With only weeks to go until Election Day, Phil Knight, the billionaire co-founder of sportswear giant Nike, shocked Oregon by donating $1 million to Republican gubernatorial candidate Christine Drazan.
The million-dollar donation to the Republican comes after Knight’s previous donation of more than $3 million to former Democrat Oregon Representative Betsy Johnson, who jumped into the race as an independent to run against Dem. Candidate Tina Kotek and Republican Drazan, according to KGW NBC.
According to the New York Times, Knight is willing to do anything to prevent the Democrats from staying in power in the Beaver State.
Nike founder Oregon supporter Phil Knight during the second half of a football game between the University of Oregon Ducks and the University of Arizona Wildcats on October 8, 2022, at Arizona Stadium in Tucson, AZ. (Christopher Hook/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Knight reportedly relayed the story of a recent political cartoon that described how disgusted he is with Oregon’s politics.
“One of the political cartoons after our legislative session had a person snorting cocaine out of a mountain of white,” Knight said. “It said, ‘Which of these is illegal in Oregon?’ And the answer was the plastic straw.”
With his two big-dollar donations to the Republican and the Independent in the hopes that either of them would beat Democrat Kotek, Knight told the Times that he is less “for” the other two candidates and instead views himself as “an anti-Tina person.”
Polls in Oregon have Republican Drazan and Democrat Kotek neck-and-neck, with Johnson lagging back in a distant third place. But what is shocking is that Nike’s Phil Knight, who is reportedly worth $40 billion, has not donated to the Democrat as he frequently does.
A poll reported by Oregon Public Broadcasting found that Oregon voters are very unhappy under current Democrat Gov. Kate Brown. The key finding is that more than 70 percent of respondents said that Oregon is “on the wrong track.”
Kate Brown, governor of Oregon, speaks during an interview in Portland, Oregon, U.S., on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. Brown, a Democrat, joined the state House of Representatives in 1991, was later elected to the Senate, and served as secretary of state since 2009 before taking over as governor in February. (Meg Roussos/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Oregon has other troubles, too. According to KOIN, the Beaver State is the second-worst state for substance abuse and addiction. Even worse, it is at a rock bottom 50th in access to treatment.
Oregon also had some of the strictest COVID policies in the country and only removed its mask mandate on March 31, making it among the last states to do so, KGW added.
Nike, of course, was right in line with Oregon’s strict COVID policies and, in 2020, even closed all its stores nationwide over its hysterical fear of the coronavirus.
Nike is one of the most left-wing corporations in the U.S.A., so left-wing that it couldn’t even see its way clear to release a Betsy Ross flag-themed shoe it had planned because its partner, American anthem protester Colin Kaepernick, illogically equated the Betsy Ross flag with slavery.
On the other hand, while the company couldn’t bring itself to honor American history, it did put out a shoe commemorating the day Colin Kaepernick first took a knee during the national anthem.
Despite the company’s commitment to “social justice” and the poor and oppressed, Nike has also been mysteriously silent in the face of China’s genocide against its minority Uyghur population and its long, long list of other human rights abuses.
Indeed, Nike isn’t just remaining mum on China’s abuses, current company CEO John Donahoe has admitted that at the same time they stay quiet on China’s crimes, the red giant is “a very important market for us.” Follow the money.
Meanwhile, the communist regime has been excoriated for perpetrating abuses against its Uyghur people in the Xinjiang autonomous region, allegedly persecuting the Muslim minority with forced sterilization and slave labor.
Granted, Knight is no longer running Nike, having stepped down in 2016, but his company has been reliably left-wing for decades.
However, for Knight to realize that the Democrats need to be kept out of power like his political donations this year show, says volumes about just how bad the Democrats have messed up this country, not to mention how much more likely that red wave is set to wash over America’s political scene in November.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston, or Truth Social @WarnerToddHuston
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