SALEM — As Gov. Tina Kotek considers her appointee to succeed Democrat Shemia Fagan as secretary of state, two of Kotek’s predecessors discussed what they faced when they had to fill vacancies in statewide elected offices.

Since Bob Straub was governor almost 50 years ago, each of his successors — counting John Kitzhaber twice — has had to make at least one such appointment during their terms.

Democrat Barbara Roberts had two appointments, including her successor as secretary of state, during her term as governor from 1991 to 1995.

Democrat Ted Kulongoski also had two appointments during his two terms as governor, though both took place in his second term ending in 2011.

However, Fagan’s resignation is only the third in recent years prompted by a controversy — in her case, her consultant’s contract for a cannabis business while state auditors were looking at state regulation of the industry. (The Audits Division director, who was appointed four years before Fagan became secretary of state, issued a statement Friday, May 5, saying that Fagan had no involvement in the auditors’ work or recommendations other than reviewing the final product.)

The other resignations were those of U.S. Sen. Bob Packwood in 1995 following accusations of sexual misconduct and Kitzhaber in 2015 amid an ethics scandal. But state law requires a special election for a vacancy in the U.S. Senate or House, and the Oregon Constitution specifies the succession for governor.

The latest vacancy came just four months after Democrat Kotek became Oregon’s 39th governor.

Roberts and Kulongoski, in separate interviews, made it clear that Kotek had not sought their advice. They supported others for governor in last year’s election.

Both said that because each situation is different, there is no standard for a governor to consider — other than a state law, which dates back to the mid-1950s, that requires an appointee to a vacancy in state elected office to be from the same party as the previous officeholder. Oregon does not conduct special elections for those vacancies.

“If there is a death, you move more swiftly because everything is disrupted and you need stability back in the office,” Roberts said. “If there is a scandal, as was the situation with John Kitzhaber, you have that to consider — and you have something similar now, at least in people’s minds. I think you tend to be more careful about the process, because people are feeling disillusioned and waiting to see what you do.”

Kulongoski said that a governor has wide latitude in an appointment, because it is not subject to legislative approval.

“There are very few issues where the governor can make a choice — and nobody else can play in the sandbox. It’s the governor’s choice,” he said.

“The first thing you ask is whether you are just looking for someone to fill the unexpired term — almost two years in this case — or do you want someone who will be a viable candidate in the election process two years hence?”

The secretary of state is next in the line of succession to the governor. But whoever Kotek appoints would be initially ineligible, because the Oregon Constitution requires the next in line to be elected. That spot would go to state Treasurer Tobias Read, who lost the 2022 Democratic primary to Kotek and whose second term ends in 2024.

If an appointee runs and wins in 2024, however, that person would be next in line.

Kotek’s potential appointee would be eligible to seek two full terms, since Fagan has already completed more than half her elected term. That person could still be secretary of state at the start of the next decade, when legislative districts have to be redrawn to account for population shifts after the 2030 Census. (A ballot initiative proposed for the 2024 general election would create an independent commission to do the job, and if voters approve it, would remove both the Legislature and the secretary of state from the process.)

In addition, the secretary of state is Oregon’s chief elections officer, although officials in the 36 counties conduct them, and also oversees audits, public records and business registration and small-business assistance.

Of 10 secretaries of state going back to Republican Mark Hatfield in 1956 —excluding two short-term appointees who did not seek election — four became governor and four sought the job but lost.

“Are you making a decision that is going to help you politically?” Roberts asked. “Or a decision for the good of the office and help employees who lost their leader? Or are you going to do something that complicates that by bringing in a different leader who does not have the same credentials as the former officeholder did?”

When Kate Brown was faced with appointing her own successor as secretary of state after she replaced Kitzhaber as governor in 2015, her appointee was Jeanne Atkins, a longtime Democratic legislative staffer who pledged not to seek a full term in 2016. House Republicans praised her decision; Senate Republicans criticized her appointment.

Brown faced another choice in 2019, after the death of Dennis Richardson, a Republican elected in an open race for secretary of state in 2016. She appointed Bev Clarno, a former speaker of the Oregon House — and as a former Republican leader in a 15-15 Oregon Senate in 2003, she helped negotiate a power-sharing agreement with Brown, then the Democratic leader in that chamber.

Clarno, already in her early 80s, said Brown never asked her whether she planned to run for a full term in 2020. Clarno said she considered it, but having run as the Republican nominee for state treasurer back in 1996, she did not want to do another statewide campaign.

Barbara Roberts

Roberts, after her election as governor in 1990, chose Phil Keisling, a two-term state representative from Portland, as her successor as secretary of state. Keisling went on to redraw legislative districts after the 1990 Census — a Democratic Senate and a Republican House failed to agree on a plan — and he won voter approval of a 1998 ballot initiative that opened the way for mail ballots in all statewide elections.

“It’s a huge decision to put someone in an office of that caliber,” Roberts said. “You start thinking of and evaluating people who might be available and who you would feel good about appointing.”

Keisling won two terms on his own, but resigned in late 1999 to take a job in the private sector. His appointed Democratic successor, Bill Bradbury, conducted Oregon’s first primary and general elections by mail. (Keisling had done so in 1995 and 1996 in what were special elections to fill Packwood’s Senate seat.)

Not quite a year later, Roberts had to appoint a successor to her 1990 Republican rival for governor, Dave Frohnmayer, who resigned with one year left in his third term as attorney general to return to the University of Oregon as dean of the law school. (A few years later, Frohnmayer became university president, a job he held for 15 years.)

Roberts chose Charles Crookham, a retired Multnomah County judge, who told Roberts he would not run for a full term in 1992. That open race was won by Democrat Ted Kulongoski.

“I knew he could do the job,” Roberts said of Crookham. “He had high respect in the legal community — the respect I wanted to see in that person and the experience to step into that state office immediately. He had no political agenda because he did not intend to run.

“I did not make that a requirement, but he made that a credential,” she added. “I never felt I could tell someone that I would appoint them if they did not choose to run. That may not be legal. If you can’t make it a criterion, you shouldn’t ask.”

Crookham died in 2004. Kulongoski, who was governor by then, was among those who attended his memorial service.

Ted Kulongoski

Kulongoski had two such vacancies to deal with as governor, but both occurred in his second term.

When Bradbury was ending his second consecutive term in 2008 — he could not seek reelection — four Democratic state senators sought their party’s nomination. But then in 2008, Dan Gardner resigned as state labor commissioner — a position made nonpartisan in 1995 — to take a union job in Washington, D.C.

Kulongoski appointed state Sen. Brad Avakian of Beaverton, who served until 2019. The senators remaining in the 2008 primary were Kate Brown of Portland, who ultimately won the office; Vicki Walker of Eugene, who today is director of the Department of State Lands after service as a federal appointee, and Rick Metsger of Welches, who later ran for state treasurer in 2010. After a federal appointment of his own, Metsger returned to Oregon, where he is employed by Pac/West Communications.

Avakian won a three-way race for the Democratic nomination for secretary of state in 2016, but lost to Richardson.

Kulongoski said he never considered appointing a caretaker who would serve only eight months at the Bureau of Labor and Industries.

“That was not an issue with me. I just wanted to get the right person to be part of the (state government) team,” he said. “Then it becomes personal.”

“I think most people knew who was on the list,” he added.

But his second appointment to a statewide vacancy was a surprise to many in Salem.

Kulongoski said he knew for months he would have to appoint a successor to Ben Westlund, a Democrat elected state treasurer in 2008 with Kulongoski’s support after Westlund, a former Republican, mounted an independent campaign against Kulongoski’s 2006 reelection. Westlund dropped his candidacy and endorsed Kulongoski.

Westlund in fall 2009 had undergone a recurrence of cancer, which he was treated for successfully back in 2003, while he was still in the Legislature. Westlund died on March 7, 2010, two days before the filing deadline for the 2010 primary, though the treasurer’s position was not scheduled to be up that cycle.

Kulongoski then announced he would appoint Ted Wheeler, who had already filed for reelection as Multnomah County board chair.

“I think I surprised everybody. I knew every Democrat in the Legislature wanted to be state treasurer. I figured that I was going to make one person happy and the others mad at me, so I was going to get someone else,” he recalled.

“What I was looking for was somebody who was capable of doing the job, knew something about finance — and not part of the Capitol circle. To be blunt, I knew Ted was in a position in his life financially that he did not have to worry about being pressured by any interest groups or campaign contributions. I thought he did a good job as state treasurer.”

Because Westlund was just 14 months into his term, Wheeler was elected in 2010 to complete the two years remaining in it, and then reelected in 2012 to a term of his own. In 2016, barred from seeking another term, Wheeler was elected Portland mayor and reelected in 2020.

A summary of governors and vacancies they had to fill in statewide elected offices in the past four decades. Govs. Barbara Roberts and Ted Kulongoski are excluded because they are mentioned in the main story. The 2015 resignation of Gov. John Kitzhaber also is excluded because the Oregon Constitution, which voters amended in 1972, specifies the order of succession for governor.

Vacancies for U.S. senator and representative are filled in special elections.

• Vic Atiyeh: James Brown for Democrat Jim Redden as attorney general, 1980, after Redden resigned to become a U.S. District Court judge; Republican Bill Rutherford for Clay Myers as state treasurer, 1984, after Myers resigned with nine months left in his second and final term.

• Neil Goldschmidt: Republican Tony Meeker for Rutherford as state treasurer in 1987, after Rutherford resigned midterm; John Erickson for Verne Duncan as state schools superintendent in 1989, after Duncan resigned to teach at the University of Portland; Norma Paulus for Erickson in 1990, after Paulus won the nonpartisan primary outright and Erickson resigned before the start of Paulus’ elected term. (That position is no longer elected.)

• John Kitzhaber, first tenure: Democrat Bill Bradbury for Phil Keisling as secretary of state in 1999, after Keisling resigned to take a job in the private sector with slightly more than one year left in his second term.

• John Kitzhaber, second tenure: Democrat Ellen Rosenblum for John Kroger as attorney general, 2012, after Rosenblum won the primary; Kroger, who did not seek reelection, left with six months left in his term to become president of Reed College.

• Kate Brown: Democrat Jeanne Atkins for Brown as secretary of state, 2015, upon Brown succeeding Kitzhaber as governor; Republican Bev Clarno as secretary of state, 2019, after the death of Dennis Richardson, who was elected in 2016 to the open position after Atkins did not seek a full term.