QAnon, Proud Boys candidates embraced by an Oregon Republican Party awash in extremism

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A portrait of Oregon Republicans in 2022: Three GOP candidates are given an onstage benediction by a QAnon preacher praying over them. At a local “Lincoln Day” dinner, a group of Proud Boys—including a man under indictment for felony assault—share drinks and applause for their cohort running for a state House seat. At a debate among U.S. Senate candidates, the QAnon-loving 2020 Senate nominee compares aid to Ukraine with Donald Trump’s border wall, while she and her cohorts all condemn the nonexistent teaching of “critical race theory” for “breeding racism” in Oregon schools.

So while Oregon officials grapple with an auditor’s finding that the state is at high risk for extremist violence, it’s becoming eminently clear that one of the wellsprings of the problem is the state’s own Republican Party. Even more than the GOP on the national level, Oregon’s Republicans have descended into an open embrace of the very factions that inspire and inflict that violence.

The onstage QAnon benediction occurred last month in Bend, when self-described “prophet” Johnny Enlow prayed over and “commissioned” three Oregon Republican candidates: Marc Thielman, seeking the governorship; Darin Harbick, a U.S. Senate candidate; and Patty Adair, a county commissioner seeking reelection. They were part of a Christian nationalist “Restore: Government and Economy” summit held at Eagle Mountain Apostolic Resource Center.

Enlow assured them that, win or lose, their mere candidacies were victories for “the kingdom of God”:

“Lord, you’re showing me and want me to tell them all that you’ve already won,” Enlow said. “Whatever we contend for we actually get. Whatever we contend for, we penetrate with the kingdom of God. So when you have that interest, what you’re contending for, it will leave a mark of heaven in that place, no matter what. And so if he considers it best for you to win, then you’re going to officially win out there. But it’s a win for the Kingdom of God just the fact that you have said, ‘We’re going for this position.’ He says it will be penetrated in the spirit: It will forever be a marked as kingdom territory.

“He wants you to be at ease for what’s taking place as if you already won because you have won in his eyes,” Enlow told the candidates. “He is watching over you. He’s protecting you. So I want to declare just the protection over you, the peace of God, a canopy of grace over each and every one of them, Lord, in this process. We bless them in your name.”

“All right,” said Haaby following the prayer. “Go take this state for Jesus.”

Thielman also eagerly participated in this past weekend’s ReAwaken America event in Keizer, a Salem suburb. The rally, part of a nationwide tour by far-right “alpha male” Clay Clark, featured leading QAnon figure Michael Flynn and other Trumpist media stars: Eric Trump, “My Pillow” executive Mike Lindell, notorious homophobe Sean Feucht, and a large cast of others.

It was a nonstop circus of right-wing conspiracism and Christian nationalism. At one point, Flynn introduced a video appearance from Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the onetime Apostolic Nuncio to the U.S., who launched into a pro-Putin, anti-Ukraine rant. Viganò told the audience (as he has done elsewhere) that the Russian military is actually preventing Deep State aggression and combating the “globalist cabal.” He also claimed that the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Azov Battalion were present at the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection.

The event drew about 4,000 attendees, with people arriving from around the Pacific Northwest. Counterprotesters also turned out. Left Coast Right Watch reports that “this was absolutely a QAnon event”:

It featured former QAnon promoters like Ann Vandersteel, Gene Ho, John Chambers, and cranks like Lori Gregory, who appeared on a QAnon show to promote antivaxx conspiracy theories. There were, in total, 38 featured speakers, at least ten of which were there specifically to promote antivaxx and COVID paranoia. It was also a highly religious event—six people on the list had “Pastor” in front of their names with other evangelical figures speaking as well.

Julianne Jackson, founder of Black Joy Oregon, told the Salem Statesman-Journal that the rally made her feel unsafe in her own community—particularly after social media postings advertised a post-rally celebration of “Anglo American identity.”

“It’s very important to read between the lines and know that means whiteness,” Jackson said. “And that means danger for people like me and people that look like me.”

Besides being present in the crowd, Thielman was publicly endorsed onstage by speaker Kevin Jenkins, and happily acknowledged the plug. Also among the crowd: Dan Tooze, the Proud Boys organizer who is running for a state House seat from Oregon City’s District 40. He took a selfie there with the Oregon Proud Boys vice president, Carl Todd.

Thielman and Tooze have a well-documented relationship of mutual avid support. Thielman, the former superintendent of schools in rural Alsea who stepped down after defying COVID-19 mask mandates, is scheduled to speak at an April 15 fundraiser for Tooze. He’ll be joined by two local Republican candidates, Clackamas County Commissioner Mark Shull and commission candidate Steve Frost.

Tooze’s Proud Boys led flag-waving protests outside Pamplin Media’s local news outlet, and then were given space on the op-ed page to promote Tooze’s organization: “When Proud Boys say, ‘I am a Western chauvinist,’ we are saying, ‘I am a proud and unabashed proponent of Western Civilization.’ That is it. It has nothing to do with race, ethnicity, religion, sexuality or even national origin. Only love of country.”

In addition to apparently driving his pickup through groups of Portland counterprotesters in August 2020—on the same night that a right-wing compatriot was shot and killed by an antifascist following a day of harassment—Tooze gained some notoriety in 2020 for leveraging Facebook’s fundraising capabilities to promote and finance violent events in Portland.

Tooze also recently played a key role in a video shared recently on social media showing a tableful of Proud Boys drinking and flashing “OK” signs at the Feb. 12 Clackamas GOP Lincoln Day Gala banquet.

The table’s centerpiece was a Tooze campaign sign. Among the Proud Boys seated at the table was Miles Douglas Furrow, the 41-year-old man indicted in January for his role in the Proud Boys violence that occurred at an August 2021 event in northeast Portland. He raises a drink to toast with the cameraman.

“I’ve always said, Proud Boys are the new Republicans,” says the cameraman as he walks up to “the most important table” and is greeted with “OK” signs.

As it happens, Tooze himself was recorded on video (courtesy of @Johnnthelefty) at the same event engaging in violence directed at counterprotesters, though he was never indicted afterwards like his comrades.

Last December, Tooze led a group of “Patriots” to invade the local Clackamas mall in an anti-masking “protest” that was nothing more than an organized attempt to harass “liberals.” Tooze’s group, organized under the name Free Oregon, staged an anti-masking protest at the Clackamas Town Center mall in unincorporated Happy Valley, an exurban area east of Portland. The group parked their flag-festooned pickups in the parking lot of a sporting goods store and proceeded to stroll through the mall, harassing store clerks and mall security personnel who attempted to enforce the mall’s mask requirements.

The absorption of radical-right actors into the GOP mainstream has been occurring in nearly all regions of the state. In Corvallis this past weekend, a debate among six of the seven Republicans running to be the nominee for Oregon’s contested U.S. Senate seat turned into an almost predictable conspiracism and disinformation carnival led by the presence of Jo Ann Perkins, the QAnon enthusiast who was the GOP’s nominee for the Senate in 2020.

Perkins disparagingly compared aid to Ukraine in its war with Russia to Donald Trump’s wall along the Mexico border. “If our government, including Mitch McConnell, can vote to send $14 billion to Ukraine, but we can’t spend $15 billion on our fences to secure our country, we have a problem,” Perkins said.

She and other Republicans railed against the Enviromental Protection Agency and blamed critical race theory for “breeding racism” in schools. Prineville Mayor Jason Beebe said the theory (which is not taught in K-12 classrooms in Oregon) is grossly unnecessary.

“I teach my kids to be respectful to everyone,” Beebe said. “You do not treat someone badly, no matter what they are, who they are, what they believe and anything that they choose to do.”

Motel owner Darin Harbick from Blue River and Grant County Commissioner Sam Palmer have been the top two fundraisers in the race so far, having outraised Perkins several times over. But Perkins enjoys a huge populist following in the state, particularly among its Patriot constituents.

Mainstream Republicans have been wrestling with the far-right takeover of the party apparatus for over a year now, following the vote by the party faithful in February 2021 to unseat Chairman Bill Currier, a vocal Trump supporter, and replace him with state Sen. Dallas Heard, a Republican from Myrtle Creek notorious for aligning with far-right causes. Heard led a pro-Trump protest at the Oregon Capitol in Salem on Jan. 6, 2021, at the same time as the U.S. Capitol insurrection—and had previously led a rally on Dec. 21, 2020 in which Patriots attacked and successfully breached the Oregon Capitol.

It has been, as OPB’s Sergio Olmos observed, a gradual process taking place in incremental steps over several years: “Small militant groups like the Proud Boys, Patriot Prayer and various militias have at times acted as muscle for conservative rallies throughout Oregon and Washington,” he writes. “But the frequency with which the party has embraced once fringe characters did not slow in the time before or since Jan. 6, as heated talk spilled into violent actions.”

Heard stepped down as party chair in early March, accusing his fellow Republicans of “communist psychological warfare tactics” intended to “destroy anyone of true character.” His letter explained that he can no longer “survive exposure to the toxicity that can be found in this community.”

“The endless slander, gossip, conspiracies, sabotage, lies, hatred, pointless criticism, blocking of ideas, and mutiny brought against my administration has done what I once never thought possible,” Heard wrote. “They have broken my spirit. I can face the Democrats with courage and conviction, but I can’t fight my own people too.”

The bizarro world takeover has begun driving out ordinary mainstream Republicans, including the party’s 2018 gubernatorial nominee, Kent Buehler. His final straw came in February 2021 after party officials passed a resolution claiming that the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection was a “false flag” intended to smear Trump.

“I don’t know what the Republican Party stands for,” he said. “It’s almost become a cult of personality. Is it possible to re-correct? Absolutely.”