Trump labor secretary pick Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer blew over $60K on ritzy hotels, limos during failed re-election campaign

President-elect Trump’s union-backed labor secretary pick apparently has C-suite-level tastes.

Oregon Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer’s campaign burned tens of thousands of dollars during her doomed congressional re-election bid on lavish expenses such as ritzy hotel stays and limo services, federal records show. 

Between February 2023 and October 2024, the 56-year-old Republican pol’s team burned over $56,000 on hotel fees, many of which were well beyond her district in the Beaver State and Washington DC, according to Federal Election Commission data reviewed by The Post. 


The Ritz-Carlton hotel
Chavez-DeRemer’s campagin burned $859 at a Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Miami. Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

In mid-March, Chavez-DeRemer’s campaign dropped $6,290 on the five-star Phoenician Resort in Scottsdale, Ariz., where guests can take a dip into a three-level pool with Camelback Mountain in the backdrop. 

In June and July, Chavez-DeRemer’s team spent over $5,052 at the Potawatomi Casino Hotel in Milwaukee, along with $2,072 at a Hilton hotel in Wisconsin’s capital. In October 2023, her campaign dropped $859 at a Miami Ritz-Carlton hotel.  

The labor-loving cabinet nod’s team also managed to blow at least $4,345 on limo and chauffeur services during her closely-watched race, which she narrowly lost by under three points to Democrat Janelle Bynum on Nov. 5.

One of the companies, Snow Country Limousine in Park City, Utah, received a total of $731.50 from the campaign in mid-December 2023 — roughly the same time that Chavez-DeRemer’s team forked over $1,512 to the over-the-top, ski-in, ski-out St. Regis Deer Valley resort, the American Journal News first reported

“All this wasteful spending, boy is she ready for the Department of Labor,” quipped one GOP insider to The Post. 

“This nomination…tests the theory that only [former DOJ pick] Matt Gaetz is so bad he can’t be confirmed.”


President-elect Donald Trump at a microphone
Republicans criticized Trump’s labor secretary pick over her support for pro-union bills during her time in Congress. AFP via Getty Images

Chavez-DeRemer, who was one of three House Republicans to co-sponsor the union-backed PRO Act, received a flurry of criticism from the conservative stalwarts tearing into her as a “Republican in name only” shortly after Trump announced her cabinet nod.

The bill, which failed to pass the House during Chavez-DeRemer’s brief term, would have effectively banned right-to-work laws in over two dozen states that allow employees to opt of paying union dues, among other labor-friendly reforms. 

The controversial cabinet pick, who also supported legislation providing illegal immigrants paths to citizenship and co-sponsored a bill to make it easier for public sector workers to unionize, allegedly nabbed her nomination thanks to Teamster union president Sean O’Brien, a Republican insider previously told The Post. 

This week, the Oregon Republican was among several Trump cabinet appointees who received bomb threats targeting their homes, a move she slammed as an “unacceptable way to express opposition.”  

A spokesperson for Chavez-DeRemer did not to a request for comment.  

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