Oregon: New Jersey with trees
A culture of political corruption pervades the Beaver State.
Not so long ago, Oregon was thought of as a clean government state: a place where Birkenstock-clad do-gooders protected beaches, incentivized recycling and banned amateur gas-pumping with a public spirit untainted by graft. It was a pristine little laboratory of soft-core lefty public policies the envy of fleece-clad urban planning students around the world.
But Oregon’s culture of political ethics has changed dramatically in the last decade. Oregon is now New Jersey with trees.
Things began unravelling in the mid-2010s, when Governor John Kitzhaber was chased from office by ethics charges related to his then-fiancee’s alloy of paid consulting for progressive causes and state employment. It was a sign of things to come.
Liberal in-migration anchored by before-the-fall, Portlandia-era Portland and Oregon Republicans’ chronic conflict with competence made Democrats nearly electorally untouchable in the state by 2020. That advantage, along with a state media the hollowed out remnants of which were mostly obsessed with local angles on stories involving Donald Trump, emboldened Democrats to enrich their campaigns with little regard to public perception.
Most famously and sensationally, recently resigned Secretary of State Shemia Fagan enriched both her campaign and herself with the largesse of marijuana vendor La Mota while her office was completing an audit of state regulations of the cannabis industry.
Even in her absence, the Secretary of State’s office contends it is investigating the Democratic Party of Oregon for its largest, and fishiest, donation that maybe came from a guy who admits he committed campaign finance fraud in other cases. Or maybe it came from someone else. The important part is the Democrats have a back channel to the investigators, whom they know well. That’s the way it works in New Jersey. And in Oregon.
The politicians aren’t the only ones who sense opportunity. La Mota, the same outfit that courted Fagan into an early retirement, and its owners are doing their best Tony Soprano impersonation. When a small town Oregon mayor objected to a pot shop because it would have been unlawfully near another such shop, they painted the building hot pink and proposed for it a sex shop, named after the mayor.
The La Mota crew in recent years donated some $200,000 to Oregon Democratic politicians in the form of stacks of cash. We don’t yet know whether La Mota’s $45,000 to Fagan, $68,000 to Oregon Governor Tina Kotek or $10,000 to Senate Majority Leader Rob Wagner was delivered in brown paper bags.
Oregon’s “top cop,” who theoretically should be policing corruption is in on the act. Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, in a Democratic Party of Oregon (DPO) online fundraiser in 2020, was a shameless auctioneer:
“We need to make sure the DPO is fully funded.”
“There’s nothing like our amazing staff at the DPO . . .”
“We have Aaron Mitchell from La Mota at $5,000."
(Rosenblum’s comments begin at about an hour and three minutes into this video.)
Unsurprisingly, Rosenblum has declined to take up an investigation into the $500,000 DPO donation and has not expressed interest in investigating La Mota’s influence in state government.
Democrats in Oregon and their political paymasters have gotten greedy. The machinery of the state’s government has proven itself exceedingly efficient at precisely one thing and one thing only: delivering tax dollars to the donor labor unions to which state employees belong. The resulting market opportunity has attracted other, um, entrepreneurs looking to deploy the machinery of state for their own ends.
But the newcomers lack the unions’ savvy. And their excess has exposed Oregon for what it now is: New Jersey with trees.
Yes, I know New Jersey has trees but Oregon has more. Also, I am not planning any lengthy trips so if you don’t hear from me for a while, please alert the authorities.
At least the mafia of old delivered something of value to their customers (taxpayers). Today's mafia (The DPO and Legislature) doesn’t do a damn thing for their customers except take, take, take.
The only quibble I have with your article is the onset. I returned to Oregon from New Orleans in 1997 dragging my native New Orleanian wife with me. She was a legal secretary whose last job was running the inhouse council for a private oil company. Her boss (and family) were very well connected in a place where connections are everything. It took her about a year to notice similarities between Oregon and Louisiana. Difference of course was in Louisiana everyone knew the "game" which gave you some advantage, Oregonians were blissfully ignorant. Edwin Edwards would have given his right am to pull the out in the open scams pulled here. It should also be noted that Louisiana elected a series of reform governors following Edwin; Oregon has doubled and tripled down.