cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/5092051
All of this spending is since 2020.
In the last election for Governor, they gave $10,000 to Friends of Tina Kotek but also gave a combined $85,000 to Betsy Johnson (widely acknowledged as a spoiler to help Christine Drazan) and Christine Drazan.
Here’s that breakdown:
- Friends of Christine Drazan (R Governor Candidate last election who ran against Tina Kotek) $7,500
- Run Betsy Run $75,000 + $2,500 to another Betsy PAC.
In fact, if you look at any local R race, Tillamook likely donated to them. Their donation list is basically a “who’s who” of OR republican candidates. Here’s a few more donations:
- Friends of Boomer Wright PAC (OR House of Reps): $2,000
- The Leadership Fund (for supporting R candidates) $27,500
- Evergreen Oregon PAC (for supporting house R candidates) $20,000
- Friends of Suzanne Weber $5,000 (R OR Senate)
- Committee to Elect Daniel Bonham $3,000 (R OR Senate)
- Tim Knopp for State Senate $25,00 (R OR Senate)
- Denyc Boyles $2,500 (R OR Senate)
One of their biggest expenditures was to “Stop the Metro Wage Tax” which they spent over $250,000 on. I don’t know enough about the measure’s history to say one way or the other where it lands on the political spectrum.
All this is public info you can find on Oregon’s ORESTAR system https://secure.sos.state.or.us/orestar/gotoPublicTransactionSearchResults.do?cneSearchButtonName=prev&cneSearchContributorTxtSearchType=C&cneSearchTranType=C&cneSearchTranSubType=CA&cneSearchFilerCommitteeTxtSearchType=C&cneSearchTranSubTypeName=Cash+Contribution%2CIn-Kind+Contribution&cneSearchTranTypeName=Contribution&cneSearchTranStartDate=09%2F01%2F2020&cneSearchTranEndDate=09%2F15%2F2023&cneSearchContributorTxt=Tillamook&srtOrder=asc&by=FILER&cneSearchPageIdx=1
Pro-tip: if something’s in Oregon but not in Portland, there’s a pretty good chance it’s really, really racist.
The dairy industry is generally very anti-regulation for a few reasons.
Manure management is a massive investment for them. If properly managed they can mitigate environmental damage but it’s expensive. Improperly managing the manure is a lot cheaper and does a hell of a lot of damage to the environment and water supply.
Milk is an ideal medium for many pathogenic bacteria. As such all sorts of regulations are in place to protect the consumers. These regulations are expensive and limit their marketing ability. This is why dairies are okay with supporting the “raw milk” crowd even if it kills a few children and stupid adults every year.
Dairy’s require a steady stable labor force to do lots of shitty jobs. There’s always a few asshats who want to take advantage of their employees to line their own pockets.
Republicans also are big and handing out lots of free money for votes to agriculture as subsidies. Toss the idiots cash to keep them doing the exact same fucked up things that should have bankrupted them 40 years ago.
Now there are a few diaries that are for regulations and invest heavily in following the rules and supporting new ones being developed in a logical and scientific manner. These are the profitable ones.
I predict a rash of Republican passings, as they rush to support their fellows by consuming copious quantities of ice cream. They may not know clogged arteries are a thing.
A few years ago, we visited the Tillamook ice cream “museum”. They had lots of pretty questionable imagery. Not a single person of color in their many images, even though I can literally see people of color working.
They replaced all that with even more generic ones but I still think about that.