LA GRANDE — With the Nov. 3 national election only days away and more than half of Oregon’s registered voters having cast their ballots, the race to replace longtime congressman Greg Walden in Eastern Oregon has become a sprint to the finish line.

Democrat Alex Spenser, who is running against former Republican state senator Cliff Bentz, said she believes voters in Oregon’s 2nd Congressional District are ready for a change.

“All of these dominoes, they’re falling the wrong way,” Spenser said. “We need new leadership. We need leadership that believes it’s time everyone is cared for.”

As a Democrat who describes herself as center-left, a win for Spenser would flip a district Republicans have held since 1981. To do that, she’s run on a platform featuring health care and education reform, women’s rights and climate justice.

She had strong words for her opponent, criticizing him for taking part in a Republican walkout of the state Legislature over legislation to combat climate change.

“(Bentz) claims to have led the walkout of Republican senators from the Senate in Oregon, and he is, oddly enough, campaigning on the fact that that’s what he did,” Spenser said. “To me, that doesn’t seem like what Oregon needs. We need people who are going to stay in the room.”

Spenser said she supports treating health care as a right rather than as a privilege and would like to expand access to health care nationally using Oregon’s health care system as a template.

“The Oregon Health Plan covers you from head to toe,” she said. “I know because I was that person. I was a single mom, I didn’t have much money, I stayed home with my kid, I was homeschooling, and suddenly I was very, very ill. … It was the best health care I’ve ever had … and there was no one in the middle saying ‘no.’ … There was never a bill.”

Ideally, Spenser said, she would like to see a similar national plan that includes comprehensive dental, vision and psychological care.

She said she also believes education should be a right. She said in an ideal world she would support free college, even for master and doctoral programs. Spenser also supports increasing corporate taxes and has taken aim at Oregon’s timber industry, which she said has long taken advantage of the state’s natural resources and needs to adopt more responsible practices.

“It’s time that we take a stewardship approach to timber,” Spenser said. “It’s not just a commodity, it’s also the thing that’s going to get us through this extreme weather and this climate change. We have to start taking care of our trees. We have to stop replanting with a monoculture. We need to return biodiversity into our forests.”

Spenser is aware of the situation with the Boise Cascade plywood plant in Elgin, where workers recently received warning the facility may have to close or reduce production this winter.

“It’s unfortunate that this is happening with the plywood plant in Elgin … that they’re having a dispute with the DEQ,” she said. “I know that so many of the regulations have been pushed back, so to say that’s the issue is a little bit surprising. I know too that we need to care for these things. They may not seem important in the moment, but (we need to) look at the long-term effects of how people are doing business. … For so long the timber business was all about money.”

And in spite the recent political divisiveness in the county, Spenser said she has hope for the future.

“My daughter gives me hope,” she said. “She stands up and she says ‘No, Mom. This is what we need. This is right. This is important.’ That’s what we need, and that’s what we’re seeing — women and girls standing up and saying ‘I’m here, you have to see me now.’ We’ve asked for a long time (and) it’s time we demand to be seen. It’s time we demand to be heard, and it’s time we demand our rightful place in the American government.”

If elected, Spenser would be the first woman to hold Oregon’s 2nd Congressional seat. Voters have until Tuesday at 8 p.m. to cast their ballots.