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Patricia McCaig at the first arm of Gov. John Kitzhaber, the morning after their victory in the 2010 election.
(Michael Lloyd)
It was inevitable that the arc of outrage -- and, daresay, justice -- would bend back around to Patricia McCaig. She is just as married to former Gov. John Kitzhaber as Cylvia Hayes ever was, and easily twice as smart.
While we're waiting for the Hayes' emails - held hostage in the court battle between Hayes and The Oregonian/OregonLive - we have been treated to a series of cloying exchanges between Kitzhaber and McCaig, leaked to Willamette Week.
"You truly are a Princess," Kitzhaber wrote after McCaig - who managed everything that mattered to him - explained how to meld Cover Oregon reconstruction surgery and his re-election campaign. "How did I get so lucky to be on your team?"
"Because you are you and you are governor of the great state of Oregon," McCaig gushed back. "And I believe."
Let me guess: You're stuck on "princess." Kitzhaber is paying homage, of course, to McCaig's favorite self-mocking tribute to her gifts, one that often feels over-used and overwrought.
"Princess of Darkness" is only one of her personalities. Back in the early 1990s, she described herself as "Gidget," too.
I knew McCaig best in the Gidget years. She was accessible, quotable and entertainingly intense, working for Barbara Roberts in the secretary of state's office or managing Roberts' 1990 campaign for governor.
She was still telling people that going to work for Frank Roberts, Barbara's late husband, "pretty much changed my life. I was an angry, disgruntled person and he showed me how to make it work within the system."
And she still cared about the need for light in politics. Not only did McCaig happily hold her neuroses up for inspection, but she was an illuminating source on the first scandal I tripped over as a political columnist in 1989.
To cover up a telling omission in the campaign finance records of the House Democratic Caucus, Carl Wiederaenders - top aide to David Dix, the House Majority leader - stole into the Elections Division early one morning and removed a page from the public file.
As that deceit came undone, McCaig didn't seem to care that Dix and Wiederaenders were fellow Democrats. She relished the trouble I caused.
That provocateur is long gone. Gidget grew up. When Roberts was still secretary of state, McCaig took a leave of absence to work on a campaign for FDR Services, an aggressive Seattle-based consulting firm.
When I once asked her about FDR's slash-and-burn style, McCaig said, "It's not that they enjoy the slash and burn. They enjoy winning."
Increasingly, so did McCaig. When she ran for Metro Council in 1994, she insisted her goal was "to get a quality life, a balanced life. I want a life outside government and politics. Something outside. Something distinctly different."
But she never found that satisfying balance at Metro, in a brief stint as a strategist with the pollsters Adam Davis and Tim Hibbitts, or riding herd on the Portland zoo bond.
She only found it -- "And I believe" -- with Kitzhaber. The very guy who ran Barbara Roberts -- and McCaig -- out of the governor's office in 1994.
It may be a bit much to suggest McCaig made peace with Kitzhaber on the chance she might one day collect $553,000 on the very bridge project for which she served as Kitzhaber's top adviser.
Maybe she simply related to his callous opportunism. Maybe she just wanted to be wanted. Kitzhaber wanted her for everything: the state Board of Education, his 2010 campaign, the Columbia River Crossing, the Cover Oregon mess, and oversight of his last, desperate weekend in office.
He trusted her loyalty and her utter devotion to winning, no matter the prize, no matter the cost, no matter the bill.
After all these years, I don't know that McCaig ever returned to "angry" and "disgruntled." But the game, the stakes and the scrutiny have worn her down. She has been hardened and isolated by the journey.
And she is increasingly comfortable in the dark. In those email exchanges with Kitzhaber, McCaig bragged about "not putting too much on paper;" advised the governor not to share state documents with Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum; and celebrated the night that only two reporters checked in on a Cover Oregon board meeting: "That's great progress."
That's Oregon politics, choreographed by Kitzhaber and McCaig. How did we get so lucky?
-- Steve Duin
sduin@oregonian.com
503-221-8597; @SteveDuin