In recent years, the Salem-Keizer School Board, which oversees the second largest school district in Oregon and serves over 40,000 students, has been plagued with accusations of racism, a failure to represent the diverse population of students and financial ties with special interest groups and political insiders not typically associated with education. These financial ties are largely along partisan lines, despite the fact that school board seats are officially non-partisan positions. With school board elections scheduled for May 18, Salem-Keizer voters will soon be able to decide if they want to keep their current, embattled school board or change it.
Financial Ties to Special Interest Groups
One of the biggest questions around Salem-Keizer School Board elections is who is funding candidates’ campaigns, and what the candidates are spending their money on. Recent school board elections have seen high spending by some candidates, totaling tens of thousands of dollars, particularly notable as the position is unpaid. This has been a point of contention itself with some community members criticizing the expensive campaigning as making the seats inaccessible to members of certain groups.
Analysis of campaign contributions for the seven current board members, filed with the Oregon Secretary of State, reveal that significant sums of money appear to be cycled by Salem-Keizer School Board members and a tightly connected network of special interest groups and political insiders. The special interest groups are often unrelated to education and a number of the political insiders are from outside the Salem-Keizer School District.
Several current school board members have received thousands of dollars from pro-life groups that, according to public filings with the Oregon Department of Justice and the Oregon Secretary of State, are all interconnected with reappearing individuals and financial sources. These interconnected nonprofit organizations and PAC’s include Oregon Right to Life, Oregon Right to Life PAC, Oregon Right to Life Victory PAC and the Women’s Leadership Coalition PAC.
Publicly available election disclosures reveal that Oregon Right to Life and its cabal of PACs have given almost $39,000 to the campaigns of current directors in the last two Salem-Keizer School Board elections alone. This makes them the biggest single funder of current members of the board, through cash contributions and in-kind donations.
In his 2017 school board election, Director Jesse Lippold, who is running for re-election in May, received almost $9000 in campaign contributions from the Oregon Right to Life PAC and Oregon Right to Life Victory PAC. In 2019, Chair Satya Chandragiri received over $11,500 from Oregon Right to Life and the Oregon Right to Life PAC for his school board campaign. Vice-Chair Danielle Bethell was given $6449 from Oregon Right to Life in her 2019 school board campaign (and another $107,790 from Oregon Right to Life and interrelated PACs in her run for County Commissioner in 2020).
Director Marty Heyen received $8,163 between in-kind and cash contributions from Oregon Right to Life and its PAC’s in her 2019 school board campaign (and more than $5000 in her failed bid for the Oregon House of Representatives in 2018). Director Kathy Goss received an in-kind contribution from the interconnected Women’s Leadership Coalition PAC in the amount of $3700.
Only Directors Paul Kyllo and Sheronne Blasi have not received money or in-kind contributions from Oregon Right to Life or an interconnected PAC in the two most recent school board elections.
The contributions appear to be a coordinated, multi-year attempt by a select group of special interests to establish and retain a majority on the Salem-Keizer School Board, which they did in the 2019 school board election. They are now fighting to hold onto this majority in May 2021.
In early February, Representative Bill Post (R-Keizer) reposted on Facebook, “There are at least 3-4 zones [in the Salem-Keizer School District] that need a good solid Conservative candidate willing to run in each zone…. All need pro-life, Conservative candidates to run. These elected board members have tremendous influence over what your children learn.”
He went on to add that “pro-life” candidates are important because “In 2017, a slate of Planned Parenthood-backed candidates took control of the school board in Hillsboro and overturned a decision that stopped school-based health centers from dispensing birth control to students.” He also echoed statements from Oregon Right to Life itself that “pro-life” candidates are important because Planned Parenthood taught sex-ed in the Salem-Keizer School District in the early 2010’s.
Tens of Thousands Paid to Political Insiders
The complex financial ties of Salem-Keizer School Board members with Oregon Right to Life and its PAC’s do not end with the tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions. Salem-Keizer School Board members who received those funds, in turn, collectively have paid tens of thousands of dollars to private companies owned by political insiders, including Reagan Knopp, the current political director of Oregon Right to Life.
Board Chair Chandragiri paid $25,788 to Knopp & Company LLC, a political consulting firm founded by Reagan Knopp, son of State Senator Tim Knopp (R-Bend), starting in March 2019. Days later, $11,482 in in-kind donations are reported on Chandragiri’s campaign finance record from Oregon Right to Life and Oregon Right to Life PAC. Chandragiri went on to win his school board seat in May 2019 by 1624 votes.
Two years earlier, Kathy Goss had paid Reagan Knopp’s LLC the first of several payments totalling $4,858 on April 15, 2017. Three days later, her campaign reported $3700 in in-kind contributions from one of the PAC’s related to Oregon Right to Life. The following month, Goss won by just 859 votes.
Reagan Knopp’s LinkedIn profile lists him as a former “project manager” at New Media Northwest, the firm run by Chuck Adams, a controversial political strategist criticized in an Oregonian editorial for his campaign tactics, back in 2006. New Media Northwest remains active, with Bethell paying more than $20,000 for their services in her recent bid for County Commissioner.
Although Reagan Knopp’s address is in Linn County and he is listed as a recent president of the Jackson County Republican Party in southern Oregon, Reagan Knopp has been deeply embedded in the Salem-Keizer School Board elections in recent years, frequently changing roles behind the scenes, and more recently in media interviews, despite living outside the district.
Reagan Knopp is involved in the school board election again this year, co-founding a new political action campaign called Marion+Polk First PAC. Publicly available records indicate that Salem-Keizer School Board’s current chair, Chandragiri, contributed $250 to this PAC, and Oregon Right to Life gave $5000. Overall, $15,507 has been raised in the past 3 months with approximately $8000 in “miscellaneous cash” contributions listed on the PAC’s public filings with donors unidentified.
Funds given to Marion+Polk First PAC from Chandragiri, Oregon Right to Life, and other contributors—including the undisclosed contributors who gave the “miscellaneous cash” donations—have, in turn, been paid to Intisar Strategies, a company that was recently formed by David Kilada. Like Reagan Knopp, Kilada was a project manager at Chuck Adams’ political firm (New Media NW) before becoming the political director for Oregon Right to Life, a position he held for almost five years according to his LinkedIn Profile.
Kilada’s time as the political director of Oregon Right to Life aligned with the time that the Salem-Keizer School Board elections saw tens of thousands of dollars infused into the campaigns of candidates, including Lippold, Chandragiri, Goss, Bethell and Heyen. Both Kilada and Knopp have been listed as Directors of the Women’s Leadership Coalition PAC, one of the political action committees tied to Oregon Right to Life, which has donated to members of the current school board.
Reagan Knopp arrived at Oregon Right to Life in July 2019 to take over as political director from Kilada, a couple months after the 2019 school board elections. Within one month, Kilada, the outgoing political director, created his own political consulting LLC, Intisar Strategies, similar to Reagan Knopp’s LLC, which public records reveal had benefited for years from money paid by Salem-Keizer school board candidates and their campaigns.
Kilada stayed on at Oregon Right to Life until the end of 2019, according to LinkedIn, overlapping with Reagan Knopp for about six months. Since then, public finance records show that Oregon Right to Life and its PAC’s have paid tens of thousands to Kilada’s new consulting LLC.
Who Is Marion+Polk First PAC?
Marion+Polk First PAC is a new political action committee run by many of the same people involved financially and politically with Salem-Keizer School Board members in recent years. Half of the founders appear to live outside of Marion and Polk Counties and have no known relationship to the Salem-Keizer School District except for their political and financial ties to school board candidates and members.
Marion+Polk First PAC was co-founded by Reagan Knopp two days after Representative Paul Evans [D-Monmouth/Independence], whose district includes part of the Salem-Keizer School District, wrote a letter expressing “mounting concern” about the school board’s mismanagement to Reagan Knopp’s former client, Board Chair Chandragiri. Chandragiri donated $250 to Reagan Knopp’s new PAC opposing Evans’ efforts to reform the Salem-Keizer School Board elections. Reagan Knopp’s employer, Oregon Right to Life, donated $5000 to the rapidly-formed PAC as well.
Public records reveal that the company Kilada formed the previous year, Intisar Strategies, was retained as a consultant to the new PAC, and Kilada served as the spokesperson when Evans’ proposal was reported in the media. In the first three months of Marion+Polk First PAC’s existence, Kilada’s LLC has billed over $28,000.
In his letter, Evans criticized Chandragiri’s disregard for public comments from the district’s students and their families at the school board’s public meetings. Evans warned that he would propose legislation to reform Salem-Keizer School Board elections if the school board did not reform itself, calling for “zone-based” voting so that neighborhoods will be able to elect their own school board members and the potential of state-appointed positions on the board.
Currently, candidates come from different zones, but the elections are district-wide, which disproportionately favors wealthy, white candidates and allows for more influence by special interest groups and political insiders from outside the community. As a result, no Latino/Latina candidate has ever been elected to the Salem-Keizer School Board, despite the fact that 44% percent of the district’s students are Hispanic, according to demographic information from Salem-Keizer School District.
Marion+Polk First PAC is not limiting its involvement to school board elections. The PAC also opposed the calls of Salem-Keizer students and families to end the district’s contract for school resource officers based on the negative effects the presence of the officers were reported to have on BIPOC students. In light of community concerns, a decision was made by Salem-Keizer Superintendent Christy Perry to end the school resource officers contract earlier this month.
Reagan Knopp and David Kilada are not the only political insiders involved with Marion+Polk First PAC. Natalie Newgard of Summit Finance NW, a campaign finance firm, is listed as treasurer with a Tigard address and a California area code. Reid Sund, who Vanessa Nordyke beat in a race for Salem City Council in 2020, is also listed as a board member of the PAC (Chuck Adams worked on Sund’s failed race), as is Debora Nearman, wife of State Representative Mike Nearman (R-Polk County).
Mike Nearman came under fire in the past several months after a surveillance video was released showing him letting alt-right protesters into the Oregon State Capitol on Dec. 21 when the capitol was closed and the protesters were trying to breach the building. Video surveillance shows that after Mike Nearman let in the protesters, he immediately walked around the building and entered through another door. At the time, legislators had gathered for a one-day session to pass wildfire and COVID-19 relief legislation. Alt-right protesters did, in fact, breach the building and violently attacked law enforcement. An unlawful assembly was declared and arrests were made. As a result of those events, Mike Nearman was stripped of his responsibilities in the House and fined.
Mike Nearman contributed directly to the school board campaigns of Goss and Chandragiri.
More Financial Ties
Chandragiri paid thousands more dollars to C & A consulting, another prominent Republican consulting firm to handle his financials. The founder, Carol Russell, served as treasurer for his campaign committee, Friends of Satya. According to public records, Russell lives in Bandon, Oregon. Russell handled his finances when he campaigned unsuccessfully in the Republican primary for Oregon House District 19, the year before he ran for school board.
Chandragiri said that he hired Russell to handle his finances because she has “done that for other Republican leaders.”
Russell is regarded as one of Oregon’s most prolific Republican treasurers, serving in this position for over 50 campaigns for conservative candidates, PACs and ballot measures according to the Oregon Secretary of State website. She is treasurer for groups such as the Oregonians For Medical Freedom PAC, which opposes mandatory vaccinations. She served as treasurer for an organization run by the tobacco industry which successfully killed Measure 50, a cigarette tax proposed to expand healthcare for children.
Chandragiri was not the lone school board candidate who used Russell as treasurer. Bethell and Heyen did, as well.
Directors Tied to Extreme Right-Wing Groups
Financial ties to special interest groups and partisan political insiders are not where the criticism ends for members of Salem-Keizer’s School Board. Heyen has come under fire for both a failure to address racist incidents in board meetings and ties to extreme right-wing groups. In response to her failure to hold members of the board accountable for their racism when she was chair, a petition garnered more than 5000 signatures calling for her removal last summer. Heyen refused to resign; however, she did not run again for re-election as board chair following the petition.
Notably, Heyen has discussed and been seen in photos with members of the Three Percenters. The Anti-Defamation League defines the Three Percenters as a “right-wing,” “extremist” militia. The movement has anti-immigrant, anti-muslim, and anti-leftist sentiments.
An image from a joint campaign event for Chandragiri and Heyen shows her husband posing with known members of alt-right, militia groups and the Proud Boys. Among those present is Angela Roman, who is affiliated with the Three Percenters and was a major player in right-wing events that turned violent in the summer and fall of 2020. A person in the image is also seen making a “white power” hand gesture.
Heyen told the Salem Reporter that she is not a member of the Three Percenters, but her husband has attended a few meetings and she is friends with members.
Her husband, Jeff Heyen, was the chair of the Marion County Republican Party. As chair, he was involved in an Independence Day picnic at Riverfront in which reporters were threatened, intimidated by armed men and chased off, including a photographer from the Statesman Journal and a member of the Clypian team. Shortly after talking with Jeff Heyen, the Clypian reporter was surrounded by armed men who demanded the reporter’s camera. A bystander had to intervene and escort the reporter to safety. The Clypian reporter who was harassed and intimidated by the armed men at the event with Jeff Heyen is a legal minor and a student in Salem-Keizer School District.
Flaunting COVID-19 Restrictions
Other members of the school board have come under fire for reckless actions relating to COVID-19. In January of 2021, Lippold received criticism for posts in which he disregarded COVID restrictions, posting maskless photos on social media. The since-deleted post, showed Lippold and friends maskless at a holiday party with a tongue-in-cheek caption about how they “definitely didn’t social distance last night.” He added that he was tested and planned to quarantine, although this did not save him from the criticism that he acted recklessly during a global pandemic to go to a party.
Other posts shirking COVID restrictions are not difficult to find on Lippold’s page. In July, Lippold posted an image of a “pool party with friends,” in which none of the 24 people in the photo were wearing masks. Other images show him without a mask handing out chromebooks to students when schools shut down due to COVID.
Several more group photos show a maskless Lippold posing with friends at a Halloween Party and with YoungLife students on a beach trip. Lippold excused this behavior in the captions of those two posts, saying that they wore masks, except when taking photos, but this has not stopped the criticism.
Screenshots of Director Lippold’s Instagram show him at events and parties throughout the pandemic along with groups of maskless individuals.
Lippold isn’t the only school board director who has posted photos of maskless events on social media during the pandemic. Bethell posted photos of a campaign event hosted by Dalke Construction, featuring other prominent members of the Oregon Republican party, including Representative Post. The photos again show no one in masks, although in a defense to critical Facebook comments, Bethell argued that masks and hand sanitizer were provided and that she was socially distant.
Screenshots of a campaign event for Bethell in the Fall of 2020 show maskless attendees.
Accusations of Classism and Racism
In addition to concerns about their financial ties to special interests and political insiders, involvement with extremist groups, and open flouting of the governor’s executive orders and public health guidelines in the middle of a global pandemic that has prevented most Salem-Keizer School District students from being able to return to their classrooms for over a year, members of the board have also been accused of racism and classism.
In June of 2020, video surfaced from a March school board meeting of Director Paul Kyllo wearing a mask with the face of a Black man. The board at large responded with laughs both immediately in response and on social media later. Due to the lack of accountability from the board and its chair at the time, there were widespread calls for Kyllo and Heyen’s resignations. Kyllo issued an apology when the video went viral. Only Blasi came out and unequivocally condemned their actions, and called for the resignation of Heyen, but not Kyllo, after speaking with local NAACP leaders, as reported by the Statesman Journal.
“I will hold myself and others accountable,” Chandragiri said in response to Kyllo’s actions during the summer when the news broke, but added, “I have not made a statement condemning Heyen and Kyllo because the issue has been addressed.”
“I need our board to feel safe, so that they can safely share,” Chandragiri also added.
At the beginning of July, the board received heavy criticism from the community claiming that they did not respect the wishes of the population with the election of Chandragiri as the school board chair and Bethell as vice-chair at the end of Heyen’s term. At this point, the board was still reeling from the community backlash to Paul Kyllo’s Blackface. Despite the majority of public comments calling for the election of Blasi as chair, the board elected Chandragiri and Bethell instead.
Chandragiri’s run for chair was not anticipated. Blasi had 130 letters of support and the support of Superintendent Christy Perry. Meanwhile, Chandragiri only had one letter of support.
“I did not share with Director Blasi or the newspaper or the community that I was running [for chair],” Chandragiri told the Clypian in an interview last summer.
Although Chandragiri did not receive as much public criticism as Heyen and Kyllo, some have called for his resignation as well, mainly current or former students in the district on social media.
In October 2020, the Salem-Keizer NAACP and other organizations serving people of color hosted a Zoom forum in the lead up to the 2020 General Election. In the forum, they invited all local candidates to attend and asked them the same questions. The NAACP does not officially endorse candidates.
Bethell was one of the only candidates who declined to attend.
She told the Salem Reporter at the time that because the group Latinos Unidos Siempre was one of the co-hosts, she didn’t participate. Latinos Unidos Siempre is a “POC, youth-led, grassroots, social justice” group which was leading the fight to remove School Resource Officers from the district’s schools because of the negative impact their presence has been shown to have on BIPOC students.
In an October Facebook post, Julianne Jackson, a Black community leader, posted a graphic in response reading “Marion County Commissioner Candidate Danielle Bethell refused to participate in a recent candidate forum organized by the Salem-Keizer NAACP and other organizations standing up for BIPOC communities. Bethell claimed she ‘didn’t feel safe.’ The forum was conducted remotely via Zoom, not in-person. Why doesn’t Bethell care more about BIPOC voters??”
In another Salem Reporter article that same month, Bethell stated that she thinks that systemic racism is real, but has not seen it personally in Marion County.
Comments in Meetings
This was not the end of controversies for the school board. In August 2020, a video circulated from a School Board meeting of Goss criticizing the amount of money the district spent to feed children during the pandemic. In the 2019-2020 school year, 70 percent of Salem-Keizer students were considered to be economically disadvantaged, many relying on free and reduced lunches. The federal government provides reimbursement for many, but not all, of the meals.
Goss referred to feeding students over the summer as “extra things” that should be trimmed. She likened feeding students to getting a new luxury vehicle.
“I think we’ve made it too easy for some parents to just pat their kids on the back on the way out and assume we are going to feed them breakfast, lunch and sometimes dinner. I don’t think we have the money to do that. Believe me, I’d like a brand new red, convertible Mercedes, but I know I can’t afford one right now, so you won’t find one in my garage. I think we need to approach things in that kind of consumer view,” Goss said during the meeting.
In a school board meeting on March 15, Blasi came under fire for a comment in which she said “Good. Good, motherf*****,” after the motion to approve the summary of the evaluation of Superintendent Christy Perry, which she opposed, failed. The intended recipient of the comment is unclear, if it was directed at anyone in particular.
After she made the comment, Heyen told Blasi that her mic was on. Blasi responded “Good. I’m terribly sorry, but good.” She added that she thought she was muted and is sorry, but that she was “appalled” by the process and their treatment of Perry, the board’s sole employee.
“I know that you have been working so hard, despite all the challenges that we have faced in the world, during a pandemic and fires…. You guys have just forged ahead, despite the challenges and you put students and families first,” Blasi had said earlier in the meeting to Perry. “I think it’s unfortunate that you were not recognized by this board… for not only being the Superintendent of the Year for the State of Oregon, but for also being one of four finalists for the national Superintendent of the Year.”
Political Ambitions of Board Directors
Many of the current school board directors ran for the school board after they failed in political campaigns for public office at the state level. Chandragiri ran for and lost the Republican primary for Oregon House of Representatives District 19 in 2018, right before his bid for school board. That same year, Heyen ran for House District 22, winning the Republican primary, but losing in the general election. Goss, like Heyen, won the Republican primary, but lost the general election, in her 2014 bid for House District 20.
In 2020, Bethell won a race for Marion County Commissioner, keeping the Republican trifecta of the Marion County Commission intact. She is currently holding both positions which is completely legal, however she has faced some community criticism that she needs to focus on one position or the other.
Looking Ahead
In what is likely to be another contentious set of elections, four zones have director seats up for re-election in May. Only Lippold has filed to run again. March 18 was the last day to file, with 11 people filing across the four zones. Blasi, Goss and Kyllo did not file.
Heyen, Bethell and Chandragiri, three of the most publicly criticized board members, were elected in 2019 and, as a result, have two years left in their four-year terms. Depending on the results of this coming election, the make-up of the board could be both changed dramatically or stay shockingly similar. However, no matter how the election goes, the Salem-Keizer School Board will likely not escape heavy criticism.
The memories of the public consciousness may be relatively short, however, the current school board’s lasting legacy will almost certainly be a long record of public criticism for its excessively political nature and the insensitive comments and actions of its members. This is likely, particularly as these actions came during one of the most challenging periods in modern history for the district’s students, families, employees, as well as the larger Salem-Keizer community.
The Clypian will be following the school board election closely and providing the community with updates. This is the first installment in a series in the lead up to the election.
