John Kitzhaber, who handily won re-election, is now facing a criminal investigation and announced Friday that he will step down. This is how he wound up here.
Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber kisses his fiancée, Cylvia Hayes, after he is sworn in for a fourth term as governor.
AP Don Ryan
Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber is in hot water. A controversy surrounding his fiancée's influence in his administration has reached a fever pitch, and numerous officials are calling for his head.
Kitzhaber himself has waffled back and forth on whether he would step down, and his behavior has grown increasingly bizarre. It's a stunning case that Thursday looked like it was going to bring him down.
Here's how it got to this point:
The Willamette Week story described Hayes as possibly "the most influential first lady in Oregon history."
The paper went on to describe Hayes' role in Kitzhaber's administration: She kept a desk at the governor's office, went on trade missions, and characterized herself as a "policy advisor" to Kitzhaber.
However, Hayes was also a private energy consultant, and records showed that she had taken money from private groups that had an interest in the policies she was pushing at the time.
Her private and public work apparently overlapped in other ways as well — records showed that she used her state-paid assistant for private work and her government titles while appearing as a private consultant.
via on BuzzFeed
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