Kate Brown

Katherine "Kate" Brown (born June 21, 1960) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the 38th governor of Oregon. A member of the Democratic Party, Brown previously served in both houses of the Oregon State Legislature and as Oregon Secretary of State. Brown entered Oregon politics in 1991 when she was appointed to fill a vacancy in the Oregon House of Representatives. In 1996 she won an election to the Oregon Senate, where she remained until her election as secretary of state in 2009. As secretary of state, Brown focused on modernizing the office with new technology. The secretary of state is next in the order of succession to the governor. When Governor John Kitzhaber resigned in February 2015, amid a public corruptions scandal, Brown was sworn in. She was elected to serve out the remainder of Kitzhaber's gubernatorial term in the special election the following year and reelected in 2018 to a full term in her own right. Brown is the first openly bisexual governor in the United States, the first openly LGBT person elected governor in the United States, and the second female governor of Oregon, after Barbara Roberts.