Wearing all black, Phil Knight sits on a chare on stage.

Phil Knight, billionaire co-founder of Nike, sits at an event at the Nike campus in Beaverton in 2023. Knight is a prolific donor to Republican candidates in Oregon.

Jonathan Levinson / OPB

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Oregon’s richest man is once again setting political giving records with his checkbook.

Nike co-founder Phil Knight last month sent $3 million to a political committee focused on electing more Republicans to the state Legislature. That committee, Bring Balance to Salem, has been increasingly important to the GOP’s aim of winning back influence in the state over the last two election cycles.

The check marks the largest single donation ever by an individual political donor in Oregon. And it brings Knight’s total giving to Bring Balance to Salem up to $9 million over the last three years.

With the donation, first reported by the Oregon Journalism Project, Knight is signaling once again that he is fed up with Democratic dominance in Oregon. While the billionaire used to donate to members of both parties — including sending $250,000 to Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber’s 2014 reelection bid — his largesse has been squarely focused on the GOP in recent years.

In 2022, Knight spent more than $5 million supporting the two chief candidates running against Democrat Tina Kotek in the governor’s race. In a rare interview that year, Knight told the New York Times he is “an anti-Tina person,” and spoke of being opposed to drug decriminalization and other policies Oregon had enacted.

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Knight’s money didn’t dictate the outcome of the election. Kotek defeated both Republican Christine Drazan and nonaffiliated candidate Betsy Johnson that year. Drazan is once again seeking the state’s highest elected office.

Four years before, in 2018, $2.5 million that Knight spent supporting GOP gubernatorial candidate Knute Buehler wasn’t enough to lift him over Democrat Kate Brown either.

Knight has had slightly more success with Bring Balance to Salem, the PAC dedicated to increasing GOP influence in the statehouse. The committee was spearheaded in 2021 by Greg Walden, a former Republican congressman from Hood River who helped run GOP races nationally while in office.

Aided by $2 million from Knight during the 2022 election, Republicans clawed back some seats in the state House and Senate, eliminating Democratic supermajorities. While progress, the result was not as robust as Republican strategists had believed was possible.

The 2024 election was worse for the party. Despite a war chest for Walden’s PAC that included $4 million from Knight, the GOP lost one seat in both the House and Senate, once again falling to superminority status in both chambers.

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Mid-term elections are often unkind to the party that holds power in Washington, D.C., and many prognosticators believe Republicans will face headwinds next year. Knight’s latest check signals he is ready to spend big to counteract that difficulty locally.

History suggests Knight will also intervene in next year’s governor’s race, in which Kotek is widely expected to seek reelection. Despite criticisms on both sides of the aisle, most political observers expect her to prevail.