The death of a political leader is sometimes an auspicious circumstance. President Abraham Lincoln’s death was the most coincidental of all. He was assassinated on Good Friday. That forced clergy across America to rewrite Easter Sunday sermons.

Sen. Henry Jackson of Washington – one of the Northwest’s most significant lawmakers – unexpectedly succumbed to a heart attack at the age of 71– some hours after learning that his archenemy, the Soviet Union, had shot down a Korean passenger jet, in what appeared to be cold blood.

Gov. John Kitzhaber became Oregon’s first modern governor to resign. His appointment with history occurred on Friday the 13th.

In his resignation statement, Kitzhaber took an obligatory swipe at the media. Maudlin as it was, the resigning governor’s rant is something that we in the print press should accept with gratitude.

Our Legislature had nothing to do with shining a light on the influence peddling that went on down the hall in the governor’s suite. Neither did the Secretary of State’s Audit Division. Nor did state prosecutors.

It was reporters who sniffed the stench and doggedly pursued clues. Nigel Jaquiss of Willamette Week was the prime mover. I am proud to say that Hillary Borrud of our company’s Capital Bureau also played a pivotal role, reporting Cylvia Hayes’ $118,000 payment from a clean fuels interest group. The Oregonian was late to the hunt, but broke a piece of significance.

The new aspect of this story is that it all broke online. Each news organization posted the stories to their websites while between print editions. That added to the velocity of events.

Notably absent from all this was our state capital newspaper, the Statesman-Journal. In a strange column published Monday, SJ Executive Editor Michael Davis berated The Oregonian for its Sunday editorial urging Kithaber to resign.

The O’s editorial was hardly the main show. The heart of the bat was revelation after revelation about how the Kitzhaber administration had put its office up for sale through Cylvia Hayes. That’s what sank the ship.

Among hard-core liberal Portland Democrats there no doubt is some mourning over Kitzhaber’s demise. But they are weeping over John Kitzhaber of the first and second terms. The third term John Kitzhaber was different. Kitzhaber was exceedingly poorly served in that third administration. I don’t think I’ve encountered a more inept political press secretary than Kitzhaber’s in that term. State Sen. Betsy Johnson regularly told me how the governor’s staff was not up to the task during those four years.

Moreover, if a governor’s wife or companion had taken money in six figures from the Koch brothers, do you think urban liberals would see no evil?

The essence of the crime committed in the state capital was captured by Brent Walth who told an Astoria Columbia Forum audience in November: “I didn’t think we’d ever see, in my life, the office put up for sale, but that’s exactly what we’ve seen.”

— S.A.F.

If the Koch brother gave a governor’s wife or companion $118,000, Portland liberals would be scandalized.