This essay first appeared at the Political Vanguard website.

Governor John Kitzhaber left office Wednesday. He resigned because he had broken an ethical contract with the people of Oregon and this time the official media actually bothered to report it.

Officially, the Oregon Democrat, who won an unprecedented fourth term of office in November, left under a stink of suspicion.

Kitzhaber’s under investigation by the Oregon State Attorney General’s Office, the state ethics commission and the FBI. Even the House Congressional Government Oversight Committee want a piece of him.

Unofficially, Oregon’s Governor was brought down by a his ego, environmental hubris, one party rule and an open fly.

The Governor’s fiancé, Cylvia Hayes,  whom Kitzhaber insisted the media (and everyone else) address as ‘Oregon’s First Lady’ (beginning well before he ‘put a ring on it’), is a woman by whom Kitzhaber is clearly wholly beguiled.

Hayes cajoled her boyfriend into using his office to advance her and her friends’ careers and arrogate grants and state (read: taxpayer) largesse to her.

Kitzhaber was eager to do it. He enlisted the help of his staff to make it happen. It turns out you might be able to do that if you’re just-some-guy with a hot, younger girlfriend, but not if you’re the Governor using other peoples’ money.

It wouldn’t be the first time Cylvia Hayes pulled the opportunistic grifter girlfriend act.

The woman with a degree from Washington state’s hippy-dippy Evergreen State College:

• Once married an illegal alien for $5,000.00. She never bothered to tell her Governor boyfriend about the first of her three matrimonial unions.
• Hayes talked an older boyfriend into buying property to plant an illegal pot farm. He claimed she took the lead on the plan.
• As a 35 year old woman, she convinced an 81 year old man to loan her $40,000 as a down payment for a house and talked him into a trip to Paris.
• She got another coot 20 years her senior to cover the loan from other old guy, pay her daily expenses and advance her career. His name is John Kitzhaber.

In fact, her biography is so tawdry and ignominious, the U.K. Daily Mail labeled her, ‘Oregon’s Shady First Lady.’

MailOnline has discovered she divorced her second husband, married an Ethiopian for a green card and went away with a lover all in matter of months.

Unfortunately for Kitzhaber, his kind of ‘help’ brought the scrutiny of law enforcement. And it could also put him –and her, due to her failure to report some of her ill gotten fees to the IRS — in matching orange jumpsuits.

Of course, most of this information was available before the November election. But this is Oregon.Despite Kitzhaber’s colossal biffing of the ‘OrBamaCare’ plan roll out, Cover Oregon, and a huge failed light rail program, both of which left Oregon’s taxpayers a half BILLION dollars in the hole,  Oregon went bluer in the last GOP tidal wave election.

Oregon, being a one-party state with a slavishly Democrat devoted media and less than robust GOP, hired back the jeans-wearing old guy.

Can you blame Kitzhaber for thinking he was bullet proof?

But, as the game show prize announcer man always says, ‘There’s more!’

The truth is, Kitzhaber let his grifter girlfriend get her way because they hold the same radical environmental views. He believed he would get cover from his fawning media, ironically whom he blamed for his fall from grace. He knew his fellow Democrats in the legislature would do his bidding and look the other way and indeed they did.

Until.

• After it became known Kitzhaber asked his staff to destroy emails which, we now know, show his willingness to satiate his fiancé’s seemingly insatiable desire for more taxpayer money and power.
• After the Feds and AG’s office said despite the Governor’s efforts to slow-roll document discovery under open records law, they’d investigate anyway.
• After the election with the Democrat leitmotif firmly established, the daily (dying) newspaper of record called for Kitzhaber’s resignation.

The Secretary of State would take over.

Kate Brown, an even more radical environmentalist than Kitzhaber and his girlfriend, has now taken control of Oregon’s governor’s office. She has the added bonus of a being, as the LGBT community helpfully added mere moments after after Kitzhaber announced his intent to resign, the first ‘bi-sexual Governor’ ever, ever.

Now Democrats can continue the same — or worse — programs and plans without John Kitzhaber to kick around anymore.

Out of sight, out of mind. Change the subject.

Until … next time.