He's back?

After mostly avoiding the limelight in the 13 months since he quit the governor's office amid a federal investigation, John Kitzhaber on Friday made clear his days of keeping a low profile are over.

Why now? He wants to get back to earning paychecks -- and put the scandal over his resignation in his past.

Taking to a new page on Facebook, he posted a fireside video exclaiming his innocence over allegations of influence-peddling involving his fiancee, Cylvia Hayes.

"I can't sit any longer," he said in his trademark denim, "and allow my career and my reputation to be defined by a media narrative that, from the start has been long on speculation and short on facts."

And on Oregon Public Broadcasting, he sat down with a reporter who'd covered him for decades, Jeff Mapes. Mapes spent years as the senior political reporter for The Oregonian/OregonLive. The interview was taped Thursday but aired Friday, about when Kitzhaber's Facebook video went live.

Kitzhaber wouldn't say much about the investigation, except to say he hasn't yet met with investigators. And also that he expects he'll be cleared of wrongdoing.

"I remain confident that when the truth is told and the investigation complete, I will be exonerated," he told Mapes. "I am very confident of that."

"I'm also trying to figure out what my career path from a financial standpoint is going to be," Kitzhaber said in the OPB interview. "And as I said, I do think that will involve some consulting. And if you're going to do some consulting, people need to know you're alive and well."

Kitzhaber didn't immediately respond Friday to messages seeking comment.

The near-simultaneous appearances aren't the first time the former governor has showed his face since resigning in February 2015.

He "ended nearly eight months of silence" in October, the Statesman Journal reported, after issuing statements criticizing media coverage of his administration. Also that month, he sent a letter beseeching the White House for peace over a water management fight in the Klamath Basin.

"We're running out of time," he told Steve Duin, a columnist for The Oregonian/OregonLive, at the time. The interview was done with the agreement that Kitzhaber wouldn't take questions beyond the Klamath issue. "Since I have a history in it, and I know the secretary, I wanted to weigh in and see if there was anything I could do."

Kitzhaber and Hayes' personal and political lives have been laid bare for months in a series of emails requested by The Oregonian/OregonLive under the state's public records law.

The former governor opened up a bit more in the Mapes interview this week.

He spoke of doing chores around the house. He also said he and Hayes remain engaged but are waiting until after the federal investigation to set a date.

As for politics, he's minding the brewing fight between labor and business interests over a measure that could raise up to $2.5 billion a year by taxing large, out-of-state corporations. Kitzhaber negotiated a "mutual stand down" over similar measures in the final year of his third term, in 2014.

He's also watching his successor, Gov. Kate Brown, telling Mapes about her "steep learning curve" but otherwise saying little else.

On Facebook, Kitzhaber acknowledged the isolation of his seeming exile and said he was "very excited (and, quite frankly, a little nervous) to be using social media to reconnect with so many Oregonians I've lost contact with over the past year."

"I find the prospect both amazing and somewhat terrifying," he wrote in a post separate from his video. "But I'm game. So in the immortal words of Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise, 'make it so.'"

The post was liked by Hayes and notables including former Portland City Commissioner Randy Leonard. But the first comment came from conservative radio host Lars Larson.

"Mr Kitzhaber," Larson wrote, "I'd be happy to let you use my regionwide talk show to 'reconnect' to Oregonians. More than a few of us have some questions we'd like answered."

-- Denis C. Theriault

503-221-8430; @TheriaultPDX