Money for grants. Money for TV. Money for mailers.
Money to spread around to candidates.
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| No LNG group stops Rotary meeting |
A sleeping giant has awakened.
For most of the past two years local voters heard a single point of view regarding the Jordan Cove project and the pipeline that would cross Jackson County to serve it.
Opposition.
Opponents of the pipeline showed up at town halls with signs, they showed up to protest fundraising events at my home, they show up with booths at public events, they show up at Rotary meetings with a delegation with signs.
They know why they oppose the pipeline. They say it might leak, it serves a Canadian business, it will use eminent domain to cross private property, the gas goes for export rather than our use, it will transport fracked gas, the terminal in Coos Bay will pollute, and it perpetuates use of fossil fuels.
In the past six weeks this changed. Now we are hearing from Jordan Cove. They offer grants to community activities. They are advertising about the value of the project. It will be safe, the land they traverse will be restored, they will pay money in taxes, they will be good for business. And now, they add that they will be making community grants.
And political donations.
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| Newspaper Ad |
They sent the ChamberPAC--the political action arm of the Medford Jackson County Chamber of Commerce--a total of $70,000 so far. The Chamber officially supports the project. This represents by far the biggest contribution to the Chamber of Commerce PAC. Previous contributions to the PAC had been in checks of one to several thousand dollars from well known local individuals and local businesses. Jordan Cove gave $25,000 on August 24, 2018 and an additional $45,000 on October 5, 2018.
This donation was unexpected and completely unsolicited, according to John Watt, a Chamber spokesman. He said they were happy to get it, of course. [NOTE, UPDATE. JOHN WATT CONTACTED ME SUBSEQUENT TO OUR PHONE CONVERSATION AND SAID THAT HIS INFORMATION MIGHT NOT BE ENTIRELY CORRECT ON THIS POINT. I WILL UPDATE THIS IN FUTURE BLOG POSTS.]
This donation was unexpected and completely unsolicited, according to John Watt, a Chamber spokesman. He said they were happy to get it, of course. [NOTE, UPDATE. JOHN WATT CONTACTED ME SUBSEQUENT TO OUR PHONE CONVERSATION AND SAID THAT HIS INFORMATION MIGHT NOT BE ENTIRELY CORRECT ON THIS POINT. I WILL UPDATE THIS IN FUTURE BLOG POSTS.]
See for yourself: Click: Oregon Secretary of State
Shortly after receiving the first $25,000 check the ChamberPAC made substantial contributions to candidates: $10,000 to Rick Dyer and Colleen Roberts for County Commissioner, $10,000 to Kim Wallan for State Representative, and $10,000 to Jessica Gomez for State Senate.
On October 4 the Chamber booked receipt of another $45,000 from Jordan Cove. The Secretary of State report shows a flurry of donations surrounding the receipt of that check: $5,000 to the group that opposes the restaurant tax in Jacksonville, $2,500 to Joe Davis, a candidate for judge, $25,000 to Knute Bueller, and additional $10,000 checks to Jessica Gomez and Rick Dyer. [NOTE: UPDATE. JOE DAVIS DECLINED TO ACCEPT THE DONATION, CITING THE NEED TO AVOID ANY POTENTIAL APPEARANCE OF CONFICT OF INTEREST ON MATTERS THAT MAY COME BEFORE HIM IF ELECTED. THE SECRETARY OF STATE REPORT SHOWS A CONTRIBUTION WAS MADE TO HIM, BUT DID NOT SHOW THAT HE HAD RETURNED OR REJECTED IT.]
$45,000 in. Then $45,000 out to those three Republican candidates. Was this an odd co-incidence? Was this a re-gift and sanitization of Jordan Cove project donations to Bueller, Gomez, and Dyer, in effect "washing" the donation from Jordan Cove through the independent Chamber PAC?
Some chatter in social media thinks so, saying it was an obvious pass through. Money in, money out. Click
The idea of washing gifts to disguise their source had not particularly occurred to me except that the GOP Leadership Fund's Political Director, Evan Ridley, had said that gaming the contribution reporting is "typical" political practice, and that the Oregon Education Association had done this for Jeff Golden when they produced TV ads praising him. He said they avoided a direct gift to Golden, but he got the benefit of their direct expenditure, thus disguising the gift. (Golden said he didn't ask for it, didn't want it, and that it hurts him more than helps him. Ridley says it helps him. and that he was "surely" in on it.)
One other prominent Republican officeholder contacted me to make the same charge--explaining to me the ease of which campaign contribution sources can be disguised, a candidate getting the benefit of the donation without needing to acknowledge its source.
If the money was a washed re-gift, Jordan Cove and the ChamberPAC covered their tracks. The gifts to the Davis and Meals Tax campaigns meant the money amounts did not line up perfectly. There was five days of delay between posting the Jordan Cove gift and making the Gomez contribution. Dyer signed a letter saying he opposed the pipeline project, so an odd beneficiary of Jordan Cove money, assuming his opposition remains firm.
In any case, the ChamberPAC is entitled to make those gifts to Buehler, Gomez, and Dyer for any reason they choose on their own, and having in hand the $45,000 additional dollars put them in a position to do so. Buehler is openly supportive of the pipeline project.
Jessica Gomez is Vice President of the Chamber, but her position is unclear, signaled as both Yes and No in a public forum. In a conversation with me she seemed somewhat opposed to the project, but said she wanted to defer to Coos Bay area officeholders who supported it. She was non-committal. Yes-and-no.
Ugly, messy campaign financing. We are witnessing that arena where campaign donations, free speech, candidate positions, and the right to try to influence policy all intersect. It is an area where the public is uncomfortable, and should be.
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| The second donation of $45,000 |
But not directly to her.
It is totally legal (assuming a foreign corporation can donate to the ChamberPAC, which I assume the company's lawyers have investigated and cleared.) Does it compromise Jessica Gomez? Certainly not in any legal sense. She is totally free to disappoint them and announce she will oppose them at every step or to give halfhearted support. Certainly there is no formal quid pro quo, nor even any need for an implied obligation.
But the contributions suggest a tilt, an orientation toward one side or another, and voters can make an inference. Their guesses may play out.
Big contributions send another powerful message of political power. A big check is a reward and a threat. Look at the big campaign stick we hold. This is how we reward our friends, and this is how we punish our enemies.
Beware of us. We can make you or break you,
5 comments:
Peter, I have not received any donations from the Chamber PAC and will not be receiving any donations from them. The issues associated with the Jordan Cove Pipeline are ones that may well end up in court and accepting any donations associated with them is, in my opinion, inappropriate for a judicial candidate.
Joe Davis
Jessica Gomez has gone on record several times saying she does not support the Jordan Cove pipeline.
It isn't clear to me that candidates in Jackson County taking positions on the Jordan Cove pipeline to terminal project have yet to figure out just what can actually be done by them, in office, or else maybe level with the voters that this is nothing but a litmus test for pro or anti environment, pro or anti jobs or whatever else the imaginations and motivations of their campaign staff can concoct. I say this because just two years ago, before our current administration took office and with its staff changes at the EPA and necessarily at FERC, Peter DeFazio took a question on stopping the proposed pipeline to explain that he could do absolutely nothing about it, it was so far out of his political sphere of influence that he felt he would waste our time answering the For It or Against It tenor of the question. We are in a new political era, as I see it, with a new corporation taking the plans off the shelf and re-initiating the approval process. Where is the new application in the paperwork pipeline? From eminent domain to engineering for Cascadia, there are a lot of areas where the public and its elected officials MIGHT have something to say about the project. However, candidates running on the fumes of this issue, whether their campaigns accept financing, whether they think cash for cash strapped counties can be put to use in schools or infrastructure or job development, let's get some clarity on these issues and this project, please. Forgive me for saying this, but I find it ridiculous that this has become a campaign issue for so many candidates.
So, Sheryl, I am one of those candidates, running as forcefully as I can against the Jordan Cove project from the day I entered the State Senate race (before, actually) before then). I’ll skip the list of reasons that makes this a staggeringly terrible proposal (and potentially a bigger setback to reducing global emissions than first meets the eye) and go straight to your point: is this just a litmus test, or as Peter might say, a virtue-signaling exercise, designed more to win votes than contribute to a constructive policy debate?
I don’t think so. You’re right to suggest that the state senate I want to join has no jurisdictional role in this issue. If there’s any prospective legislation that could slow down (other than the specifics of some provisions in the pending Clean Energy Jobs Bill), I don’t know what it is. The state official who, according to almost every expert on the complex matrix of jurisdictional duties, could kill this project is the Governor. There are three potential institutional paths s/he could use. The most direct is probably the State Land Board (where s/he would need a second vote from either the Secretary of State or State Treasurer). So the role of a legislator would be to build a coalition of colleagues, bolstered by insistent anti-JC activists across the state (there are thousands of them) to persuade/nudge/cajole/browbeat the governor to deny the project needed permits. We’re talking here about serious Capitol Building negotiations, a realm where I’d admittedly be a rookie. But I’d have a lot of help from veterans who understand that Jordan Cove would cancel out all the gains we’d make with other climate action initiatives, and then some.
A state senator’s other relevant tool is the bully pulpit. What could a coalition of, say, 15-25 coordinated legislators do if they laid out the damage this project would do at every town hall gathering, every televised speech, every opportunity to testify at relevant agency meetings, every meeting with the governor, every editorial board meeting at every newspaper across the state? How could that shift the center of political gravity on this issue?
The Jordan Cove/Pacific Connector Project would be a tragic mistake for Oregon and beyond. If I’m fortunate to get to Salem, nothing will get my attention faster than joining those working for its defeat. As we’ve never quite been here before, I can’t tell you exactly what that looks like. I’m determined to find out.
This is not a litmus test.
Build the Jordan Cove pipeline use our resources and reap the benefits. It’s called Commerce, happens everyday all over the world. That thing we do.
No one has been to India or Beijing and seen the pollution from coal firsthand besides me. Oh yeah it kills people to, so there’s that.
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