On a stormy Sunday evening in February, Gov. John Kitzhaber joined his fiancee Cylvia Hayes and six advisers at Mahonia Hall in Salem for a blunt discussion. Could he come back from the influence-peddling scandal that had him on the verge of ruin?

Among those gathered around Mahonia's formal dining table were Patricia McCaig, his pugnacious longtime adviser; Mike Bonetto, the loyal chief of staff; and Mark Wiener, the loud, opinionated political consultant.

They were near unanimous. He'd fallen too far, the politics had become too toxic. Even if he chose to hang on, he would certainly face a recall in July.

Kitzhaber cut off the conversation and said he would resign.

"The office doesn't deserve this," he said. "Good people are getting hurt."

As the stunned group began to break up, Hayes muttered almost to herself: "It's just amazing to me that the pursuit of happiness could cause such an uproar."

Thunder boomed overhead with exquisite timing, seemingly punctuating the end of a political era.

But that resolve didn't last long. The next morning, Kitzhaber decided against resigning anytime soon.

Kitzhaber declined interview requests for this story. He did give the above statement.

In the coming days, The Oregonian/OregonLive has established, Kitzhaber would change his mind at least five times. He finally announced Friday, Feb. 13, that he was giving up the office he had held longer than anyone in history.

He blamed the press and political allies for what appeared to be a stunningly swift exit.

In fact, The Oregonian/OregonLive found that a heated debate had divided Kitzhaber's team in the months before he walked out, and he had begun to lose the political support of those closest to him.

Like Kitzhaber, Hayes declined multiple interview requests for this story. Her lawyer did release this statement.

Neither the former governor nor Hayes would agree to an interview. This account of never-before-reported events comes from interviews with more than a dozen Kitzhaber insiders, political leaders and others in government. They agreed to discuss the Kitzhaber administration only if not identified, out of loyalty and concern for the intense federal criminal investigation now underway.

They portrayed a talented politician long in denial that Hayes' consulting contracts and forceful involvement in public affairs threatened his governorship. When he finally grasped the threat, he was indecisive about how to respond. Events made the choice for him.

Rival factions of his team contributed to his uncertainty with compelling but contradictory advice. For months heading to the end, his political advisers were increasingly pointed: The love of his life was political poison and would bring him down unless he distanced himself from her and disclosed everything about her business affairs.

Key players Among the key people former Gov. John Kitzhaber consulted as he struggled with a decision to resign: Patricia McCaig: Kitzhaber's longtime adviser Mike Bonetto: Kitzhaber's chief of staff Mark Wiener: political consultant Steve Janik: Kitzhaber lawyer Jim McDermott: Kitzhaber lawyer Tom Imeson: utility executive and political veteran Dmitri Palmateer: Kitzhaber's legislative liaison Kevin Looper: political consultant Whitney Boise: Hayes lawyer Peter Courtney: Senate president Tina Kotek: House speaker

The attorneys argued just as adamantly that transparency was a luxury the governor could no longer afford. Above all, the attorneys told him, don't quit. His job was his most important bargaining chip for likely settlement negotiations of ethical and perhaps criminal accusations.

In the end, Kitzhaber picked his own path.

He sealed his fate by opting for secrecy over disclosure, leading even his most loyal supporters to wonder what he was hiding. In their view and to their lasting dismay, he left the political stage arm-in-arm with the one person whose naked self-interest and disregard for ethical boundaries led to his undoing.

"He chose Cylvia over his reputation, over his legacy, over his service to the people of Oregon," one insider said.

The "Free Radical"

The seeds of Kitzhaber's doom were planted as he took office for his third term in 2011. Hayes had insisted through the campaign on being a player and now wanted a large voice in affairs of the governor's office. Senior executives in Kitzhaber's administration recognized from the start they would have a challenge managing her.

Hayes, who declined an interview request, referred to herself as the "Free Radical," a reference to the wildly unpredictable molecules that tend to cause chain reactions. Twenty years Kitzhaber's junior and strikingly attractive, she was a self-styled environmental champion struggling to generate a living from her green energy consulting business.

Behind the flower-child-turned-green wonk exterior, she brought a burning ambition to the Capitol. While Kitzhaber and his staff wanted to focus on health care and education, Hayes continually pushed the governor and his staff to make a mark on the environment.

Some on Kitzhaber's staff came to loathe her. Then-Chief of Staff Curtis Robinhold preached an almost militaristic discipline, a tightly focused agenda and highly controlled access to Kitzhaber. Hayes considered herself exempt.

"I was in a rather tense conversation with two of John's senior staff about how I would contribute to these issues that my life has been committed to," she said in a later speech. "I was getting some pushback from the guys. One of them said, 'When you work for the governor...' I immediately jumped in and said 'I don't work for the governor. I work for the earth.' "

"Their jaws just dropped, poor fellas," Hayes said.

The line drew a good chuckle from the Portland State University crowd. Hayes made no mention of the private consulting work that had confounded Kitzhaber's staff for months.

On May 13, 2013, Hayes hosted what appeared to be a government meeting at Mahonia Hall on the so-called Genuine Progress Indicator. She was a big booster of prosperity metrics, arguing that they are more accurate measures of social well-being than traditional measures such as the gross domestic product.

Kitzhaber was at the meeting, as was Michael Jordan, the state's chief operating officer, and several other senior Kitzhaber policy advisers and other state employees. Also in the room: Lew Daley, director of policy and research at Demos, a New York City non-profit.

Demos was helping Kitzhaber institute the GPI to measure the success of his state policies. Demos officials attended the same "gross national happiness" seminar in Bhutan that Kitzhaber and Hayes had traveled to earlier that spring.

As the discussion continued, Hayes disclosed that she was being paid by Demos. Staffers knew nothing of the arrangement, and it's unclear if the governor did.

As Kitzhaber staffers returned to the Capitol that spring day, they shared a realization: Their Cylvia problem had just escalated. Here was Hayes using a state building with the governor and other senior state employees in attendance pushing policies advocated by her client. It appeared to be a case of official misconduct, some said.

"This is where it got weird," one former insider said. "She would say 'we' did this and 'we' want that. It was never clear who 'we' was."

Robinhold, recognizing the conflicts, tried to corral her. He directed Liani Reeves, Kitzhaber's general counsel, to get a full list of Hayes' contracts. In ensuing weeks, Reeves wrote guidelines intended to separate Hayes' private work from her role as first lady.

Kitzhaber seemed to appreciate efforts by his staffers to set ethical limits on Hayes, sometimes calling them aside for a quiet word of thanks. But in the end, he did little to support them. Hayes objected to the restrictions crafted by Reeves and managed, with Kitzhaber's help, to weaken them.

Containment of Hayes eroded further when Robinhold, Communications Director Tim Raphael and senior economic adviser Scott Nelson left the Kitzhaber staff in late 2013. Insiders credit all three for keeping Hayes in check.

Hayes exploited their absence. The following summer, Bonetto, the new chief of staff, fired Nkenge Harmon Johnson as communications director. One of her offenses: urging closer monitoring of Hayes.

In the end, the Free Radical demonstrated she could wear down and outlast her opponents -- a message not missed by Kitzhaber's staffers.

Contracts become political bombshell

The "Cylvia problem" took a dramatic turn in fall 2014, as the governor campaigned for an unprecedented fourth term.

Recent developments What's happened since John Kitzhaber resigned as governor: Feb. 13: Kitzhaber announces his resignation about noon. That afternoon, federal agents deliver a sweeping subpoena naming the governor and his fiancee, Cylvia Hayes, that seeks thousands of records from agencies and state employees dating to 2009. Feb. 18: Secretary of State Kate Brown is sworn in as Oregon's new governor. Feb. 22: Kitzhaber's criminal defense lawyer tries to stop criminal investigators from getting Kitzhaber's personal emails stored on state computers, some of which are leaked to Willamette Week. Feb. 23: A top official in Brown's administration begins a criminal investigation into who leaked the emails. Feb. 25: The IRS joins the FBI in its investigation of Kitzhaber and Hayes, The Oregonian/ OregonLive reports. Feb. 26: Hayes asserts her constitutional right against self-incrimination in a lawsuit seeking to block a state order that she release work-related emails from her personal accounts to The Oregonian/OregonLive. Feb. 27: Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum suspends the state's investigation into potential influence peddling by Hayes and Kitzhaber, which she had announced Feb. 9, giving way to FBI and IRS investigators. March 5: Michael Jordan, the state's chief administrator and one of Kitzhaber's closest allies, resigns. March 10: Brown terminates the contract of a Kitzhaber forest policy adviser who collected hundreds of thousands of dollars while running a private timber consulting firm, The Oregonian/ OregonLive reports. March 19: The Oregonian/OregonLive reports that Kitzhaber's criminal attorney has filed a federal motion seeking to keep his emails out of federal investigators' hands, and that two public defenders, at taxpayer expense, will defend Hayes in the investigation.

The Kitzhaber team learned that Portland alternative weekly Willamette Week was about to run a story on Hayes and her consulting contracts.

The newspaper was asking disturbing questions about Hayes' marital history, pushing the Kitzhaber camp on whether Hayes had been married twice or three times.

The questions became the central topic for a routine campaign meeting in Portland the evening of Tuesday, Oct. 7. McCaig called Hayes to confront her. Hayes admitted that years before, she had entered a sham marriage with an Ethiopian seeking a green card.

A disgusted McCaig told Hayes to phone Kitzhaber and tell him. Kitzhaber was at a fundraiser at Providence Park, but soon joined the campaign and office staffers at his re-election headquarters.

Whitney Boise, a Portland criminal defense attorney retained to represent Hayes, arrived. Boise played shuttle diplomat between Hayes and Kitzhaber. He kept them in separate rooms and exchanged information about the questionable marriage. He did so to protect Hayes' legal position by preserving attorney-client privilege. He also avoided specifics so Kitzhaber wouldn't have them to share if there were later legal proceedings.

As the evening wore on, the whiskey kept for the governor drained away shot by shot.

The published story about the sham marriage the next day was quickly followed by Hayes' tearful public admission she had taken $5,000 in the arrangement. More disclosures followed, but Kitzhaber was re-elected with 733,000 votes. News of Hayes' misdeeds seemed to cause little harm.

Election night was like the eye of the hurricane for Kitzhaber, a strange and deceiving show of calm and strength amid an unrelenting storm of bad news. The election honeymoon lasted just three days. It ended when the Oregon Government Ethics Commission revealed it was considering an investigation of Hayes' consulting contracts.

Kitzhaber maintained that he'd done nothing wrong. He didn't buy the premise that Hayes' contracts posed a conflict of interest. But the press was relentless, burying the governor's office with requests for contracts, emails and other internal records.

The governor's apparent steadiness masked the turmoil behind the scenes. As the new year approached, Kitzhaber asked those closest to him to signal whether the Hayes matter was impairing his ability to govern.

His advisers warned him the scandal was growing, eroding his political capital even before he could be sworn in. Political consultants told Kitzhaber he could contain the Hayes controversy by disclosing everything and apologizing for any lapse in judgment.

Kitzhaber's lawyers, Portland power brokers Steve Janik and Jim McDermott, advocated a different strategy: Hunker down behind a wall of secrecy. The attorneys, hired by Kitzhaber in October, argued that no one could touch him until July, the soonest the law allowed a recall effort. By then, the legislative session would be over, Kitzhaber would have some wins to trumpet, and people would have moved on.

This debate played out again and again in ensuing weeks like a scene from the movie "Groundhog Day." Even as his position continued to weaken, Kitzhaber's political advisers couldn't get through to him.

The lawyers had arguably won the day by early December, when they filed paperwork with the Ethics Commission on behalf of Hayes contending that it had no jurisdiction over Hayes because she was neither a public figure nor a member of Kitzhaber's household. The filing, for the moment, was secret.

The pressure ratcheted on Jan. 28 when the East Oregonian reported Hayes' admission she had been paid $118,000 for a previously undisclosed consulting contract. The Oregonian/OregonLive reported that development, adding that the payments appeared more than the income Hayes reported on her federal tax returns.

What had been strictly a civil investigation now seemed headed for the criminal realm. Hayes had been represented by a criminal lawyer since October. Kitzhaber didn't hire his own criminal defense attorney until Feb. 9, which some take as a reflection of his belief he did no wrong.

McCaig persuaded the governor to hold a press conference to declare that Hayes would have no official role in the governor's fourth term. That message at the Jan. 30 conference was overshadowed by Kitzhaber's terse one-word answers or refusal to answer at all.

The next day, Kitzhaber judged the event such a failure he was ready to resign, insiders said.

Kitzhaber's staffers took the governor at his word, though, and began screening Hayes from the office. Hayes discovered the changes when she returned from Europe nearly a week after the news conference.

She found her state phone disconnected, office meetings canceled and her state-paid assistant reassigned. State technicians had removed the First Lady of Oregon page from Kitzhaber's website.

Hayes called Bonetto, upset about the website and other actions. She asked her state-assigned staffer to restore meetings to her calendar.

She seemed near oblivious to Kitzhaber's political nose dive, focused instead on the loss of her first lady perks.

Unrelenting pressure

The damaging revelations kept coming. Two days after the press conference The Oregonian/OregonLive broke the news that two close Kitzhaber associates had helped create jobs for Hayes in 2011 with groups hoping to influence Oregon energy policy.

On Feb. 4, The Oregonian/OregonLive's Editorial Board called on Kitzhaber to resign. The damage-control effort clearly was failing.

Politicos were blunt: Kitzhaber had to end his relationship with Hayes to survive. He needed to release all the emails and other documents he'd been sitting on and throw himself on the mercy of the Oregon public.

Kitzhaber agreed, but wouldn't sacrifice Hayes to save himself. He thought one way to buy time to rehabilitate his career would be to appear cooperative with an investigation by Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum. He was unaware that the FBI already was asking questions.

The governor and his fiancee also were confronted with escalating efforts to get at their records. Hayes had ignored and now was contesting an effort to force her to disclose personal emails related to her first lady work.

"The refusal to come clean on the emails made recovery very difficult," said one insider. "A 50 percent mea culpa doesn't work."

Hayes' lawyers were preparing a filing to the state Justice Department contesting a petition seeking those emails. A primary argument was that Hayes was not a public official, so the public records law didn't apply to her. To buttress their point, the lawyers planned to include a copy of the earlier secret filing to the Ethics Commission outlining why Hayes was just another private citizen.

But attaching that filing meant it would become public - and that its claims would contradict Kitzhaber's public declaration that he and Hayes would fully cooperate with the Ethics Commission. Bonetto, the chief of staff, proposed the Sunday meeting at Mahonia Hall to consider the implications of such a disclosure.

The insiders gathered about 5:30 p.m. Besides McCaig, Wiener and Bonetto, others seated around the long dining table included Hayes, Portland executive Tom Imeson, legislative liaison Dmitri Palmateer, and political consultant Kevin Looper.

The governor, wearing a dress shirt and jeans, arrived late from a friend's funeral in Roseburg.

The group discussed the options, ranging from resignation to recall. They reviewed the legal challenges, particularly what would happen if the Ethics Commission filing became public. The governor had insisted to his staff that Hayes be treated as an adviser. Now, the lawyers' argument would leave Kitzhaber looking like a hypocrite and a liar.

The conversation lasted more than hour, and the consensus: resignation at some point was inevitable. McCaig turned to Imeson, asking if he had a different view. The Portland utility executive, a veteran of Oregon politics who hadn't been closely involved in the unfolding drama, sided with the group. For Kitzhaber, there was no coming back.

Kitzhaber agreed. It was over. The next step would be a meeting the following afternoon with a smaller group from his inner circle to prepare his exit.

Early the next morning, Kitzhaber shared his intentions in a meeting with his civil lawyers, McDermott and Janik, and Hayes' lawyer, Boise. They were aghast. He'd done nothing to warrant resignation, they said. It made no sense for an elected official looking at multiple investigations to give up his job. They said he needed time to set up a legal defense fund, something available only if he remained in office.

They talked him out of resigning and Kitzhaber was a no-show at the planned meeting with Bonetto and others. He told Bonetto he felt his team had done him a disservice in pressuring him to resign. And now he wouldn't.

McCaig learned of Kitzhaber's reversal and thought he should have told his inner circle face-to-face. They deserved as much after working so hard to craft a path forward that would spare his legacy. Frank as always, she texted Kitzhaber.

"That was rude and disrespectful," she typed.

Kitzhaber otherwise tried to maintain some routine, meeting in his Portland office late morning with a labor official and midafternoon with a local consultant.

The next day - Tuesday, Feb. 10 -- Kitzhaber met privately with Senate President Peter Courtney and then House Speaker Tina Kotek. They told him the scandal was damaging his legislative agenda and theirs. He gave them the impression he would resign.

At about 1:30 p.m., he called Secretary of State Kate Brown, who under Oregon law would replace Kitzhaber were he to leave office. He needed a face-to-face meeting, just the two of them, as quickly as possible. When could she return from Washington, D.C.?

As the day ended, Kitzhaber's advisers believed he once again was ready to resign.

Then came Wednesday. The Capitol, transfixed with the intrigue, hummed with energy. Word came in the morning that Brown was on her way back to Oregon at the governor's request. His resignation seemed imminent.

With Brown in flight, Kitzhaber again met with his lawyers. Again, he changed his mind about departing. McDermott called an Oregonian/OregonLive reporter just after noon, declaring publicly that as far as he knew, the governor had no intention of resigning. The statement, quickly reported, surprised Kitzhaber's advisers, leaving them to wonder what was next.

That afternoon, Brown met Kitzhaber in a Port of Portland office, expecting Kitzhaber to discuss resignation and transition. Instead, he asked her, "What are you doing here?"

Later that evening, a defiant Kitzhaber told KGW: I'm not going anywhere.

The landscape shifted, yet again, the next morning when Courtney and Kotek trooped to Kitzhaber's private office. Kitzhaber appeared ready to fight, reporting that business and union leaders were urging him to stay put. The leaders were stunned. Kitzhaber seemed unaware of how damaged he was. They told him: You're on your own.

They soon met with their respective caucuses, telling them they were about to publicly call on the governor to resign. They issued their statements after alerting Kitzhaber. That was followed by a statement that quickly rocketed through the building. Brown issued a press release recounting her "bizarre and unprecedented" meeting the day before with Kitzhaber.

Kitzhaber summoned Bonetto, his chief of staff and one of his last remaining allies. But even Bonetto's loyalty was finite. He had informed Kitzhaber the day before that he was prepared to help orchestrate a resignation and transition. But if the governor decided to stay and fight, it would be best if he found another chief of staff. Dmitri Palmateer, his legislative liaison, had delivered the same message.

By midday, Kitzhaber realized he had no hope.

He walked back to his small private office in the Capitol. His desk was lined with personal photos. On a shelf behind the desk stood a photo of his political hero, Robert Kennedy, and a photo of him with Hayes.

Alone, he started packing.

- Jeff Manning and Les Zaitz

- Laura Gunderson, Nick Budnick and Jeff Mapes contributed to this report.