Salem Reporter Owner Spends Big on GOP Candidate for Salem Mayor
Tokarski dumps $40k into race, joins far-right supporters with deep pockets
The owner of a weekly newspaper in Salem has contributed nearly one-third of the entire amount raised to support Salem City Councilor and mayoral candidate Julie Hoy.
To date, City Councilor Julie Hoy’s campaign has far outraised the incumbent, Salem Mayor Chris Hoy (no relation) - largely sourcing financial support from wealthy business owners; far-right extremist PACs; and Republican political candidates/campaigns.
But Larry Tokarski, Salem Reporter owner and President of Mountain West Investment Corporation, is a gargantuan financial force in the race for Salem mayor. Through personal donations ($20,000) and one giant donation from Mountain West ($19,104), Tokarski is again using his vast wealth to tip the scales towards local right-wing candidates.
Tokarski’s contributions to Julie Hoy were made in two bursts - a personal donation of $10,000 in November 2023 (made the same day Tokarski’s newspaper ran an article announcing Julie Hoy’s candidacy), and $30,000 in early February 2024 split between personal and business donations.
Tokarski joins a familiar list of who’s who in the Salem-area GOP throwing financial support towards Julie Hoy, including:
Keizer City Councilor and subject of an open Oregon State Ethics Commission investigation Kyle Juran ($500)
Failed Salem-Keizer School Board Candidate and anti-transgender, book banning enthusiast Cassity Troutt ($250)
Marion+Polk First PAC ($4,250 in in-kind contributions), a group that most recently attempted to grift off of the Salem Payroll tax vote, and supported a slate of regressive, far-right candidates for Salem-Keizer School Board in 2023.
Salem-Keizer School Board Director Satya Chandragiri ($200), an “anti-woke” Republican with a penchant for spreading disinformation and unashamed friend to christofascists.
Oregon GOP Vice Chair and failed Republican Congressional candidate Angela Plowhead ($200).
Tokarski’s political spending doubled after founding the Salem Reporter
In fact, through this own personal donations and political money spent through his businesses, Tokarski has pumped nearly $2 million total into mostly Republican candidates since 2007, with a more recent trend of supporting more extreme far-right candidates with even more money as the Oregon GOP plummets to the ideological depths of delusional MAGA devotion.
Tokarski doesn’t make campaign donations in the name of his media business, the Salem Reporter. But through his Mountain West Investments business, he has flooded local and state GOP candidates with more than $1.5 million since 2008. Additionally, personal political donations from Tokarski himself total $412,599 since 2007 (all contribution data pulled from public sources via ORESTAR).
Since 2018, when Tokarski and Salem Reporter Publisher Les Zaitz founded the newspaper, Tokarski’s political contributions have ramped up significantly. Prior to founding the Salem Reporter, Tokarski made $774k in political donations privately and through his Mountain West business entity over the course of a decade.
Since founding the Salem Reporter, Tokarski’s political influence has surged with more than $1 million in campaign donations over the course of just 6 years.
In other words, Tokarski started at spending around $77k a year on his political pets. After founding the Salem Reporter, his political spending pace increased dramatically to $167k a year - more than doubling his efforts to get increasingly far-right and increasingly unhinged Republican candidates into local office.
Now, I don’t know Larr, and I certainly can’t speak to his intentions. But the guy who bankrolls very far-right local folks with profoundly stupid (and dangerous) ideas while also owning a significant local news source is…not great.
To their credit, Salem Reporter does usually include a disclaimer on political articles they publish that include campaign coverage of candidates supported by Tokarski.
In a recent story that featured Julie Hoy, the newspaper included the following:
Disclosure: Larry Tokarski, a founder and an owner of Salem Reporter, is a contributor to Julie Hoy’s campaign. He is not involved in news coverage produced by Salem Reporter.
But those disclosures seem to only apply to content specifically about elections or campaigns, and not any political piece about an elected official or cause Tokarski supports financially. That limited disclosure would imply that the need to disclose a connection ends once Tokarski’s beneficiaries are elected. Which would, in turn, require you to believe that when a single person floods political contests with right-wing cash, that person gets nothing of value in return. You take a look at the state of politics and decide if that seems likely true.
And, look - I’m not trying to be an asshole…but the second sentence in that disclosure requires tremendous faith - “(Tokarski) is not involved in news coverage produced by Salem Reporter.” Maybe it’s true, right?
But we recently saw Latinos Unidos Siempre extensively cite instances of reporting around a recent shooting in Salem. From the group’s Instagram on March 16, 2024:
BIPoC communities of Salem Keizer have always been at the mercy of local journalism when it comes to documenting the issues that directly impact us. We are often left with a lens that is not culturally responsive and embedded in white supremacy due to the lack of journalists of color in this industry. Although the most recent incidents impacted communities of color and left us with so much grief, sadness and eagerness to support our communities, local journalism is not reflecting our voices.
After last week’s tragic incident, the number one question should be how are children being led to violence and how are they accessing guns. Instead we are regressing to the racist tropes around drug use and hoodies and this is directly connected to who and how these news are being documented.
Latinos Unidos Siempre’s criticism of local coverage of the fatal shooting used several examples from Salem Reporter in their IG post above. Among other things, LUS felt coverage relied heavily on law enforcement and various officials for narrative, with little or no input from the youth population impacted.
News coverage of crimes often defaults to law enforcement-driven narrative, of course.
But not all news media entities are owned by a guy who gave upwards of $25k in 2017 (a year before he founded the Salem Reporter) to fund campaigns to persuade Salem voters (his future readers) to boost police funding and build a new police facility.
Now think back to the sentence from the disclosure used by Salem Reporter: “(Tokarski) is not involved in news coverage produced by Salem Reporter.”
Maybe he isn’t. But when his newspaper is perceived to skew narrative in favor of the police, it makes the dude’s personal investment in the long-term future of the local police a concern. And it’s a non-controversial, reasonable concern, given the circumstances.
Anyway…
Salem Mayor Chris Hoy lags far behind in fundraising
Salem Mayor Chris Hoy does not appear to have a Republican, media-owning sugar daddy to finance his campaign. In fact, Tokarski’s spending alone with Julie Hoy is more than incumbent Mayor Chris Hoy has raised in total.
While GOP challenger Julie Hoy has raised more than $133k from donors through March 2024, incumbent Salem Mayor Chris Hoy has mustered just shy of $16k raised to defend his seat.
Mayor Chris Hoy’s contributions are largely small dollar donations. Notable contributors are current Salem City Councilor Trevor Phillips ($2,500).
I’m going to send you an article about Larry and what he is up to. He’s been buying influence in Salem for decades and it goes far deeper than just the Salem Reporter.
Grrrr. Donated to our current Mayor. And sorry/not sorry I'm canceling my subscription to Salem Reporter. I had high hopes on their reporting but they have lost my trust.