Doesn't look like there was any sort of widespread institutional corruption.

The governors girlfriend made a few hundred thousand in consulting fees from lobbyist on issues she was advising the Governor about.

I didn't vote for Kitzhaber this cycle, mostly because his girlfriend issues were making it look like he was getting old and foolish. Probably no one here followed the campaign much but Kitz's girlfriend Cylvia Hayes brought a number of scandalous problems to the Governors reelection campaign. It was revealed that she had previously married an immigrant that she wasn't romantically involved with so that he could get citizenship in exchange for a cash payment. She had previously been a partner in an illegal marijuana grow operation. She made a bunch of money from lobbyist that were courting the Governor. The failure to successfully implement the insanely expensive health care exchange he tried to build raised some question marks about his competence as well.

It's a miracle that the Republicans didn't win the Oregon governorship this cycle. The republican challenger (Dennis Richardson) had the charisma of a potato, held staunchly inflexible conservative positions, was in bed with big business and the strongest messaging effort of his campaign for was a some punchy bill boards that didn't even have his name on them and were meaningless to your average voter. The RNC put almost no money into the campaign and the Oregon Republican party has an uncanny knack for picking born losers. Any moderate or libertarian republican with moderate financial backing from the national apparatus would have beaten Kitz this year.

Richardson's campaign was a bang up first rate success compared to the Senatorial campaign by republican challenger Monica Welby which crashed and burned 19 points.

The Republican party in this state is hampered by their unwillingness to adopt a few mild centrist positions on anything. The minute a Republican leans a tiny bit left they get pilloried by their fellows, which pretty much guarantees that they can't win state wide races.

Secretary of State Kate Brown now gets promoted to Governor. The media is fond of trumpeting that she is the first out LGBT Governor, the people could really give a fuck for the most part and just hope she does her job well. I don't think that Republicans are going to be very fond of her. Early indications are that she doesn't have any connections the Red west or southern parts of the state and she has deep long standing connections with labor unions.

John Kitzhaber was a more than a decent Governor back in the day, it's sad to see him fall in the way he has.