JOHN DAY — Two U.S. Senate candidates vying for the GOP nomination courted voters on Thursday, Jan. 27, during the Grant County Republican Central Committee meeting at the John Day Fire Hall.

Darin Harbick, a small-business owner from Rainbow in the McKenzie River Valley, and Ibra Taher, a self-employed philosophy teacher from Eugene, both spoke at the meeting.

Both are running in the May 17 primary for the GOP nomination to oppose Ron Wyden, the Democratic incumbent.

As of Monday, Jan. 31, five other candidates have filed to run in the Republican primary, including Grant County Commissioner Sam Palmer.

Ibra Taher

Taher, who made a bid for Jeff Merkley’s seat in 2020 as both a Green and Progressive Party candidate but since left those parties over disagreements regarding the pandemic, told the Eagle that Progressives and Republicans share more common ground on core issues than many realize.

He said those issues include decentralizing the country’s financial markets and a non-interventionist foreign policy approach.

Taher said the answer to many of the problems the country faces, be it internationally, financially or domestically, would be to decentralize the markets, localize governments, and allow for independence and self-reliance.

“Let people decide for themselves,” he said. “We have different cultures. Do you want someone from Eugene to tell you how to live your lives?”

Taher sparked a sharp debate with his views on COVID-19.

In March 2020, during the second week of the pandemic lockdowns, Taher told the audience, he published an article highly critical of the government’s response to the virus.

As many were busy buying toilet paper, Taher said, he examined the scientific literature and found no evidence consistent with what was coming out of the White House or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The coronavirus, according to Taher, is not as dangerous as it was made out to be by the federal government.

Taher said the pandemic protocols violate fundamental freedoms, and the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government have allowed those violations to continue.

Rhonda Stephens, a Prineville resident who attended the John Day meeting, told Taher that discounting the severity of the virus is dangerous.

“If you’re telling me that some 800,000 people that died from COVID is fake news that didn’t happen, then I have to disagree with you,” she said. Stephens told Taher that she hoped he had evidence to back up his statements.

Taher said he questions the actual number of deaths and how health officials classify the deaths.

”Do they actually have that disease? We need to ask, what is the evidence that enabled you to say that this person died of that disease?,” he said.

”When a doctor is filling out the death certificate, there’s more than one reason for death,” he added. “They are ordered into how proximal they are to death.”

In 2020 Justin Lessler, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University, wrote that when someone dies from a COVID-19 infection, the top cause of death listed is respiratory failure. This, according to Lessler, is because “ultimately that’s what happened.”

But he said the next reason listed would be COVID-19, which led to the respiratory failure.

State health officials in 2020 told the Eagle that there is no difference when tracking and reporting COVID-19-related deaths.

“The choice of the words ‘COVID-19 related’ is intentional. OHA cannot determine the exact cause of death — so our data focuses on people who most likely had COVID-19 and died,” OHA public information officer Carmen Perezchica said in an email to the newspaper. “Sometimes, there is a time difference between the diagnosis of COVID-19 and the person’s death. Also, sometimes there is a cause of death that may not seem directly connected to COVID-19.”

Perezchica said OHA could not determine the cause of death in every instance; rather, the state’s goal is to track people who died with COVID-19. She said this is standard practice in infectious disease reporting.

While Stephens said there might be some “bad apples” who may have signed off on a death certificate in bad faith, she noted that local hospitals are run by respected personnel and have good doctors who are accredited.

She reminded Taher that he himself told the audience that he was not a scientist. With that, Stephens said, she asked that he not spread “propaganda” that science and health officials are committing fraud.

Stephens told Taher that the government put together some of the world’s top scientists with “Operation Warp Speed” to promote and review the development, manufacturing, and dispersal of COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics.

“So, if you’re going to sit here and tell me that you know more than that pool of brainiacs, then I’m going to put my money on the pool of brainiacs any day of the week,” she said.

Grant County resident Athena Moline asked Stephens if she had heard that nasal swabs included with COVID-19 tests contain ethylene oxide, a colorless type of gas used to sterilize medical equipment.

Moline’s claim was from a widely debunked conspiracy theory that began circulating on social media and claimed that the nasal swabs used for COVID-19 testing could cause lasting harm, potentially even cancer, according to information from Rueters Fact Check.

While the gas commonly used to disinfect medical equipment such as COVID-19 nasal swab tests is carcinogenic, it has been used for decades and is highly regulated.

Frances Preston, the committee’s secretary and chair, asked that the rest of Taher’s speech not touch on COVID-19 and requested that the conversation get back to a “peaceful place.”

Later in the conversation, Stephens asked Taher what his stance on immigration is and what he would do to address the southern border situation.

Taher said people cross the border for various reasons. Some, he said, are asylum seekers, while others are the children of those asylum seekers.

”We have to ask one important question,” he said, “and that is: What is our moral obligation?”

Darrin Harbick

Harbick, a longtime small-business owner who initially entered the 2022 election as a candidate for governor, said he is better suited for the Senate.

He said he was always under the impression that to run for political office someone had to have gone to law school or have previous political experience.

However, he said, he was inspired by Glenn Youngkin’s win in the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election, where he defeated Democratic former Gov. Terry McAuliffe.

“When I saw Youngkin as a business owner, and then that (President) Donald Trump never held office anywhere … there are some people that have been in office that haven’t been in that political scene their whole life, but they know what people want,” Harbick said.

Harbick is not a complete newcomer to elected office. He served on the McKenzie School District’s board for 14 years. He also coached the high school’s basketball team and led them to a state championship.

Harbick said when people ask him if he is vaccinated against COVID-19, he tells them, “It’s none of your damn business,” a line that garnered applause from the audience.

While some in the GOP have been criticized by fellow Republicans for refusing to say they are vaccinated to avoid alienating the conservative base, Harbick said he genuinely believes someone’s vaccination status is personal.