Tina Kotek and Aimee Kotek Wilson pictured in 2022 when Kotek was the governor-elect.
Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB
Gov. Tina Kotek is backing off of plans to expand her wife’s role in the administration and apologizing for her handling of the subject, as mounting public scrutiny on First Lady Aimee Kotek Wilson becomes an increasing threat to the governor’s policy agenda.
In a lengthy statement and subsequent press conference Wednesday afternoon, Kotek appeared to close the door on an effort public records show she has quietly pursued for months: creating a formal office for her spouse, Kotek Wilson.
A trove of emails released last week showed definitively that Kotek’s steps in that direction — over significant concerns raised by staff — were a key reason three of the governor’s top aides announced their departures last month. A staff attorney and Kotek’s communications director have since resigned, though it’s not clear those departures are related.
“After listening to and reflecting on the concerns of Oregonians who have contacted my office, as well as the advice of staff, I want to be clear about next steps: There will not be an Office of the First Spouse,” Kotek wrote in prepared remarks before a planned news conference. “There will not be a position of Chief of Staff to the First Spouse.”
The move marks an abrupt turnaround. Kotek had shown no public misgivings about exploring a larger role for Kotek Wilson.
But it was also not entirely clear Wednesday what the change of course will amount to. Kotek made clear in her statement the first lady “will continue to accompany me and attend events representing the Governor’s Office, such as Tribal visits and ceremonial events, and she will listen to Oregonians about the issues most impacting them…”
She refused to say what, if anything, the first lady would not be doing, however. That’s a pertinent question, since Kotek Wilson’s calendars show she has met extensively with a wide variety of officials on behavioral health matters. Kotek said she is awaiting an opinion from the Oregon Governor’s Ethics Commission before finalizing what her wife’s role might be.
“I think it’s important to say what she will be doing and I think her calendar will be transparent,” Kotek said. “That’s, I think, what Oregonians are asking.”
Kotek said the first lady will be free to use her small office among other staff members in the governor’s office. And the governor said she had reassigned one of Kotek Wilson’s assistants in light of her decision, though the office continues to employ an advisor who assists with the first lady’s calendar and is working to clarify her role in the office.
Kotek’s chief regret, she suggested, was sloppily communicating how she views the first lady’s role to the public — a topic she said she began to think about more last year, when she and Kotek Wilson toured the state.
“I think things just kind of moved ahead without a lot of clarification,” she said. “That’s why it’s been a little uncertain and messy. We’re bringing clarity to it.”
In a meeting with reporters in early April, the governor suggested she was only at the outset of thinking about how the first lady’s more expansive influence could work, and announced she would be putting formal questions to the Oregon Government Ethics Commission.
“We weren’t sure what questions we needed to ask,” Kotek said at the time. “We are now expediting that because of the public interest and so going to the Ethics Commission to try to figure that out.”
The documents released last week, however, show staffers had been flagging potential issues about the arrangement for months, posing the kinds of detailed questions that Kotek told reporters her office had just begun to consider.
They also show clearly that Kotek had already hired a chief of staff for her wife: Meliah Masiba, a former legislative director for the state’s sprawling Department of Administrative Services. The governor’s office recast the position publicly as an “advisor” once concerns surfaced in late March about Kotek Wilson’s role.
“I take responsibility for not being more thoughtful in my approach to exploring the role of the First Spouse,” Kotek said. “I am sorry for the way this conversation between my office and you has started.”
Kotek appears to be holding firm on a decision to grant the first lady bodyguard protection from the Oregon State Police when she appears in public, a move that emails show caused friction in her office.
And Kotek says her office is “assembling a First Spouse Manual to spell out policies and procedures related to that role, including protocols for addressing any staff concerns or complaints.”
Such protocols appear to be similar to steps one of Kotek’s now-departed aides, Abby Tibbs, called for in an email in mid-March, shortly before she left the office. But it’s also clear from emails released Friday that members of Kotek’s staff have been working on a formal job description for Kotek Wilson since at least February. The governor said she will refuse to release an internal legal opinion she received about the role of the first lady, saying that the decision not to release the legal document applied to all legal opinions in her office.
Kotek Wilson got her start in Oregon politics working on Democratic campaigns and for public officials, including then-Secretary of State Kate Brown. She pivoted to social work. Records show she was licensed by the state as a social worker from early 2021 to the end of 2022, and she worked for Cascadia Behavioral Health at that time. Kotek Wilson has also said she lives with mental illness and is in recovery from alcohol use disorder.
Kotek has repeatedly said that life path gives her wife valuable insight on how to address Oregon’s serious struggles with substance use and mental health care.
“The First Lady and I share a profound commitment to standing up for the most vulnerable among us, fighting for a more just world, and making sure we leave this world better than we found it,” Kotek said Wednesday. “She is a social worker, someone with lived experience and someone who has throughout her career helped lift up the stories of others to make meaningful change.”
Kotek noted that her wife receives no pay for her participation in the administration, and says the couple “jointly and intentionally decided that she not return to employment or have any outside income as to avoid any perceived or actual conflict of interest.”
That decision might be rooted in recent history. Then-Gov. John Kitzhaber was forced to resign in 2015 after First Lady Cylvia Hayes accepted paid consulting work from entities that had an interest in influencing the administration.
But Kotek Wilson’s lack of income has not been enough to avoid scrutiny of her position, and some interactions have raised eyebrows in the governor’s office.
At one point, emails show Kotek asked a policy adviser to call Cascadia Behavioral Health to intercede in a workplace matter on behalf of one of Kotek Wilson’s friends. Tibbs was unsparing about the move, writing in an email it was “highly inappropriate at best.”
“The Governor has been reminded several times now of the power she and the [first lady] hold in this office and externally and the appropriate use of their power,” Tibbs wrote on Feb. 9.
Kotek declined on Wednesday to offer insight into those reminders, but said she stands behind the decision to direct staff to call Cascadia.
“When I am approached and when people express a concern about safety, particularly in this instance workplace safety, I think it’s my job to respond, but respond accordingly and appropriately,” she said.
In Oregon, the first spouse is considered a public official. But as Kotek often notes, there are no hard-and-fast rules for what the role entails. That has instead been left largely for governors and their spouses to determine.
Kotek’s remarks Wednesday suggests that, while she has tabled some possibilities for her wife’s role, the subject is still unsettled.
“I am committed to defining the role of the First Spouse with respect to what we learn from [the Oregon Government Ethics Commission],” the statement said, “not only on behalf of this administration but future administrations as well.”