratic constituents consider dealbreakers.

Still, some of his constituents argue he isn’t conservative enough, and one is leading an effort to remove him from office. But Javadi said he isn’t interested in following along with the status quo of his party. He instead believes governing has become too party-driven, and he hopes to change that in the way he represents his politically diverse district.

“We have come to expect that whoever the representative or senator is, they’re going to reflect the party and its agenda as their top priority and then whatever benefits the district comes last,” he told the Oregon Capital Chronicle. “I feel like that is backwards.”

Javadi represents a stretch of rural coastal towns from Astoria to Neskowin — communities that rely on tourism and fishing and that deeply care about the environment. Javadi, who spoke to the Capital Chronicle at a Pacific City cafe overlooking the Nestucca River, said tourism especially strains public services and housing available to locals.

“They want schools that aren’t crumbling,” Javadi said about his constituents. “They want to know their jobs are safe. They don’t want to find out next month or next year that the industry that they made their generations of living off of — like fishing or farming — is suddenly not viable anymore because of some new rule or regulation.”

In his Substack posts, similar to a weekly blog, Javadi regularly explains his lived experiences to his constituents and how they shape the way he views policy — such as growing up with a single mother who relied on food assistance or sharing that during dental school he relied on Medicaid for himself and his children, similar to the 1.5 million Oregonians on the Oregon Health Plan.

Now in office, Javadi said he sees his younger self and his mother in many of the constituents he represents.

“Public assistance isn’t charity,” he wrote in one of his Substack posts. “It’s investment. It’s insurance. It’s the price we pay to live in a country that doesn’t leave people to starve just because they had a bad year. Or a bad decade.”

Romy Carver, a Tillamook resident and one of Javadi’s constituents, has never voted for him. During Javadi’s first campaign in 2022, she even campaigned for his Democratic opponent in the general election.

While she doesn’t agree with Javadi on everything, she said she appreciates his collaborative approach.

“He’s taken some stances that I feel have been brave,” Carver said. “He’s trying to protect vital services from being attacked against some pretty intense pressure from people in his own party.”

During the interview with the Capital Chronicle, Javadi criticized his party’s proposed transportation package in the 2025 legislative session that wouldn’t have raised taxes but instead redirected millions of dollars from electric vehicle, bus, bike, pedestrian and climate programs to pay for road projects.

“Instead of my own party coming to the table with a long-term solution… all we came up with was a short-term fix that would look good in the next election,” he told the Capital Chronicle.

The Democrats’ proposal, House Bill 2025, was at least “headed in the right direction,” he said. But in the end, he said their proposed tax and fee increases were too much.

“(My party) didn’t want to raise taxes, so no new revenue,” he said. “We proposed zero ways other than using the emergency money to fill that shortfall, but we said nothing about what we were going to do long-term to make sure we had sustainable funding for our roads.”

Like Carver, Ketzel Levine is a constituent but from Nehalem. The registered Democrat actively campaigned against Javadi in the 2024 election and said she’s been suspicious of him “all along” after he sponsored an unsuccessful bill that year to restrict abortion access after a 15-week gestational period with exceptions to rape, incest or an urgent health need.

She described her email interactions to Javadi as “adversarial with a sense of humor.” But in recent months, through his legislative votes and weekly Substack posts, she said she’s beginning to sense that Javadi is more than just a “knee-jerk, anti-abortion conservative.”

Still, Levine told the Capital Chronicle that the only way she’d vote for Javadi would be if he changed his stance on abortion.

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