BAKER CITY — Two Baker City Police officers responded to a complaint about audience behavior during a forum featuring several Republican candidates for Oregon governor Friday, March 25, at the Baker Elks Lodge.

Officers Justin Prevo and Jonathan Parsons responded to the Lodge, at 1896 Second St., around 6:09 p.m., according to the dispatch log.

They escorted a few people from the Elks Lodge early in the forum, which started about 6 p.m. Police didn’t make any arrests and no charges were filed, Police Chief Ty Duby said.

Duby said on March 29 that he “doesn’t feel really comfortable” with what happened.

“It puts us in a bad situation,” Duby said.

He said he doesn’t believe police are responsible for ensuring people attending an event such as the forum, which took place at a privately owned venue, comply with the audience rules.

So long as people attending aren’t acting in a threatening way, Duby said he doesn’t believe police officers should be involved.

Greg Baxter, Baker County district attorney, said he is awaiting reports from the Baker City Police to determine whether there is anything to pursue with possible charges.

Rick Rienks, of Baker City, who along with his wife, Penny, was escorted from the Elks Lodge by Prevo and Parsons, contends that the situation didn’t warrant summoning police.

Rienks said he and his wife, who are registered Republicans, attended the forum because they wanted to hear from the candidates.

Rules cause conflict

The conflict stemmed in part from rules that the Baker County Republican Party, which organized the forum, set, including a prohibition on people videoing the event or applauding while candidates were speaking.

Kerry McQuisten, Baker City mayor and a Republican gubernatorial candidate who attended the forum, said some candidate forums this year, including one in Pendleton on March 24 and one on March 26 at Vale, had similar rules.

McQuisten said she believes the “disturbance” during the forum at the Baker Elks Lodge was “scripted and preplanned.”

McQuisten, whose mother, Suzan Ellis Jones, is chair of the Baker County Republicans, said that prior to the forum she overheard a group of people talking about their plan to speak out in opposition to the rules.

In a post on her campaign Facebook page, McQuisten wrote that “the minute the format for the evening was read aloud, they began heckling.”

McQuisten said some of the people she overheard were carrying campaign signs for Marc Thielman, who is also seeking the Republican nomination in the May 17 primary.

Thielman called the forum rules “weird” and said he was disappointed that some candidates drove for hundreds of miles to attend the forums with a goal of “getting their message out” and meeting voters, only to have disturbances interfere.

Thielman said there’s “no validity” to McQuisten’s implication that his supporters conspired to disrupt the Baker City forum.

In a post on his campaign’s Facebook page, Thielman wrote that “the Baker County Republican Party hosted an entirely disrespectful and unAmerican gubernatorial candidate forum.”

“In these low-attendance, remote-location events which cannot be accessed easily by the majority of Oregonians, providing streaming coverage is a useful tool to voters,” Thielman wrote. “It is understood among earnest people seeking information that the sharing of candidate positions is beneficial to voters.

“One must wonder why a candidate, via her mother/campaign manager, would be so determined to stifle the respectful coverage of candidate positions,” Thielman wrote. “What is there to hide? Why is the flow of information to voters stopped at the dictate of one county chair? Is the candidate afraid to have her performance recorded and compared to that of other candidates?”

McQuisten, on her Facebook page, wrote: “The hue and cry on social media from such people is that their first amendment rights were infringed upon. The setup to make these claims, of course, was always part of their plan as this was my home county. No part of our wonderful Constitution gives any individual permission to cause harm simply because they feel entitled to. This behavior isn’t patriotism; this is thuggery.”

In a March 28 letter responding to the incident at the forum, the six-member executive committee of the Baker County Republican Party blamed the disruption on Baker County United, the local group formed last summer that has objected to Oregon Gov. Kate Brown’s executive orders requiring mask wearing and vaccinations during the pandemic.

“Law enforcement was made aware that we may have an issue at this event,” the letter reads. “We hoped not.”

The executive committee consists of Jones; vice chairman Julie McKinney; treasurer Joanna Dixon (who is also treasurer of McQuisten’s campaign committee and, like McQuisten, a member of the Baker City Council); secretary Justin Langan; and delegates Tom Van Diepen and Keith Jones.

The letter states that the ban on livestreaming the forum, except for hosts, was added after “ugly behavior” at a forum in the Portland area when someone “used their recording/live-streaming to bash other candidates with slander and name calling.”

Suzan Ellis Jones said the organizers’ video of the forum will be posted online.

The letter states that during the Baker City forum, one couple was recording the event and, after being asked to stop, declined. Jones said she believes Langan, who was part of the security detail along with Van Diepen and Sharon Bass, then called police.

“Allowing a disruption is unfair to ALL candidates and ALL who were there to watch the forum,” the letter states. “By allowing a faction to be disruptive is not supporting the rights of the whole. While this group screams first amendment rights, their rights do not overcome our right to assemble peacefully, or the rights of who we choose to have on private property at a private event.”

Rienks said that when officers Prevo and Parsons arrived, he told them that he was there to listen to the candidates and did not feel there was any reason for him and his wife to leave.

Rienks said he eventually decided to go along with the officers. While walking out of the Elks Lodge, he said he started chanting, “hell no, we won’t go,” and that some other audience members started repeating the slogan.

Rienks said others yelled “let them stay.”

He said some other participants, who had not been asked to leave, also exited in what he considered a show of “solidarity.”

The executive committee’s letter also notes that “others chose to leave as well.”

Rienks said that outside the Elks Lodge, he shook hands with the police officers and left.

He said he considers the episode a “betrayal” of the candidates who attended, and he intends to send an apology letter to each of them.

Other interparty disputes among RepublicansThielman isn’t the only Republican to reference the relationship between Jones, the longtime Baker County Republican chair, and her daughter, McQuisten, who is seeking to become the first governor from Eastern Oregon in more than half a century.

In a February letter, Dallas Heard, then the chairman of the Oregon Republican Party (Heard resigned the position in early March, citing “wickedness” in the party), asked Jones to respond in writing to a series of complaints, including that the county party donated $2,500 in November 2021 to McQuisten’s campaign.

In the letter, Heard writes that the Oregon Republican Party’s bylaws require the party to treat all GOP candidates equally prior to a primary election. To comply with that bylaw, Heard wrote, the Baker County Republicans would need to donate $2,500 to each GOP candidate, rather than contributing to McQuisten’s campaign alone.

But Jones contends that the Baker County Republican bylaws allow members to override chapter bylaws by a vote of a majority of those present, and that doing so, in the case of the donation to McQuisten’s campaign, does not violate the state GOP bylaws.

Jake Brown of Halfway, an elected precinct committeeperson for the Baker County Republican Party, also filed a complaint with the Oregon Government Ethics Commission regarding the $2,500 donation.

Brown sent the complaint to the state agency, which is responsible for reviewing potential violations of Oregon’s government ethics laws, on Dec. 31.

The Ethics Commission did not open a case based on Brown’s complaint, however, because members of county political parties, including Jones, are not considered public officials and thus not under the Commission’s jurisdiction, Susan Myers, the Commission’s compliance and education coordinator, wrote in an email to the Baker City Herald.

In his written complaint to the Commission, Brown wrote that the $2,500 donation, which was approved at the GOP Central Committee’s Nov. 29, 2021, meeting, was not listed on the meeting agenda.

He believes that omission violates the Committee’s bylaws.

According to the bylaws, “Material changes in the agenda or a substantial substitution of a new agenda shall be treated as a new meeting, and will require the mandatory ten (10) days’ meeting notice. Minimal agenda additions or deletions are allowed by majority vote of those present. The Chair or Vice-chair, in their sole discretion, will determine which agenda changes are truly ‘minimal.’”

Brown contends that the $2,500 donation does not constitute a minimal change to the agenda, since that amount equals about 66% of the $3,799.87 the Committee had on hand at the start of November, according to its treasurer’s report.

Brown’s complaint was the latest in a series of contentious exchanges between him and the executive committee of the Baker County GOP.

In September 2021, a majority of the members of the Baker County Republican Party approved a resolution censuring Brown for, among things, allegedly “maliciously commenting about Gubernatorial Candidate Kerry McQuisten with the intent to hurt her campaign” during the Miners Jubilee event in Baker City in July 2021.

The resolution states: “Be it resolved by the Baker County Republicans that Mr. Brown cease and desist his constant barrage of libel and slander.”

Heard, in his letter to Jones, questioned a screenshot regarding Brown’s censure that was posted on Jones’ personal Facebook page, and Heard asked Jones to provide a copy of the Baker County GOP bylaws allowing for “such public censure.”

Brown and Jones also disagreed over Senate Bill 865, which was introduced in the Oregon Legislature in May 2021.

The bill, which passed and became law on Jan. 1, 2022, makes it a fineable offense to serve simultaneously as a state officeholder and an officer of a state central committee of a political party. Violators can be fined $250 per day.

The bill challenges Heard, a Republican state senator from Roseburg, who earlier in 2021 was elected chair of the Oregon Republican Party.

The bill says it was introduced “at the request of Malheur, Baker and Morrow Counties Republican Executive Committees.”

Brown said in May 2021 that he did not support the bill, and that he was disappointed that Jones and other members of the Baker County executive committee backed the bill.

“One must wonder why a candidate, via her mother/campaign manager, would be so determined to stifle the respectful coverage of candidate positions.”

— Marc Thielman, Republican candidate for governor who attended a forum in Baker City on March 25

“No part of our wonderful Constitution gives any individual permission to cause harm simply because they feel entitled to. This behavior isn’t patriotism; this is thuggery.”

— Kerry McQuisten, Republican candidate for governor, referring to a disturbance during a candidate forum March 25 in Baker City