LOCAL
A6 — THE OBSERVER
TUESDAY, JANUARY 18, 2022
Bentz alleges 2020 election was ‘bought’
Congressman
concerned about
parent participation
at school board
meetings
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
Union County Search and Rescue/Contributed Photo, File
The Wallowa Mountains stand covered in snow in October 2021. Ac-
cording to the National Weather System’s extended forecast, the
northern Blue and Wallowa mountains will likely get a break from
the snowstorms until the end of January into early February.
Drought conditions
marginally bett er
Late December
snowstorms help
improve Wallowa
County’s outlook
By RONALD BOND
Wallowa County Chieftain
ENTERPRISE —
Drought conditions that
have heavily impacted
Wallowa County — and,
really, the entire West —
are starting to show a little
improvement, but there
is a ways to go before the
drought lifts entirely.
In recent weeks, the
U.S. Drought Monitor
website — which is “pro-
duced through a part-
nership between the
National Drought Mitiga-
tion Center at the Univer-
sity of Nebraska-Lincoln,
the United States Depart-
ment of Agriculture, and
the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Adminis-
tration,” has shown the
severe drought conditions
slightly improving in the
state in recent weeks.
Wallowa County saw
its largest movement in
late December and early
January, as the Dec. 30
update showed the county
with 58.84% of its ter-
ritory in the “extreme
drought” range, down
from 78.87%, where it had
been the previous week,
and down from more
than 82% just two weeks
earlier.
And on Jan. 6, the per-
centage of the county
in the extreme range
was down to 38.1%. The
number was the same on
the Jan. 13 report.
The remainder of the
county is still in drought
conditions, but is catego-
rized as “severe” rather
than “extreme.”
The drought mon-
itor has six stages that a
region is categorized in,
ranging from “none,” or
no drought, all the way
to D4, the worst, which is
considered “exceptional
drought.” In between are
D0 (abnormally dry), D1
(moderate drought), D2
(severe drought) and D3
(extreme drought).
The state saw its worst
conditions in 2021 in the
Sept. 14 report, which
showed the entire state
in at least D1 and more
than 99.3% of its terri-
tory in D2, or a severe
drought. That report was
also the third in a row to
show 76.69% of the state
in extreme drought —
including most of Wal-
lowa County — and was
the third of seven straight
weeks that showed 26.59%
of the state in an excep-
tional drought, marked on
the monitor’s map with a
streak of crimson cutting
through the middle of the
state.
At its worst this past
summer, Wallowa County
had 83.22% of its range
in either D3 or D4, where
it stayed from Aug. 31
to Oct. 19. During that
stretch, there was a sliver
— 1.43% — of the state
marked as D4, or excep-
tional drought. That D4
percentage, in fact, held
from the fi rst report in
August until the last
report in November.
The county fi rst moved
into D2 on the June 8,
2021, report, and the
entirety of the county has
been in D2 or worse since
July 6.
One winter ago, in
December 2020, 61% of
the county was considered
to be abnormally dry, but
the other 39% was rated
as having no drought.
In 2020, the worst con-
ditions, in fact, actu-
ally happened in the fi rst
month of the year, when
the entirety of the county
was in at least D0 and
only 4.17% was in D1.
According to the
drought monitor website,
the last time conditions
were even close to this bad
in December was in 2015,
when the month started
with the whole county in
at least D2 and nearly 98%
of the county in D3. By
the middle of the month,
the whole county was still
in severe drought, but the
extreme drought condi-
tions were wiped out.
That summer, the
county was considered
in extreme drought from
Aug. 25 to Nov. 24.
Other than 2015, the
last times the website
shows drought conditions
close to the current level
were in 2007 and 2001.
The site has data going
back to 2000.
Snowy condi-
tions in the county —
which included near-re-
cord snowfall earlier in
December in Joseph —
have helped. The National
Weather Service reported
27.3 inches of snow in
Joseph in December
2021, which is more than
three times the monthly
average. There was 2.29
inches of precipitation
during the month, an inch
above the average of 1.29
inches.
Wallowa County is in
an area that the Climate
Prediction Center believes
will remain in a drought
through mid-March,
though it expects the con-
ditions to improve.
The most valuable and
respected source of local news,
advertising and information for
our communities.
www.eomediagroup.com
LA GRANDE —
Oregon U.S. Rep. Cliff
Bentz, R-Ontario, does not
believe former President
Donald Trump’s claim that
the 2020 presidential elec-
tion was won by President
Joe Biden because of voter
fraud.
“The election was not
stolen, it was bought,”
Bentz, a fi rst-term con-
gressman, said during a
meet-and-greet Thursday,
Jan. 6, in La Grande.
It was one of several
statements Bentz made
during the La Grande event
and then later expanded on
in a Wednesday, Jan. 12,
interview.
‘It was bought’
Bentz said Democrats
had an enormous edge in
funding donors with deep
pockets, including one who
donated $400 million to
Biden’s campaign. Bentz
said that the Democrats
spent several times more
money per vote than the
Republicans did.
Bentz referenced a large
donation made by Face-
book founder Mark Zuck-
erberg and suggested
it benefi ted Biden and
Democrats.
In September 2020,
Zuckerberg and his wife,
Priscilla Chan, person-
ally made a $300 million
donation to two groups —
the Center for Tech and
Civic Life and the Center
for Election Innovation &
Research. The money was
specifi cally designated to
recruit poll workers, supply
them with personal pro-
tection equipment and
set up drive-thru voting.
The rest was distributed
to state election offi cials
throughout the country.
According to a press
release, the Center for Tech
and Civic Life received
an additional $100 million
from Zuckerberg and Chan
in October 2020.
In an interview, Bentz
said he based his com-
ments around an October
2021 article from The Fed-
eralist, a conservative
media website, entitled
“Zuckerbucks 101: How a
Media Mogul Took Over
Mari Dominguez, PMHNP-BC
Alex Wittwer/EO Media Group, File
Rep. Cliff Bentz, R-Ontario, speaks to a group of residents during a meet-and-greet Thursday, Jan. 6,
2022, at Brother Bear Cafe in La Grande.
the 2020 Election and Why
GOP Leaders Must Never
Let It Happen Again.”
The article, mostly
citing other conservative
sources, argues that the
Center for Tech and Civic
Life “corrupted” elec-
tions by sending money to
election offi ces in Demo-
cratic-leaning areas and
by facilitating the mail-in
voting process.
Referencing the article,
Bentz said the nonprofi t
was not apolitical because
the founders had once
worked for an organization
with Democratic ties.
“That money was used
to prompt Democrat voters
to vote,” he said. “And it
was used to design and
translate ballots. It was
used to staff curing and
counting ballot operations.
Those kinds of things, all
according to various arti-
cles you can easily fi nd,
trended toward turning
out more Democrats than
Republicans.”
Both groups that Zuck-
erberg donated to are
501(c)(3) nonprofi ts, which
are legally prohibited from
political campaign activity.
The Center for Election
Innovation and Research
advertises itself as a group
with “a proven track record
of working with election
experts from around the
country and from both
sides of the aisle.”
Bentz said their actions
during the 2020 elections
could lose them their
501(c)(3) status, an
important designation that
exempts them from taxes.
“As a lawyer I have
helped form 501(c)(3)s and
I’ve been involved with
501(c)(4)s … I’ll just say
that the fact that you enjoy
that designation does not
mean, does not in any way
prove, that you’ve com-
plied with the requirements
of such a designation,” he
said.
Infl ation distraction
Bentz spoke in La
Grande on the one-year
anniversary of the day
Trump supporters rioted
at the Capitol Building in
an attempt to reverse the
results of the 2020 presi-
dential election. Bentz said
he believes Democrats are
blowing the Jan. 6 riot out
of proportion in an attempt
to divert attention from
the issues people are really
concerned about.
“It is a huge opportu-
nity for them to distract
the nation from infl ation,”
Bentz said.
In the interview, Bentz
said he condemned the
violence that affl icted the
Capitol a year ago, but he
reiterated that Democrats
were focusing on a partisan
investigation into former
President Donald Trump’s
role in the insurrection
rather than important
issues like infl ation or the
border.
The Garland memo
Bentz also spoke about
U.S. Attorney General
Merrick Garland asking
the FBI to investigate a
rise in harassment and
threats of violence against
school board members
nationwide.
Bentz told the audience
that it is not the FBI’s place
to do this.
“This is what commu-
nities should be looking
into,” he said.
On Oct. 4, Garland
released a memo directing
the FBI to meet with fed-
eral, state, local and tribal
law enforcement to develop
strategies to address
“harassment, intimidation,
and threats of violence”
against school board mem-
bers and school employees.
Later that month, Gar-
land defended the memo
at a Senate Judiciary
Committee meeting after
Republicans accused the
attorney general of over-
reach, according to The
Associated Press.
“The obligation of the
Justice Department is
to protect the American
people against violence
and threats of violence and
that particularly includes
public offi cials,” Garland
said.
In the interview, Bentz
said he did not condone
threats of violence directed
at school offi cials. But
as a former school board
member for both a pri-
vate Catholic school and
the Ontario School Dis-
trict, Bentz said he was
concerned that Gar-
land’s memo would have a
“chilling eff ect” on parent
participation.
He added that if people
threatened or harassed
school offi cials, local law
enforcement could handle
those situations without
getting the federal govern-
ment involved.