Jeffrey Alan Merkley (born October 24, 1956) is an American politician who is the junior United States senator from Oregon. He was first elected to the Senate in 2008. A member of the Democratic Party, he served from 1999 to 2009 as the representative for the 47th district in the Oregon House of Representatives, which covers central Multnomah County on the eastern side of Portland, Oregon; he was the speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives during the last two years of his tenure. Merkley defeated two-term Republican incumbent U.S. Senator Gordon Smith in 2008 and was reelected in 2014 and 2020, defeating Republican nominees Monica Wehby and Jo Rae Perkins. During his tenure, Merkley has been an advocate of progressivism and was the only U.S. senator to endorse Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries. He was considered a potential candidate for president in 2020, but chose to run for reelection to the Senate instead.