Nike Co-Founder Spens Big for GOP in Oregon Governor Race

Nike co-founder Phil Knight promised Saturday to do everything he could to keep Democrats out of Oregon’s open governor’s mansion.

Knight is putting his massive fortune where his mouth is, pouring cash into the two candidates running against Democratic candidate Tina Kotek: Republican Christine Drazan and independent state Sen. Betsy Johnson, Fox News reported.

Johnson, who was a Democrat until 2021, has received some $3.75 million from Knight and is pulling more support from Kotek’s base than from Drazan’s, according to Fox and a local NBC affiliate.

In early October, Knight shifted his support to Drazan, donating $1 million to the state House minority leader’s campaign, Fox noted in another article.

“One of the political cartoons after our legislative session had a person snorting cocaine out of a mountain of white,” Knight told the New York Times when asked about his opposition to Kotek. “It said, ‘Which of these is illegal in Oregon?’ And the answer was the plastic straw.” In 2020, Oregon voters approved a ballot measure that decriminalized possession of small amounts of hard drugs. The previous year, Democratic Gov. Kate Brown signed a bill banning plastic straws.

Knight told the Times he threw his support behind Drazen to push back against Oregon Democrats’ hard-left agenda. Oregon had not elected a Republican governor since 1982.

Knight is Oregon’s richest male resident, with an estimated net worth of $34.5 billion, according to Bloomberg. His support for Drazan and Johnson has forced Democrats to divert funds to Oregon in an attempt to retain control of the governor’s mansion, the Times noted.

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