How RFK Jr saved Oregon's kids from mandatory vaccines
This little-known tale from 2015 reveals much about RFK Jr's character and his odds of future success in the Trump administration
PORTLAND, Oregon—Nine and a half years ago—February 17, 2015 to be exact—my wife and I sat transfixed in front of our T.V., watching a story on CBS Evening News where Oregon State Senator Elizabeth Steiner-Hayward, a Democrat and a doctor, announced for the first time she would be sponsoring a bill to make vaccinations mandatory for Oregon’s school children, removing any philosophical or religious exemptions. We didn't know at the time that Senator Steiner-Hayward’s bill, known as SB 442, was actually part of a well-organized plot by Big Pharma to eliminate vaccine choice in every state in the nation, using the Disneyland measles outbreak as the reason, and Democrats as their weapon of choice.
Oregon was an easy first target. The state had a Democrat Governor, and Democrats also controlled the Senate and the House. On CBS, Senator Steiner-Hayward spoke with the confidence of someone who already had the votes, despite the fact that she was in the early stages of introducing her bill. Oregon also had a terrible system for tracking vaccine exemptions, which over-stated the number of children using vaccine exemptions in the state, giving the senator a bat to hit bad parents over the head with.
The Hearing
Like any new bill in Oregon, SB 442 would have to have a public hearing, which was scheduled for the day after the CBS report, on February 18th. I’d never done anything political in my life, but I felt I had to be a part of the hearing, and hopefully have the opportunity to speak to the bi-partisan health committee, who was holding the hearing. Unbeknownst to Senator Steiner-Hayward, or really any of us descending on Salem that day, she had just lit the fire that would create the Oregon health freedom movement, with many of its future leaders brought together that day in outrage over a bill threatening our personal freedom to raise our kids the way we felt was best.
By 2015, my wife and I had been living in Oregon for 10 years. 13 years earlier, we had endured the absolutely brutal experience of watching our middle son Jamie descend into autism after his vaccines (diagnosed in 2002), and we certainly wanted no part of vaccines for any of our kids. With three school-aged children, Senator Steiner-Hayward’s bill threatened to upend our happy life in Portland where my wife was born and raised and where we had much extended family.
I remember making the 45-minute drive to Salem for the 3 p.m. meeting seething with anger, anxiety, and outrage. Who the hell was this woman? At the time, only 2 states in the the entire country—Mississippi and West Virginia—didn't allow religious and/or philosophical vaccine exemptions for school-age children, why the hell did she want to make Oregon the third?
When I made it inside the Capitol to the hearing room for the bill, I was shocked by the standing room only crowd, and I made the decision to speak before the committee, I think each speaker was allotted 2 minutes. The 3-hour long video of testimony, which to my great surprise still exists, is like an all-star team of future rabble rousers in the health freedom movement. As one example, Dr. Paul Thomas and Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D. (both pictured below) each met each other for the first time that day, and went on to co-author Amazon’s long-standing #1 book in the vaccination and pediatrics section, The Vaccine Friendly Plan.
The Snee-Man steals the show
Re-watching the hearing, many of us landed good points with the committee, but nothing compares to the interaction between civil rights attorney Bob Snee (who I affectionately refer to as the Snee-Man) and Senator (and doctor) Elizabeth Steiner-Hayward. Frankly, it beggars belief and is simply so emblematic of the shrill, arrogant, dismissive tone so many of us have encountered when dealing with Democrat legislators. Quick background: Senator Steiner-Hayward suffered from M.S. (which, as an aside, can be caused by the annual Hepatitis B vaccine doctors receive). While pregnant, Senator Steiner-Hayward chose to breast-feed while taking an M.S. drug called Interferon, against her doctor’s advice. Steiner-Hayward was quoted discussing this decision in a medical journal, and her rights to make the proper medical choice for her, and Snee-Man called her out on the hypocrisy. Please watch below, it’s simply unbelievable.
(It’s pretty amazing to read the massive testimony AGAINST the bill versus the tiny testimony FOR the bill, almost all pharmaceutical interests and even a letter lobbed in from Philadelphia by the grand wizard of vaccines, Dr. Paul Offit, revealing SB 442 was clearly part of a larger, grand strategy.)
The Aftermath
Many of us were hyped after the hearing, and stayed to commiserate and plan potential next steps. We had no organization, no structure, no platform for advocacy, but a core group of us decided we weren't going down without a fight. Within a week, we created an organization—Oregonians for Medical Freedom—and we got ourselves a very experienced local lobbyist, a fire-breathing, take no prisoners, red-haired superwoman named Rebecca Tweed. Oh, and she was a Republican.
Thank God for the Republicans
In 2015, I was a political neophyte. Barack Obama was President, and I had voted for him twice. I lived in Oregon, Portland was a fun, open, accepting city, and being an independent or centrist democrat seemed fine with me, I gave politics and my own political leanings zero thought. To my surprise, while I was giving my testimony to the health committee in Salem, this one Senator kept smiling at me and nodding at everything I had to say. I looked him up afterwards, and it turned out he was the senior Republican Senator on the Health Committee, Tim Knopp.
Soon after the meeting, I reached out to Senator Knopp, and to my surprise he called me right away. He knew who I was (my wife and I had started an organization called Generation Rescue, and he was familiar with our work), and he was willing to do anything to help us defeat SB 442. I was shocked. Like I told you earlier, I knew nothing about politics, and the thought that Senator Knopp was sitting on a committee hating a bill that his colleague was trying to pass was new for me. In that moment, with Senator Knopp on the phone, I became a Republican, and I have never looked back. Senator Knopp told me he and his Republican colleagues were ready to support our fight for freedom, while Senator Steiner-Hayward treated us all like batshit crazy conspiracists. He also told us to go get Rebecca Tweed, so we did.
The freedom fight begins
With Rebecca Tweed calling the shots, we began to get busy, and mobilized a state-wide force of several hundred people. Phone calls, visits, letters—they all started pouring into the Capitol, and we kept hearing the same thing: Senator Steiner-Hayward was in charge, she had the votes, every Democrat legislator was rude and dismissive, and the Republicans were sympathetic and helpful but were in the minority. Basically, we were screwed.
The stress was starting to get to me. We were about two weeks into the fight, talking and organizing every night, many of us at the Capitol every day, and while we were making plenty of noise, the bill still seemed to have a very high chance of passing, Senator Knopp letting me know it was the democrat’s #1 priority.
One night, Rebecca Tweed asked us an innocent question, “does anyone know Bobby Kennedy Jr.?”
Bobby comes to Salem
I knew RFK Jr. Not well, but I had met him. He had graciously lent his name to the cause of autism many times, and had become an expert and written a book about a mercury-laced ingredient in vaccines called Thimerosal. I was able to connect with him pretty quickly, and when he understood the magnitude of what we were facing, he was quick to volunteer to help. For a group as stressed and outmanned as we all felt, the news that RFK Jr. was willing to come to Salem on our behalf gave all of us renewed energy, and we really had no time to spare.
Bobby’s schedule was tight, but SB 442 was going to the floor very soon, so he changed his plans to make it to Oregon on March 5, 2015. Senator Knopp was able to get Bobby meetings with many legislators, and we all felt like this was our last hope to kill the bill.
I had the honor of picking Bobby up from the airport, which gave us time to get caught up. I was immediately struck by Bobby’s intelligence, how quickly he grasped the issues we were facing, his curiosity to understand each of the players involved, and I could hear the prosecutor in him trying out arguments and positions in the car that probably ring familiar to many of you today. I distinctly remember Bobby asking, as we approached the Capitol, to drive around the block one more time so he could nail his pitch to legislators, which he tried out on me, and went something like this (I’m paraphrasing):
Vaccines are poorly tested and way too many shots have been added to the schedule recently. The agencies that are supposed to be regulating vaccines are captured by vaccine makers, and have failed us. In 1986, liability for vaccines was removed. The regulators are gone. The lawyers are gone. The only thing left, standing between children and these potentially dangerous products, are the parents. Don’t take away their right to protect their child.
Bobby had a command of the details beyond this pitch that were encyclopedic, God help the legislator who tried to tussle with him. I remember thinking at the time, I am in the presence of a very special and unique person. As we pulled up to the Capitol, Senator Knopp was smiling and waiting to greet Bobby. At the time, it seemed pretty absurd: the leader of the Senate minority, a Republican, escorting a Kennedy through the Capitol. I really couldn't believe it—Bobby was a diehard Democrat from the most prominent Democrat family in America!—but Bobby was happy to work with anyone who believed in medical freedom. They headed into the Capitol with Dr. Brian Hooker, who had flown up from California to lend his expertise to Bobby as well.
Hours passed. I went to a coffee shop to fret.
The aftermath
Bobby reappeared on the Capitol steps. He was smiling. He bid Brian and Senator Knopp goodbye, we grabbed a quick selfie, and we hopped in my car for the trip back to the airport. I’ll never forget when he sat down, looked at me, smiled, and said, “that bill is dead on arrival.”
Bobby walked me through each of his meetings with legislators. Every Democrat wanted to meet with Bobby. Many had pictures of his dad in their office. They asked for autographs. And, most were clueless about vaccines or the recent rise in volume, much less their known risks. Patiently, Bobby educated them on the facts. We’re not talking about removing vaccines, he said, we’re talking about choice. These products are poorly tested, some children are clearly vulnerable. Do not take choice away from these families. The legislators, many of them not fully compromised by Pharma (yet), listened. By the time he had his final meeting, with Senator Steiner-Hayward herself, the votes were gone, the bill was dead. Six days later, it made the news.
Bobby was a savior then, and a savior now
I know you are already seeing the parallels. Bobby had more in common with Republicans in Oregon than Democrats. He had no problem working in a bipartisan way. He was brilliant, poised, compelling, and devastatingly effective. He understood exactly how our health system had been compromised, he introduced me to the idea of “regulatory capture” and made a strong case. He took time out of his busy life, with zero fanfare, to keep Oregon’s kids from being forced to take vaccines.
California wasn't so lucky, parents there lost their right to vaccine exemptions for their children a few months later, the larger plot was revealed, and both Connecticut and New York also fell. Also, the Pharma lobbyists had spread the word: do not let Bobby Kennedy into your Capitol, he will kill your bill.
Take as many vaccines as you want, just don’t tell me what I need to do. It’s wrong to make anything mandatory, especially vaccines. If March 2015 in Salem, Oregon is any indication, I think Bobby will be making the issue of choice a national issue very, very soon.
About the author
J.B. Handley is the proud father of a child with Autism. He spent his career in the private equity industry and received his undergraduate degree with honors from Stanford University. His first book, How to End the Autism Epidemic, was published in September 2018. The book has sold more than 75,000 copies, was an NPD Bookscan and Publisher’s Weekly Bestseller, broke the Top 40 on Amazon, and has more than 1,000 Five-star reviews. Mr. Handley and his nonspeaking son are also the authors of Underestimated: An Autism Miracle and co-produced the film SPELLERS, available now on YouTube.
I am Dr. William schneider a chiropractor and I can fully substantiate what JB says about Robert F Kennedy Junior. I was at the capital on the day that robert of Kennedy Junior arrived and spoke to the Oregon state Democratic legislators who sponsoring the Bill to make mandatory vaccines the law of the land in Oregon. I personally met Robert Kennedy Junior myself as the chair of the public health community for the oregon chiropractic association. Kennedy a single-handedly stopped de mandatory vaccine in Oregon with his meetings with the state legislators that day. He is a great man and passionately believes in protecting children and the rights of all of us to choose what goes into our bodies. he will be an awesome man working for our benefit with the Trump administration.
I have heard second hand, that the next Oregon legislative will have some mean-spirited vaccination legislation targeting children.
By-the-way Steiner Hayward is still a schmuck of schmucks.