The Oregon Republican senators’ walkout and successful protests against a climate change bill have created a windfall of up to $120,000 for two fledgling political committees that formed last month.

The money came from agriculture, timber and trucking companies, Republican politicians like failed GOP gubernatorial candidate Knute Buehler, and Andrew Miller, a prominent and polarizing timber executive.

Miller was a major donor to conservative Oregon candidates until 2012, when his contributions began to drop off. He said seeding a political action committee for activists to use on public protests gave voice to people who haven’t been heard in Salem.

“It may make for messy events, but this is a genuine voice of everyday Oregonians speaking up,” Miller said in an interview.

Two political committees were created amid the climate bill walkout in the Legislature’s final days: Stand with our Senators PAC and the Miller-funded Timber Unity PAC.

The timber group, also known as TUPAC, has been the most active. It used a $5,000 donation from Miller to help pay some expenses around loggers’ and truckers’ raucous June 27 protest outside the state Capitol, including bus transportation, port-a-potties and other incidental expenses.

Since then, Miller’s group has raised thousands from small, undisclosed donors and has been boosted by merchandise sales -- $13,000 from bumper stickers emblazoned with the #TimberUnity hashtag and $6,000 from t-shirts, signs and coffee. It has announced plans to register as a nonprofit and continue its advocacy.

“We'll keep building this house together, and together, we will no longer stay silent about politicians that try to legislate us out of a job,” the group wrote on its Facebook page, which has attracted almost 17,000 followers.

Because the group hastily organized as a political committee, which must disclose its finances to the Oregon Secretary of State, the public can see how it has spent its money. Expenditures included $1,500 for a retainer and research fee for a law firm; Harris Berne Christensen; $3,800 in bus rentals to transport protesters to the Capitol last month; $750 in stickers; $340 on port-a-potties. The money also bought $2,500 worth of coffee from Bridgetown Coffee, which the group is selling ($30 for two pounds) on its website as the #TimberUnity Breakfast Blend.

“While other coffee companies support HB 2020 cap and trade taxes, Bridgetown Coffee supports us!” the group says on its website. Stumptown Coffee Roasters is a member of Oregon Business for Climate, a group that supported the climate bill.

The climate bill opposition marks a return to the spotlight for Miller, the CEO of Stimson Lumber, a mill operator and timberland owner. Miller was an outspoken opponent of cap-and-trade, calling for a boycott of businesses that were members of Oregon Business for Climate. Three companies -- Dutch Bros. Coffee, Fort George Brewery and Deschutes Brewery -- withdrew from the group afterward.

Since 2007, Miller’s company has poured more than $2.5 million into largely unsuccessful attempts to elect Republicans to statewide offices, including former Trail Blazers center Chris Dudley’s failed 2010 race for governor against John Kitzhaber. But he stopped spending so much because his candidates weren’t winning.

“It didn’t work out,” Miller said.

The lesson he said he learned was that Oregon was moving in a different political direction. He blamed 60 layoffs in May at Stimson’s Forest Grove mill on the business environment created by that Democrat-led direction, echoing statements he made after Stimson layoffs in 2010.

Out in a yard at a Stimson Lumber facility while logs are unloaded. File/The Oregonian

Miller told The Oregonian/OregonLive that he is Timber Unity’s director “in name only” and has no regular communication with its leaders -- loggers, truckers and a grass seed farmer. Two recently traveled to the White House.

“I wish them well,” Miller said. “I don’t have any involvement or desire to be involved with what they do. It would be a huge mistake for someone from the traditional political world to steer them.”

The group has some help from the political world. It accepted a $2,500 in-kind donation of services from the marketing firm owned by former state Rep. Julie Parrish, R-West Linn. Parrish said she is on the group’s administrative team, her interest driven by her oldest son’s work as a wildland firefighter. “It’s a personal issue for me,” she said.

In his interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive, Miller expanded on his reasons for opposing the climate bill. Given how the state has poorly managed agencies that oversee transportation, energy, health care and human services such as foster care, Miller said, “do you really have confidence it can effectively and honestly run a huge new bureaucracy with complex rules and accounting that will have a tremendous amount of money running through it each year?”

“I oppose cap-and-trade simply because it creates a bureaucracy that outsiders do not understand, including pols, and insiders know how to game,” he said.

Although supporters of cap and trade in Oregon point to California’s successes since adopting a statewide cap-and-trade program in 2006, Miller said California’s system has prompted carbon emitters to relocate. “The entire dairy industry left the state,” he said. “The cost of compliance is too high.”

That is not true, however. California remains the nation’s biggest milk producer. “We’re still here,” said Bill Schiek, economist for the Dairy Institute of California, an industry group. “Cap and trade didn’t have a big influence. The dairy industry was able to adapt to cap and trade.”

Asked to explain the discrepancy, Miller said he could not. “I will refrain from making public statements in the future that I have not fact checked,” he said. “You got me. Good for you.”

Unlike Timber Unity, which Miller seeded, the Stand with our Senators committee has spent very little.

Stand with our Senators has raised $41,000 and has spent it only on administrative fundraising costs. The committee’s largest donation came from Buehler, who gave $5,000 in leftover campaign funds. Buehler did not respond to questions. In a tweet at the time of his gift, the Bend surgeon said the Legislature had “a total disregard for how Oregonians will continue to afford to live, work, and raise a family here.”

Knute Buehler, a Republican who lost his 2018 bid to unseat Gov. Kate Brown. File/The Oregonian

Stand with our Senators is also likely to see a major inflow of cash from a GoFundMe campaign that raised nearly $43,000 during the walkout. That total shrank by $4,000 as some donors requested refunds. Donors had questions about whether Oregon campaign finance law would allow the GoFundMe to give to a political committee. Some donors are anonymous or identified only by pseudonyms, its organizer said.

Carol Williams, the Silverton Republican who organized the GoFundMe, told The Oregonian/OregonLive she has the names of everyone who donated. Donors who give through GoFundMe can keep their identities confidential from the public while still being visible to the organizer.

Williams would not say whether she has identified pseudonymous donors. Those include people who gave token amounts and listed their names as “Democrats Are Racist,” “Stay Strong!!!”, “Sick and Tired Of Taxes!” and “Fight Tyranny.”

She would not confirm whether she has obtained the addresses, occupations and employers of the dozens of donors who gave.

Alma Whalen, a compliance officer with the Oregon State Elections Division, said it’s legal to use a GoFundMe campaign to raise money as long as donors’ identities and other personal details are disclosed to the political committee receiving the donations.

The forces behind Stand with Our Senators aren’t entirely clear.

Stuart Olson, a Salem-area farmer, and Adam Schwend, a Tillamook County real estate agent, are listed as directors of the group. Olson said it hasn’t decided what to do with its money pending advice from “our legal counsel” about whether it could cover expenses for the 11 Senate Republicans who walked out in late June.

Olson is a director of the Marion County Farm Bureau and is active with the Oregon Farm Bureau, part of a national organization, the American Farm Bureau Federation, that has opposed action on climate change. Olson’s farm operation formerly employed as its lobbyist Kristina McNitt, now the president of the Oregon Forest & Industries Council, the lobbying arm of Oregon’s timber industry.

The committee hasn’t listed any legal expenses. Asked who was behind the formation of the committee, Olson demurred.

“I’m not going to give that information out,” he said. “I won’t say exactly who’s who and what’s what.”

— Rob Davis

rdavis@oregonian.com

503.294.7657; @robwdavis

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