McHaddad: Jim Doherty and Hank Sanders Join the Cyrus Javadi Caucus

Selling your soul for policies that makes life worse for your community is an interesting political gambit, and State Representative Cyrus Javadi is in for a rude awakening from his constituents about joining the Democratic Party for the express purpose of making transportation more expensive on the North Coast. His pomposity appears to be inspiring recalled Morrow County Commissioner Jim Doherty and nepo baby New Yorker Hank Sanders to jump ship from their own constituencies and supporters to dive head-first into the opposition’s unwelcome arms.

Doherty was recalled by voters in Morrow County before launching two failed attempts to run for state legislator. After losing the Senate District 29 Republican primary, Doherty spoke at an assembly of electors for the far left Senate candidate Tania Wildbill in Pendleton. Fresh off his decisive primary loss to Representative Greg Smith, Doherty apparently decided that Oregon needed to hear his voice, boosting Tina Kotek’s call for a data center moratorium at a protest in Salem full of protestors from the Democratic Socialists of America:

Never since 1980 has all the state stood up, and came together from left to right west to east and said no to nuclear energy in Oregon… I am ready to endorse the first gubernatorial candidate who steps up to see the sign of the time.

Tina Kotek spoke next about her statewide data center moratorium efforts, also thanking Doherty for his speech. The conservative response to this shift in political alliances was quick.

Umatilla Morrow Young Republicans

Jim Doherty endorsed Tina Kotek yesterday and then made a promotional video for socialist candidate Hank Sanders. This is unacceptable for a “Republican” and is why we did not support him in the primary.

Democrat Doherty showing his true colors

Rep. Greg Smith

You just never know what is going to occur on the steps of the Oregon State Capitol.

Yesterday, the person who ran against me publicly threw their support behind Governor Kotek over Christine Drazan during a political rally put together in part by Oregon Rural Action and the Democratic Socialists of America. After he announced his intention, Governor Kotek took to the podium, thanked him for his words, and expressed her gratitude and support to the audience.

I have to say, I didn’t see this coming at all.

Doherty Responds

Doherty responded directly to critics on social media, writing in part:

My exact words were:

‘Never since 1980 has all the state stood up, and came together from left to right west to east and said no to nuclear energy in Oregon… I am ready to endorse the first gubernatorial candidate who steps up to see the sign of the time.’

That is a direct challenge to any candidate from any party to finally step up for the Columbia Basin. If you watch my full speech, you’ll see it was about the heavy toll data centers and rising nitrates are taking on our underserved communities and our water.I am waiting for a leader who actually listens to the people of Eastern Oregon.

But let me be perfectly clear: fighting for the people of this community doesn’t stop after the election. No matter who wins, I will be here holding them accountable to protect our water and our future. Until a candidate actually steps up to earn it, don’t twist my words for political games.

Doherty went on to speak to Hank Sanders, a Democratic candidate for State Representative in Hood River hoping to serve concurrently with his mother, State Senator Lisa Reynolds, after moving to Oregon last year from New York City. Apparently unfamiliar with northeast Oregon’s horrific groundwater contamination crisis after his career as a New York Times liberal headline pitch bot, Sanders let Doherty further rhetorically conflate the two issues on a Facebook video, where Doherty said about data centers: “Did they get rid of their wastewater up above wells and poison the groundwater? Yes they did.” Doherty has consistently advocated in favor of groundwater contamination cleanup efforts in the Lower Umatilla Basin as northeast Oregon’s legislators deal with the problem in Salem. Dealing with the problem on the policy side requires results rather than rhetoric, and other local legislators will probably not be shifting the contamination blame to data centers any time soon because the contaminants are sourced from the following:

• about 70% from irrigated farmland
• about 13% from large dairy and cattle farms (confined animal feeding operations or CAFOs)
• about 8% from animal pastures
• about 5% from food processing facilities that reuse wastewater to irrigate fields
• about 5% from residential onsite septic systems and other sources

Data centers are the bogeyman of the day, previously inane elements of digital infrastructure that are taking on heat due to their role in advancing artificial intelligence in the economy at the price of American jobs. Construction of these data centers provides short-term labor opportunities, and their operation requires some minimal maintenance labor. Data centers are not solely focused on AI, as digital processing for something as simple as sending a Facebook message occurs at the exact same facility where someone asks ChatGPT to generate an illustration of a tuba coming to life and eating a cupcake. I wrote this editorial with an online word processor that would vanish if I disconnected from WiFi, while I used Duck AI to search for the citation about nitrate contaminant sources instead of just searching on Google. The massive expansion of data center construction in America certainly warrants careful policy analysis and steps to ensure consumers are not burdened with the costs of mining and selling their own data, but they are not intrinsically evil in the digital world that grew organically around humanity’s adoption of the Internet and smartphones. They are also not pumping nitrates into Umatilla Basin groundwater, and conflating data centers with contamination risks the many blue collar jobs that should come when the world’s digital consumers call upon hardworking northeast Oregonians to grab their hammers and build.

Hank Sanders wanders into the Eastern Oregon Cyrus Javadi Caucus by way of natural gas. As a newly minted Oregon politician intending to ride his mother’s coattails into a cushy legislative office, Sanders recalls his childhood a hundred miles away from Hood River to invoke Green New Deal fantasies. According to Sanders, growing up in Yamhill County meant, “fighting off corporations that wanted to put liquified natural gas pipelines through our ground.” Since his political awakening was clearly inspired by opposition to natural gas, that must remain at the top of his mind as he follows in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s footsteps to power Oregon without fossil fuels, right? Perhaps he simply forgot about that when he accepted a $4,000 campaign donation from the Natural Gas Political Action Committee, a pro-natural gas campaign fund overseen by a pair of Northwest Natural employees.

I laughed last year when Rep. Javadi said that he was elected solely by District 32 voters and not by a political party, even though he was only on the ballot because Republicans nominated him and the Oregon Republican Party spent over $10,000 to boost his first campaign (I remember because I was the ORP’s Treasurer). Running in Oregon’s most competitive House Race in 2022, being a Republican was once awfully important to a man who eventually dropped the Party that put him in office like a hot rock because they opposed … *checks notes* … higher taxes and more expensive fuel. Serving all Oregonians is one thing, and admirable for all Beaver State elected officials, but turning on the people that put you in office is not a mark of moral fortitude. For Doherty, getting thousands of votes as a Republican Senate candidate only to throw political weight behind a New Age leftist or running for a GOP House seat then speaking at a rally organized solely to benefit an unpopular Democratic Governor is a sign that his loyalties are not to conservative Republicans in his community. Sanders is trying to cast himself as a hippie but taking money hand over fist from a donor base that has no interest in the Green New Deal. Voters appreciate consistency from their political candidates and thought leaders, and the Cyrus Javadi Caucus is doing their best to reject voting blocks they are courting.