The dean of parcel consultants, Michael K. Erickson, has announced that he will run for Congress in the first election in Oregon’s newly constituted 6th District.
Should he prevail in the November midterms, Erickson, 59, will turn over the leadership of AFMS Consulting LLC, which he founded in October 1992 and remains its CEO, to his wife and brother. Erickson faces five other candidates in the May 17 Republican primary.
Oregon’s 6th District was created in response to the 2020 census. It covers a mostly rural area south of Portland and includes parts of Salem, the capital.
The Seattle-born Erickson has long been politically active at the national and state levels. He was nominated in 2006 and 2008 to run for the U.S. House of Representatives in Oregon’s 5th District but lost both times. He ran unsuccessfully for two different seats in the Oregon House of Representatives in 1988 and 1992.
Erickson formed Tigard, Oregon-based AFMS after a long career at the former Airborne Express. He is known in the industry for waging a multiyear legal battle with FedEx Corp. (NYSE: FDX) and UPS Inc. (NYSE: UPS) over alleged antitrust violations. AFMS argued that UPS and FedEx colluded to boycott third-party consultants who negotiated parcel contracts for their shipper customers.
A federal district court in 2015 dismissed the case with prejudice, ruling that AFMS had failed to properly define a market impacted by the carriers’ alleged actions. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower court ruling two years later.