Well, that was quick. Less than two years into her term, Oregon Secretary of State Shemia Fagan has already had to resign under a cloud of shame and corruption. Who could have seen that coming in a one-party, Democrat-controlled state? As if this story couldn’t get any happier, Fagan was caught acting as a lobbyist for a weed dispensary that was millions of dollars behind in paying its taxes.
The Willamette Weekly newspaper caught onto the fact that Fagan was being paid $10,000 per month to act as a lobbyist for the La Mota weed dispensary chain. There are 22 La Mota pot dispensaries across the state of Oregon, plus several in New Mexico. In true pothead fashion, the company has more than $7 million in tax liens, because the owners maybe forgot to pay their taxes? Maybe they were on a run for some Doritos or gravy fries?
The troubled weed company has been under investigation in Oregon by the state’s Department of Revenue and the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission, in addition to the federal IRS. What better way to get your embattled company out of trouble with state and federal agencies than by bribing some politicians?
As Secretary of State, Shemia Fagan was being paid $6,420 per month or $77,000 per year. La Mota offered to pay her a base salary of $10,000 per month, plus a $30,000 bonus for every new license she helped the company establish outside of Oregon and New Mexico. La Mota was also actively lobbying politicians to push for further deregulation of the pot “industry.” Even as La Mota was struggling financially and failing to pay millions of dollars in taxes like every legitimate small business in the country, the pot dealers were also one of the main donors to Shemia Fagan’s campaign.
Fagan announced her resignation on Monday morning, May 1st, and then the media instantly did an about-face and started portraying her as a victim. She’s a single mom, so the press started publishing woe-is-me stories about how she only took the cash from the embattled weed company because she was struggling to make ends meet.
Sure.
Fagan apparently only took the job starting in February, so she wasn’t acting as the queen of the pot dealers during the 2022 midterm elections. She was, however, going to be overseeing Oregon’s elections in 2024. For those who don’t know, Oregon has one of the most corrupt election systems in the country, having been the very first state to adopt universal mail-in voting.
Ever since universal mail-in voting was implemented, all Republicans have been purged from statewide offices, and no Republican can ever again be elected to statewide office in Oregon. (What a coincidence!) That includes the governor, the state treasurer, two US Senate seats, and of course, the Secretary of State position. The corrupt elections are a big part of the reason why nearly every county in the eastern half of Oregon has now voted to secede and become a part of Idaho.
While it is good news that Fagan has resigned from office, Oregon’s dirty elections won’t be cleaned up by simply removing one corrupt state officeholder who was moonlighting as a pot dealer. Just two cities control the entire state government in Oregon: Portland and Eugene. And since those two cities are governed entirely by Democrats and potheads and communists, Oregon’s elections will continue to be rife with voter fraud.
Congress could clear up the corrupt voting systems in many states by imposing a federal ban on mail-in balloting. But since Republican leaders in the House and Senate were happy about what happened in the 2020 election to Donald Trump, this is likely not a fight they will take up anytime soon.
