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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2018
Knight’s enormous donations impact governor’s race
“We didn’t want Dennis
Richardson to call and ask for
money and to not have asked
ourselves,” Marshall told Ore-
gon Public Broadcasting, refer-
encing Kitzhaber’s GOP oppo-
nent that year.
Just four years earlier,
Kitzhaber’s phone call with
Knight would have seemed
unlikely. Knight had played
a role in Kitzhaber’s near-de-
feat at the hands of Republican
Chris Dudley in 2010, donating
heavily to the GOP candidate.
But things had changed. In
2012, for instance, Kitzhaber
called the Legislature into ses-
sion specifically to pass a law
that ensured Nike’s income tax
calculation in Oregon wouldn’t
meaningfully change for three
decades. According to Mar-
shall, Kitzhaber had “a lot of
interaction” with Knight by the
time he got on the phone with
the candidate in 2014 to ask for
money.
Marshall and Kitzhaber
mulled over what to ask of
Knight, taking into account
other large donors to Kitzhaber’s
campaign.
“There was a feeling that
the labor unions had com-
Weighing in
for Buehler
By DIRK VANDERHART
Oregon Public Broadcasting
Armed with a plan to
become Oregon’s first Republi-
can governor in more than two
decades in 2010, Chris Dudley
turned to Nike co-founder Phil
Knight for money.
Four years later, then-Gov.
John Kitzhaber, a Democrat,
made a similar pitch to the
state’s best-known billionaire.
In each case, Knight came
through with what at the time
were head-turning contribu-
tions. They look minuscule by
the standards he’s setting these
days.
Since August 2017, Knight
has donated $2.5 million to state
Rep. Knute Buehler, the Repub-
lican who is mounting a com-
petitive challenge to the re-elec-
tion bid of Democratic Gov.
Kate Brown.
Knight has given another $1
million to the Republican Gov-
ernors Association, which has
spent more than $2 million sup-
porting Buehler.
The contributions are an
interesting development for a
candidate who got his start in
politics working on campaign
finance reform. They could also
usher Oregon into a new polit-
ical paradigm: Never before
has a single wealthy individual
given so heavily to a candidate
in the state.
Knight’s money is a big part
of the reason this year’s guber-
natorial race is the most expen-
sive in state history. It has been
seized on by campaign finance
watchdogs, who’ve long
warned Oregon’s permissive
election laws permit wealthy
interests to have too great a say
in political outcomes.
And it’s opened a new line
of attack in a race where candi-
AP Photo/Chris Pietsch
Phil Knight at a University of Oregon basketball game in
2014. For his large donations, students affectionately refer
to Knight as ‘Uncle Phil.’
dates have rarely passed up an
opportunity to go negative.
“What causes concern is
Knute Buehler is trying to
pound a ‘for sale’ sign in front
of the Oregon Capitol,” Chris-
tian Gaston, a spokesman for
the Brown campaign, told the
Salem Reporter. “If he wins,
is he going to install a red
phone that goes straight to Phil
Knight?”
“Best government money
can BUY?” tweeted Patrick
Starnes, the Independent Party
of Oregon’s candidate for gov-
ernor, who dropped out this
week and endorsed Brown.
The contributions also gar-
nered national headlines, with
Rolling Stone recently asking:
“Is billionaire Nike founder Phil
Knight trying to buy a Republi-
can governor?”
Any speculation that Bue-
hler has promised something to
Knight will apparently remain
just that. Through a Nike
spokesman, the highly private
billionaire declined requests
for an interview, and Buehler’s
campaign has refused to answer
questions about the campaign’s
ties to Knight.
But Knight has offered a
recent glimpse into places he
and Buehler agree. In a 2017
interview with Portland polit-
ical consultant Jim Pasero —
first noted by Willamette Week
— he said that Oregon’s trou-
blesome public pension system
could “sink the whole state”
and bemoaned current political
leadership — two positions that
align with Buehler’s relentlessly
consistent campaign message.
There’s another place to
look for context into Knight’s
contributions: Those who’ve
benefited from his largesse in
the past.
Kitzhaber declined to dis-
cuss his relationship with the
billionaire, but his 2014 cam-
paign manager, Mike Marshall,
says the candidate’s request for
support was common sense.
mitted significant money (to
Kitzhaber’s campaign) and it
should be aligned with that, and
no more than that,” Marshall
said. “So the governor asked for
$250,000, which I don’t believe
he’d done before.”
The resulting check was
the largest single contribution
Knight had ever made to a can-
didate. He could have given
far more — Oregon is one
of a handful of states with no
limits on campaign contribu-
tions — but Marshall argued
that $250,000 was within the
bounds of a “social compact”
he thinks exists in Oregon.
“I was comfortable with it,
because the labor unions were
coming in at the same level or
even more,” said Marshall, who
is supporting Brown in this
year’s election. “The notion of
$2.5 million is just outrageous.
It’s just Phil Knight trying to
tip the process in favor of his
candidate.”
Like Kitzhaber, Dudley had
an existing relationship with
Knight by the time he asked for
the billionaire’s financial back-
ing in 2010 — he’d met the
sportswear magnate during his
two stints playing for the Port-
land Trail Blazers.
“We talked about the issues,”
Dudley said. “When I ran, that
was most focused on education
… and then the economy and
what was going on with Ore-
gon and Oregon struggling at
that time.”
Knight ultimately made four
contributions totaling $400,000.
Dudley wound up outspending
Kitzhaber by around $3 mil-
lion, and losing by 1.5 percent-
age points.
“Questions would come up:
‘If you’d won, would you feel
any obligation to someone who
supported your campaign?’”
Dudley said. “Absolutely not.
All Phil wanted was what’s best
for Oregon.”
He sees the same situation
with Buehler.
“It’s not surprising that
(Knight) would connect with
Knute,” said Dudley, who
resides mostly in California
these days but supports Buehler.
“Similar to myself, Knute is
moderate, and he lines up with
where Phil is on a lot of stuff:
He’s pro-choice, he’s pro-free
trade, he’s pro-business, he’s in
favor of pension reform to fix
the funding of schools.”
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