In accordance with Article V, Section 8a of the Oregon Constitution, Secretary of State Kate Brown will take over as Governor until the next biennial general election (November, 2016), and will appoint someone to serve out the remainder of her term (which ends at the same time). At that point, both seats are up for grabs; Mrs. Brown gets to decide whether to run to keep the Governor's seat for the remaining two years of the term, or step down and run for her normal Secretary of State re-election.
It's always a sad day when a scandal-wracked executive needs to resign, but we can't say we didn't see this coming.
Kitzhaber, a Democrat in his fourth term as governor, has been under attack since revelations that his fiancée, Cylvia Hayes, was being paid to lobby on behalf of the clean energy industry while at the same time holding the title of Oregon's first lady and filling the role of unpaid policy adviser in the Kitzhaber administration. The Oregon Government Ethics Commission is investigating whether Hayes' consulting work was a conflict of interest, but the Oregonian says the evidence is clear.
"Whether through gross inattention or complicity, Kitzhaber has broken faith with Oregonians. His career in Oregon politics is one of great accomplishment, but his past success does not excuse the mess he has made of the office with which Oregonians entrusted him. He is now less a governor than a source of unending distraction," The Oregonian wrote. (emphasis added)
KGW reports both how much Cylvia Hayes made from her unscrupulous side work, and also how the "jobs" were lined up:
The call for resignation follows an earlier Oregonian report that associates of Kitzhaber helped create jobs for Hayes, work that influenced state policy on energy.
Her calendar shows Hayes held the paid posts simultaneously as she served as an unpaid energy adviser inside Kitzhaber's office, The Oregonian reported.
One of the jobs paid her $5,000 for five months after Kitzhaber started his third term. A current Kitzhaber aide, Greg Wolf, was key in creating the position and in suggesting Hayes take the job, the newspaper reported.
The second was a two-year fellowship created by Dan Carol, a Kitzhaber campaign advisor who later joined his staff. It paid $118,000 over two years.
The Oregonian reported that both jobs involved foundations and organizations with direct interest in state policy making.
And in a move that surprises precisely nobody, Gov. Kitzhaber responds that he's not going anywhere (via the same Fox News article):
"I'm not going to consider resigning," said Kitzhaber. "I was elected by the people of this state to do a job, and I intend to do it."
This whole mess is shocking for several reasons, not the least of which is that Gov. Kitzhaber was re-elected despite these scandalous concerns, but also that The Oregonian editorial staff endorsed his campaign!
If this were happening in any other state, the ironic schadenfreude would be delicious. But because this is my state, I weep for our future.
[UPDATE:]A "prospective petition" has been filed to recall Gov. Kitzhaber, and needs to gather at least 220,000 signatures in 90 days. As petitioner Arin Marcus says, "Two hundred twenty thousand people in Oregon are upset with the governor so it shouldn’t be that difficult." The election was pretty close, so I'd say there's a lot more than that. The hard part will be finding them all and getting them to sign in time.
If Gov. Kitzhaber resigns or is recalled, the Oregon Constitution says he will be succeeded by the Secretary of State, which in this case is Kate Brown, a Portland-area Democrat. I'll admit I don't know too much of her personal political leanings, but: She's a Portland-area Democrat (Strike 1); she's a career politician, holding office for more than half her life (Strike 2); her educational background is in Environmental Conservation, Women's Studies, and law (Strike 3); and she's received various awards and distinctions from groups like Basic Rights Oregon (LGBT-rights advocates), Oregon Commission for Women, the American Mental Health Counselors Association, and the Oregon Psychological Association (Strike 4?). It's a safe bet that gun owners' rights aren't high on her priority list, but maybe we'll get lucky and she won't be a fully-committed anti-gunner [*snerk*]. [/UPDATE]
From his (unprecedented*) fourth inaugural speech (transcript here):
I have learned that the role of government is not to fix things but to create the space in which people can fix things themselves.
Truer ideas are rarely spoken, but in this instance, it is a lie. Not the part about the role of government — he's 100% correct there — but the part where he says, "I have learned...."
If he had learned this, he wouldn't be trying his hardest to use government as a tool to fix things, as he's still trying to do. If he had learned this, he'd be getting the government out of the way, and letting people fix things themselves.
I could say more — and might later — but it'd turn into a rant.
Stay safe. ------------
* - Every news channel is calling Gov. Kitzhaber's fourth term "unprecedented". Every. Single. One. While it's true that no other person has held the governor's seat for four terms, it's getting monotonous.
I just saw this while watching the news this morning:
Oh HELL No!
The majority of gun owners want background checks in place.
Indeed, the majority of gun owners support background checks. The majority of gun owners, however, DO NOT support expanding or enhancing the current background check system.
We need to be clear(er) on this point. The polls and surveys ask, "Do you support background checks on gun sales?" Most of us are OK with them as long as they're non-intrusive and cannot be used to build a registry of guns or gun owners, but the poll answers are being conflated to include actions we don't support.
[sarcasm] Because everyone knows, if we support background checks, then we obviously must support a draconian mental-health-evaluation, traffic-tickets-included, due-process-stripping, 90-day-waiting-period, 100-page-questionaire, felony-if-you-answer-wrong, strip-naked-and-get-up-on-the-probulator* "background check" applicable every time a gun passes from one hand to the next, even if only for a few minutes, right? [/sarcasm]
On top of that, he claims to be a gun owner, but he's playing on his victim status, having lost his brother during the Clackamas Town Center shooting. I'll be the last to downplay his loss, but let's do some fact-checking here.
Here's the Wikipedia article on the shooting. Like a lot of Wikipedia articles, it's a bit short on details, but the pertinent bits are there.
The Clackamas Town Center mall has a "No Guns" policy.**
The shooter stole his rifle, so no background check was performed; he exploited the "steal-a-gun loophole", I guess.
Even if he had tried to purchase the rifle at a gun store or gun show (no "gun show loophole" in Oregon since 2001; see ORS 166.433), he had a clean criminal background and no previously reported mental health issues. He'd have passed.
The shooter evidently planned this to be much bigger (he'd purchased ammo and AR-15 magazines before stealing the gun), but seemed to be shooting randomly, without aiming; he attacked a crowded food court, but missed with 13 of his 16 shots (#17 was used on himself).
Importantly, but disregarded by many news articles on the shooting, the shooter was confronted early on by a concealed handgun license (CHL) carrier who did not fire due to the proximity of bystanders, which may have caused the shooter to retreat and take his own life, ending the incident.
So like we tend to ask after every such tragedy: Which new "common sense" law being proposed would have stopped this?
And on that note, I will NOT be supporting John Kitzhaber's re-election campaign for Governor of Oregon.
------------
* - Yes, that's a "Futurama" reference.
** - It's worth mentioning that in Oregon, "No Guns" policies -- even clearly posted ones (which this one isn't, IIRC) -- carry very weak force of statutory law (case law is different; IANAL, yadda yadda). If a person is discovered carrying against the policy, he/she can be asked to leave. If they don't, they can be arrested/charged with trespassing -- a misdemeanor (see ORS 164.265). However, it's a distinction only LEOs, attorneys, and CHL holders would recognize. I doubt the shooter considered it.
