FILE: A cow on Josh Walton’s property walks in front of a data center in Umatilla, Ore., on April 3, 2026.
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Kelly Doherty had been in elected office for less than a month when Amazon reached out.
In a July 2023 email, an Amazon representative congratulated Doherty on winning a seat on the commission that oversees the Port of Morrow in Eastern Oregon and offered to introduce her to Sheena Sharma and Courtney Lee.
Sharma and Lee weren’t just any Amazon employees. Three years after Doherty received the email, Amazon selected the pair of executives to make the case for data centers to legislators in Salem during a September public hearing.
From Oregon’s highest corridors of power to an inland industrial port serving a rural county of 12,000 people, Amazon has…
https://www.opb.org/article/2026/10/13/oregon-governor-amazon-data-centers/
