County GOP tangles with library over masks
- kerryinbox
- Feb 25, 2022
- 4 min read
NEWPORT — Attendees at a local political party’s monthly meeting where a candidate for governor was the guest speaker refused to put on masks after repeated requests do so by staff at Newport Public Library.
A Feb. 19 Facebook post by the campaign page for Kerry McQuisten, current mayor of Baker City and candidate in the crowded Republican primary for governor, says she was “pretty sure for about an hour today I was going to be sharing a Newport jail cell” with other attendees at the Lincoln County Republicans’ monthly meeting.
McQuisten’s post does not name the venue for the meeting, referring to it only as a public building the group used previously, but says it was the first in which she experienced a “full-on mask patrol try to trespass our entire group and call the police.”
The county GOP page shared McQuisten’s post, calling library staff’s actions “intrusive and disrespectful.” The post said attendees entered their reserved room directly from the parking lot through a side door without passing through the main library. Building staff and security then came in, demanded they wear masks and provided some, which the group accepted, then left the room, according to the post.
Both posts say cookies and bottles of water were served during the meeting — Oregon Health Authority guidelines exempt those who are “actively eating or drinking” from the mask requirement — and staff and security repeatedly re-entered to insist attendees wear masks.
McQuisten’s post says that at one point a member of their group put the candidate’s banner in front of the door “so that no one could look in there from outside and be upset at the lack of masks,” and she suggests staff must have been observing them on camera.
“They came down I think three separate times trying to push us out the back door,” she wrote, and they appeared to call police, but no one responded, and the group finished its meeting and “left peacefully.”
Wednesday emails to the chair of the local party and the McQuisten campaign were not returned by press time Thursday.
The gathering took place in the McEntee Meeting Room, located on the lower floor of the library and available to civic and nonprofit groups free of charge. The room has a capacity of 30 with tables, according to the library website, and the Lincoln County GOP had it reserved for two hours last Saturday, from 1:15 to 3:15 p.m.
Newport Police Chief Jason Malloy said the department received a report of the incident and that it would be dealt with by city administration. City Manager Spencer Nebel said the issue was briefly discussed during a staff meeting Tuesday, and he’d requested a report on the incident.
“I’ve requested a report on that, and we’ll review the agreement we have signed with them,” Nebel said. “And after we’ve had a chance to review that, we’ll determine what action, if any, we’ll take going forward.”
The application to reserve the McEntee Room states that library staff can enter and remain in the space at any time during a scheduled event. Health authority guidelines regarding masks are posted throughout the building.
Newport Mayor Dean Sawyer said he commended library staff for enforcing the rules.
“Nobody wants to be the mask patrol,” Sawyer said. “This is the state’s policy right now, and it would be the city that could be at risk of being fined by OSHA.”
Oregon Occupational Safety and Health, which is responsible for enforcing health authority guidelines in workplaces, has fined dozens of businesses thousands, or tens of thousands, of dollars, but never for a single instance of noncompliance, saving monetary penalties for deliberate, chronic violations.
McQuisten has made local, state and even national headlines over her opposition to COVID-19 pandemic-related restrictions, particularly mask mandates. Nine days prior to the meeting in Newport, she told a meeting of the Jefferson County Republicans that she’d pulled her own daughter out of school, saying she “would not let (her) child be segregated and oppressed with masks,” The Madras Pioneer reported.
She said in her Facebook post she was proud the Lincoln County GOP group did not comply with library staff’s instructions and that “If everyone would have refused to comply at the beginning of this debacle in 2020 we wouldn’t be where we are now.”
There have been almost 700,000 COVID cases in Oregon since February 2020, and more than 6,500 people in the state have died with the virus. There have been 3,173 cases and 46 deaths in McQuisten’s home county, Baker, which has a population of approximately 16,000. (Note: these death statistics were false. 46, in Baker County for example, was deaths from all causes.)
Gov. Kate Brown first imposed the mask mandate statewide on July 1, 2020, and lifted it briefly exactly one year later. She reinstituted the requirement Aug. 13, 2021, as case numbers climbed precipitously due the spread of the Delta variant.
Brown announced Feb. 7 she would lift the indoor masking requirement when statewide COVID hospitalizations drop below 400, or no later than March 31. Total hospitalizations dropped below 600 Wednesday after peaking at about 1,100 almost a month ago, and the Oregon Health Authority announced Thursday the mask mandate would be lifted March 19.
