With Addition of Brown in Oregon, Women Governors Now Total Six

When Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown succeeds the resigning Governor John Kitzhaber on Wednesday, February 18, she will join five other women as chief executives in the states for a total of three Democrats and three Republicans. The Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP), a unit of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University, also reports that Brown will be Oregon’s second woman governor, following in the footsteps of Barbara Roberts, who served from 1991-95. She will be the 37^th woman governor overall, and the 22^nd Democratic woman, to lead a state’s government.

Brown will be the seventh woman  and the first Democratic woman to succeed a governor who resigned. One woman, Rose Mofford (D-AZ) took office after the governor was impeached. Of the women who were elected to states’ number two posts and then succeeded to the governorship, three were later elected in their own right to full gubernatorial terms.

CAWP’s website has additional information about the history of women governors,  women in statewide elective executive posts, and women in elective offices in Oregon. Additional general information about governors is available on the website of Eagleton’s Center on the American Governor.