Kerry McQuisten attended Trump’s inauguration, Starlight Ball

kerryinbox
Jan 22
2 min read

Updated: May 23

As Kerry McQuisten watched Donald Trump take the oath of office as America’s 47th president on Monday, Jan. 20, in Washington, D.C., she felt that she was completing an exciting journey that started more than two years ago.

McQuisten, who grew up in Baker County, attended the event on Nov. 15, 2022, when Trump, at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, announced he would run in the 2024 election.

“We were there at the beginning,” McQuisten, a former Baker City mayor and 2022 Oregon gubernatorial candidate, said in a phone interview on Tuesday, Jan. 21.

McQuisten attended both the 2022 event, and the inauguration, with her boyfriend, Solomon Yue, the Oregon Republican Party’s national committeeman to the Republican National Committee. Due to frigid temperatures, the inauguration was moved indoors to the Capitol rotunda.

McQuisten and Yue watched the event from Capitol One Arena, where a massive screen was set up to broadcast the ceremony. McQuisten said they were invited to other events, including a reception with members of Trump’s cabinet, as well as the Starlight Ball, the final event that Trump attended on Monday. McQuisten said the president arrived about midnight. She said the ball was “amazing.”

Over the past two years, McQuisten said she and Yue have visited Mar-a-Lago multiple times and met Trump. “We’ve been able to meet and shake hands several times, and once in a while you get to have a conversation,” she said.

They were invited to Trump’s election night watch party Nov. 5 at the Palm Beach Convention Center in Florida. In addition to helping raise money for Trump’s campaign, McQuisten and Yue are members of Republicans Overseas, an organization founded in 2014 to keep Republican voters who live outside the U.S. politically informed. Yue is vice chairman and CEO of Republicans Overseas, and McQuisten is the organization’s senior advisor.

One of Republicans Overseas key policy positions, which Trump endorsed during the campaign, was to end double taxation of Americans who live and work in other countries. Nine million Americans who live overseas can have their income taxed twice, McQuisten said.

She said that during a conversation with Trump during the campaign she asked him why he was seeking a second term. McQuisten said Trump told her daughter, Vivien, who was 12 at the time, that he was “doing it all for her” and her generation. “His entire goal has been restoring and protecting our freedoms for the upcoming generation,” McQuisten said.