Thank you very much. Looking forward to this. Thanks for joining us. Last may, last may day in fact so last may 1st the governor of oregon stood before a cheering, chanting group of very excited supporters and he waved a bill in the air that had just passed the Oregon Senate and had just passed the oregon house and passed by a comfortable margin and governor kit hopper was in favor of it and there to sign it in front of this and big very excited and happy crowd and the governor signed that bill and he waved it in the air and it did not become law. And that is because of this man. Many people have neck and shoulder tension and they dont know why. Well, i can tell you this from much experience, there are good reasons why they have neck and shoulder tension and they would be better off without it and so what im going to do is do this little exercise for you and its purpose that man is the most prolific
funder of conservative causes in the great state of oregon. Every states got one. This is oregons. The bill that the Oregon Legislature and governor passed and signed this time last year would have given drivers license to any oregon resident even if you could not prove that you were in this country legally and this conservative zillion air lauren parks, he decided he was against that and so he personally funded an opposition effort. He permanently put up 70 of the money that it cost to get that law put up for a referendum. And so it would have become law january of this year. Would already be law and didnt instead on the ballot this november because this one guy paid for the services of all the paid signature gatherers that it took in order to get that law delayed by getting it put on the ballot. Without him, this thing would be law already. With him, its not law. At least not yet. Mr. Parks, his name is lauren parks made his fortune in medical devices including doppler flow ultrasound machines and also according to the Las Vegas Reviewjournal, quote, a
device called the plethlismoen graph which was developed in the 1900s and used in some Law Enforcement and psychological experiments to measure the arousal of sex offenders. More than a hobby in being a amateur hypnotherapist and specifically sex hypnotherapist. This is about women and sexual guilt. Mr. Parks claims to be able to cure people of basically anything you can think of that has any remote relationship to sex and if you peruse the dozens of selfhelp and hypnotherapy videos he uploaded to youtube you would find he thinks everything is related to sex including his very baroque and insistent theories on weight loss. Video about being fat and its aimed at women because thats where i have the experience. I dont have experience with men. Maybe itll work. I dont know. But at any rate, there are a multitude of reasons why women are fat. A long time ago back in the 80s when i was doing large groups of people using idiomotor finger signaling, we came up with a bunch of reasons that women who were overweight gave for their being fat. Youd be surprised at what some of them were. But ill tell you this choose one of those things that came to mind to be disconnected just have it in your mind, not a bump of them, just one and when i
sound the budder and say disconnect, it will disconnect all of the causes of that habit and perhaps youll end up losing weight. [ buzzer ] disconnect. [ buzzer ] disconnect. Thats him hypnotizing you on youtube. Mr. Parks is a very prolific donor to causes in oregon, the mother of all political donors in oregon and gives more money than everybody else according to people who study conservative politics in oregon but his sideline interests and his past do make him an awkward donor for conservative candidates and conservative causes. This is from that same recent profile in the Las Vegas Review journal. He admits hes been sued a number of times usually he says by women who dont want me to leave. One female employee sued him he said even after she signed a contract that stipulated she would have sexual relations with hill during business travels. Quote, she enjoyed our trips so much and then she turned around and said she didnt want to do it, park said. Why would someone who signed a contract do that . After those remarks and that apparently true history of his own time in court, one republican candidate for the oregon house this year returned a 30,000 donation that lauren parks had given him. This guy is running for a house seat in northeastern oregon. That primary is tomorrow so we will see if hes able to overcome having had to give back a big 30,000 donation that late in the game. But generally do not think it is appreciated broadly enough just how weird Oregon Republican politics have gotten, oregon has its primary tomorrow. Republicans have been very excited about running a campaign against incumbent democratic u. S. Senator jeff merkley. But if were honest, i have to tell you, covering the primary, the republican primary for that senate seat which is tomorrow
has been like sitting in a dusking booth at a pitchers convention. Every time you think you get your bearings, boom, there you go in the tank like every time you go to check out a new news psych walthall this primary its something new. Theres lauren parks, the amateur sex hypnotherapist with contracts to have sex with him on business travels. He is a zillionaire who is substantially funded a lot of conservative causes in oregon but right now hes funning a pac supporting one of the two republican candidates in the Senate Campaign tomorrow. Hes supporting monica wehby. The other person substantiallily funding that same pac has been widely reported to be monica wehbys boyfriend. One issue with that is anybodys boyfriend commingling with disconnect, disconnect with that guy. Thats just me. It is a free country, the other issue is more pedestrian and specific. Candidates are supposed to be totally legally forbidden from
coordinating anything with pacs that support them. Theres supposed to be no contact between the candidate and the pac supporting them including the people who fund that pac. Its very hard to say theres no contact between you and somebody you are dating. Right . If monica wehby is the candidate in a romantic relationship with one of the main funders of this pac how can you have no coordination and raised all kinds of questions whether this pac is operating legally if there is close coordination of some kind between the people in that pac and candidate herself. That led, in fact, to the Democratic Party in oregon filing a complaint about that pacs spending on this candidates behalf. Since then, though, in the closing days of this primary in oregon just this past friday, oregon and everybody else in the world learned in a very blunt and unexpected way that actually the candidate, monica wehby and the supposed boyfriend funding the pac, they are apparently no longer in a relationship. They used to be but they have
broken up and the way everybody found out about that was when politico on friday morning published the Police Report from when he called the police on her accusing her of stalking him and averaging the police to please come throw her out of his house because they were having a bad breakup and she was harassing him and she would not leave him alone. That does solve some of the worries about there being too much contact between the candidate and the guy funding the pac. But now theres also this other issue of who is leaking that Police Report four days before the primary and then later that same day also leaking the 911 call to the oregon press and the National Press just days ahead of this primary and then today, one day ahead of the primary the oregonian published another Police Report this time not from the exboyfriend but exhusband of the candidate and the report reflecting her exhusband called the police to their home during their divorce and accuse the her of ongoing
harassment of him. So the first Police Report four days before the primary and the 911 call later that day. The second Police Report one day before the primary. And the drama and the twists and turns and whatever is going on in Oregon Republican politics would be weird enough if that was just it, but that doesnt even start to touch the cast of characters involved here. Because outside of the hobbyist sex hypnotherapist and not the boyfriend anymore pac the other pac supporting the monica wehby candidacy is funded substantially by this guy, he just got a big splashy spread in National Journal magazine as the future of super pacs. This is him apparently posing with models on a hay bale from an out of take of an video posted at his winery website showing himself its a parody of that robin i dont know its just anyway
okay, his name is john jordan. He runs a winery. Very rich guy, conservative guy, republican donor and he lives in california. He doesnt live in oregon, doesnt appear to very any connection to oregon. What so doing weighing in with huge bucket loads of money in the senate race . Oregon republican politics, turns out, theyre just kind of like that because on the other side, the guy was running against monica wehby in tomorrows primary a day named jason conger has his own random out of state disinterested surveillancian their helping them, as well, the pac funder on the other side tomorrow is a Hedge Fund Guy from new york who has decided that the outcome of the Oregon RepublicanSenate Primary is apparently worst some of his hedge fund bucks for some reason and this is the thing in oregon. Oregon of all places for some reason attracts this. Four years ago you may remember we took notice of a mysterious well funded out of nowhere
challenge to a democratic incumbent named Peter Defazio. Forgive me but its sort of perennial crank candidate who lived on a compound they called his own Science Institute who sent out newsletters saying things like hiv doesnt really cause aids and anybody who is hiv positive shouldnt take their hiv drugs, he says that radiation is good for you and we should in fact consider sprinkling radiation over the entire United States and there were parks and backyards and stuff that would help everybodys health. Yeah, that candidate was mysteriously running a campaign with super slick flyers and well put together ads and a really professionallooking operation against Peter Defazio. And just none of it made sense. It wasnt like this guy was a tea partyer who was a little too conservative for the district or even that he was a rand Paul Ron Paul guy who want the us to have gold instead of paper money. It wasnt like that normal and well understood breed of republican out thereness. This guy wants to sprinkle radiation across the country so kids will play in it and get healthy. Radiation t made no sense at all that he was able to run this campaign against Peter Defazio at the level that he was running it until Peter Defazio himself figured out that there was randomly a new York Hedge Fund republican zillion their who decided from three time zone as way on the complete opposite side of the country with no relationship to oregon politics whatsoever and no apparent vested interest in that congressional race that he was going to fund art robinsons selfdeclared superscientist to run against Peter Defazio and so that inexplicable new york zillionaire gave art all that money to run a big campaign against Peter Defazio and who knows why, and robinson did not beat Peter Defazio and reached out to him earlier this month to see if he is still funding art. We did not hear back but it does not seem like he is anymore. At least not yet but even after
losing to Peter Defazio art robinson did not go away. He went on to become the chairman of the Oregon Republican party. That is his current job and he is now running for Congress City against Peter Defazio apparently without the zillionaire hedge funder helping him out this time and while art robinson is running for congress this time, he is also simultaneously sending out thousands of mailers that look like this. Accepting out these mailers all across oregon asking people to please send him jars of their urine. Because he wants your urine for science or for his version of science. He wants you to send him your urine for five years. Its like a newsletter in reverse. The worlds worst newsletter made of urine that you have to send to art robinson, chairman of the Oregon Republican party, yes. But, again, his apparently disinterested hedge funder in new york is not to be confused
with the other apparently disinterested hedge funder in new york whos funding the other republican candidate in oregon and they are not to be confused with the amateur sex hypnotherapist guy funding the pac, funding the other Republican Senate candidate and who is very against drivers licenses and his is the same pac with the guy who called the police accusing the now candidate of stalking and the Police Report that mysteriously got leaked to the press four days before the primary. Just as or gonians should be headed to the polling trying to figure out if they want any of these people to be their statewide elected officials. No republican has won statewide elected office in the state of oregon since 2002 as best as i can tell. But the Beltway Press keeps reporting on the merkley reelection race in oregon as if republicans, you know, got a real shot of pulling this off in oregon, you know what, take a closer look at what is actually going on in oregon. There are a lot of interesting Republican Partys in this country and having interesting, interesting, interesting fights among themselves. There are a lost interesting things going on in local and state republican parties but there is not one anywhere in this country more bizarre than
what is happening in the great state of oregon right now. I defy you to find me a weirder one. Joining us now is jim moore a political scientist in oregon. Professor, thank you very much for being here. Its great to be with you. Am i being unfair . Are there states out there that are weirder than oregon and oregon is more normal than it seems in terms of its republican politics right now. Well, lets put it this way, without a tea Party Faction thats strong at all, we are right up there with everybody else in terms of strange things and its been going on like this for the best part of 25 or 30 years. Well, i can can understand there being fits and starts of not just sort of impotence at state levels but in leads to a power vacuum and end up with some sort of spikes in different parties taking control. How has it been so sustainably weird and how does somebody like art robinson not get turfed out of the party when they realize who he is and end up being in
charge . In oregon because we have not had a statewide elected republican since gordon smith our u. S. Senator was defeated six years ago by jeff merkley and so in oregon, the chair of the Republican Party becomes in effect the de facto representative of all republicans. Its like theyre the governor in waiting and theres always a fight about what that chair of the Republican Party ought to be. Should it be somebody who is kind of a pure republican whose social conservative wants to cut all tax, all those kinds of things. Those people get elected as the chair and then they cant raise money and they cant recruit candidates. Ah. So then the party goes the other way and finds a moderate who can raise money and recruit candidates but theyre not ideologically pure and the party
gets rid of them after a term of being the chair so were on the more ideologically pure side right now ainge the party is suffering because of that. In terms of the funders of these people funding pacs and have been behind robinsons candidacy on both sides of the Senate Primary tomorrow, why is it that oregon seeps to attract individual donors from across the country who arent involved in any other Political Races or maybe just one here or there, you really picked up some strays here and there. Is there something specific about oregon causing that . Well, lets start with lauren parks. Lauren parks ha been giving money in a big way for over 20 years but the money he gave throughout the 1990s into the 2000s was for ballot measures. Oregon is one place where its easy to get measures on the ballot. You can get big money going for them and you can change state law and he funded a lot of things for instance sentencing guideline kinds of thing, things that had to do with what gay rights ought to be, you know, all sorts of stuff out there. He was successful on a few of them. But not very many of them. But because he wasnt successful, in the past four or five years he switched towards candidates and thats what were seeing right now. Hes going especially for the
congressional candidates. Hes also as you said, hes going for some of the state legislative candidates, havent gotten any elected but he said thats how i can change policy going with candidates rather than the ballot measures. The other guy, Hedge Fund People you were talking about, the winery guy, wow, its clear that they are looking at oregon as a place where their relatively small for big bucks, you know, this is not california, you can spend a million or two here and make a big difference in a campaign if you were in california or new york or someplace like that you wouldnt even be noti