1. John Albert Kitzhaber was born on March 5,1947 and is an American former politician and physician who served as the 35th and 37th governor of Oregon from 1995 to 2003 and again from 2011 to 2015.
46 Facts About John Kitzhaber
1. 2.
In February 2015, shortly after beginning his fourth term, Kitzhaber resigned from office and was replaced by Secretary of State Kate Brown.
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John Kitzhaber was reelected by a wide margin in 1998 and left office in January 2003.
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In 2010, John Kitzhaber ran for governor again and narrowly defeated his Republican opponent Chris Dudley.
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John Kitzhaber was reelected in 2014, to become Oregon's longest serving governor.
6.
John Kitzhaber resigned from office only a month into his fourth term on February 18,2015, as state and federal authorities were investigating criminal allegations against him and his fiancee Cylvia Hayes.
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In 2017, the federal government dropped its investigation against John Kitzhaber without filing charges.
8.
The Oregon ethics commission found 10 instances when John Kitzhaber used his political office for personal gain.
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John Kitzhaber agreed to pay a settlement fine of $20,000.
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John Kitzhaber was born on March 5,1947, in Colfax, Washington, to Annabel Reed and Albert Raymond John Kitzhaber.
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John Kitzhaber practiced medicine from 1973 to 1986 in Roseburg, Oregon, as an emergency physician.
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John Kitzhaber began his political career in 1978 when he won election to the Oregon House of Representatives, where he served for one term.
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In 1994, John Kitzhaber won the Democratic nomination for governor when the sitting governor, Barbara Roberts, withdrew from the race in January of that year.
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John Kitzhaber was sworn into office on January 9,1995.
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John Kitzhaber won 35 of 36 counties in Oregon, with only rural Malheur County on the Idaho border going for Sizemore.
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John Kitzhaber took a high profile and controversial stand in favor of breaching several Northwest dams to help restore salmon populations.
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John Kitzhaber opposed attempts to weaken protection of farmland and enforcement of urban growth boundaries.
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John Kitzhaber created the Governor's Growth Task Force and the Willamette Valley Livability Forum to help gather accurate information and outline integrated approaches for developing sustainable communities.
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John Kitzhaber's related Community Solutions program attempted to focus the efforts of numerous state agencies, other governments and interested groups in collaborative problem solving and coordination to manage various community development projects across Oregon.
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John Kitzhaber was succeeded by Democrat Ted Kulongoski, who was elected governor in 2002 and 2006.
21.
In September 2009, John Kitzhaber announced that he would run for a third term as governor.
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John Kitzhaber won the Democratic primary in May 2010, defeating Roger Obrist and the former Secretary of State of Oregon Bill Bradbury.
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John Kitzhaber was sworn into his third term as Governor of Oregon on January 10,2011, succeeding the Democrat who had succeeded him, Gov.
24.
John Kitzhaber was nominated by the Independent Party of Oregon in addition to the Democratic Party.
25.
On November 22,2011, John Kitzhaber announced that he might commute an upcoming death sentence scheduled to occur in the month ahead.
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John Kitzhaber went on to announce that he would allow no executions to occur in Oregon while he is governor, calling the issuing of death sentences "compromised and inequitable".
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John Kitzhaber appealed the decision to the Oregon Supreme Court, which decided in the governor's favor on June 20,2013.
28.
John Kitzhaber presided over the failed launch of Cover Oregon, the state's Affordable Care Act insurance exchange website.
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John Kitzhaber was disappointed in 2014 by the collapse of the Columbia River Crossing infrastructure megaproject, amid opposition from some urbanists in Portland and by Republicans in Washington's state Senate and Clark County government.
30.
John Kitzhaber was reportedly unaware of the marriage until the Willamette Week's investigation.
31.
John Kitzhaber asked for an ethics review into Hayes's business activities, which the state commission declined to look into.
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John Kitzhaber publicly defended Hayes against criticism, saying the state executive branch followed protocol with regard to her consulting work and calling her past marriage a "personal issue", although he admitted at a debate that he was "taken aback and hurt" to learn of it.
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John Kitzhaber was cross-nominated by the Working Families Party of Oregon.
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John Kitzhaber was sworn in for a historic fourth term as governor on January 12,2015.
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John Kitzhaber said he wanted to focus on socioeconomic inequality in Oregon during his last four years as governor of the state.
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The Oregonian, which endorsed him in his 2010 and 2014 campaigns, went so far as to call on him to resign, although John Kitzhaber said he would not consider doing so.
37.
In January 2019, John Kitzhaber agreed to pay $20,000 in civil penalties to the Oregon Government Ethics Commission for conflicts of interest involving Hayes while he was governor.
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John Kitzhaber holds an endowed chair on health care policy at The Foundation for Medical Excellence, an educational foundation that produces continuing-education programs for physicians.
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John Kitzhaber serves as the president of the Estes Park Institute, a continuing-education organization for community health care leaders and hospital executives.
40.
On January 13,2006, John Kitzhaber announced the Archimedes Movement, an organization seeking to maximize the health of the population by creating a sustainable system which uses the public resources spent on health care to ensure that everyone has access to a defined set of effective health services.
41.
The Oregon Better Health Act failed to pass the 2007 Legislature after John Kitzhaber was unable to overcome concerns raised by AARP about his inclusion of Medicare in his plan.
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However, John Kitzhaber denied interest in the position and said that he was not being vetted.
43.
On February 7,2014, John Kitzhaber endorsed fellow Democrat Donald Berwick for Governor of Massachusetts.
44.
On May 2,2016, John Kitzhaber announced his endorsement for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in his 2016 race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
45.
John Kitzhaber married Rosemary Linehan in 1971; they divorced in 1974.
46.
John Kitzhaber married Sharon LaCroix in 1995 and had one son, Logan, who was born in October 1997.