The Oregonian's editorial board, the opinion arm of the state's largest daily paper, called on Governor John Kitzhaber to resign this afternoon—unable to stomach the latest burst of of headlines in a long-simmering scandal over his fiancée's private business dealings during her time serving as first lady and an unpaid state advisor.
The editorial board's proclamation comes after a story this morning detailing how a pair of Kitzhaber campaign advisers found work for first lady Cylvia Hayes with nonprofits looking to shape state energy policy. Both advisers eventually landed jobs in Kithzaber's administration.
It also slightly one-ups this week's Willamette Weekcover story on Kitzhaber, which didn't explicitly call for the governor's resignation but ripped Kitzhaber for further losing his grip on the state after a disastrous press conference last Friday while strongly suggesting that the unfolding conflict issues around Hayes' work could lead to criminal charges like the ones successfully brought against convicted former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell.
Kitzhaber has repeatedly deferred to the state's ethics commission—pleas that WW reported increasingly aren't sitting well with the governor's should-be allies in the Legislature. (Kudos to Nigel Jaquiss for spending several hundred words on a sidebar accusing WW's publisher Richard Meeker's wife, Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, of "ducking the Kitzhaber-Hayes case.")
The apparent troubles with the scandal's distraction the perception of inefficacy are hammered home in final two paragraphs of the O's editorial:
The questions about Kitzhaber's judgment and competence ask themselves. Is he so oblivious that he had no idea that campaign advisers were helping his girlfriend line up employment marked by ethical red flags? Is he really so clueless that he had no idea how much money Hayes collected through her fellowship, which would explain his apparently incomplete ethics filings? Or, alternatively, did he know and fail to act? Both possibilities are damning, and it's difficult to imagine alternatives that are not.
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. He can no longer lead Oregon effectively and should resign. His constituents deserve better.
Will the editorial board get its way? They were in front of former Multnomah County Chairman Jeff Cogen's resignation over a revealed affair with a subordinate that then led to questions (but no criminal charges) about Cogen's use of county resources and his influence.
But the editorial board also levied a lot of the same criticisms about leadership (and worse) at then-Portland Mayor Sam Adams in 2009, calling on him to resignless than a month after his term began after WW broke the news that Adams had lied about his sexual relationship with teenager Beau Breedlove. Adams refused and eventually managed to be mostly effective by the time his term ended in 2012.