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. Brown will be Oregon’s second woman governor, following in the footsteps of Barbara Roberts, who served from 1991-95. She will be the 37th woman governor overall, and the 22nd 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. 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.

Courtesy of the Center of American Women and Politics at Rutger’s University (CAWP). For more information, visit: http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/