Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber appeared Tuesday to be surviving an onslaught of news disclosures about his fiancée, Cylvia Hayes, but Republican rival Dennis Richardson was still close in partial returns.

With about 60 percent of the expected votes compiled in an unofficial tally by the Oregon secretary of state, Kitzhaber was leading Richardson, 49 percent to 46 percent.

Four minor-party candidates split the other votes.

Kitzhaber was seeking a record fourth nonconsecutive term as governor. Richardson is a six-term state representative from Southern Oregon.

During the final weeks, Kitzhaber criticized Richardson’s opposition to abortion rights and marriage by same-sex couples, in addition to promoting his own record.

Richardson said Kitzhaber would resort to “demonizing” him after the disclosures about Hayes.

Among the news disclosures in the closing month of the campaign was her sham marriage in 1997, when she was a student at Evergreen State College in Washington, to an 18-year-old Ethiopian immigrant to enable him to stay in the United States. She accepted $5,000, which she says she spent on college expenses. They divorced in 2002, when she and Kitzhaber began dating.

Hayes and a former boyfriend also were involved in a 1997 land purchase intended for a marijuana-growing operation in Washington state.

But Richardson seized on another news account raising questions about whether Hayes used her position as first lady — which is unpaid — for financial gain.

Kitzhaber has asked for an advisory opinion from the Oregon Government Ethics Commission, which has received separate complaints filed by the Oregon Republican Party and Rep. Vicki Berger, R-Salem. No action has been taken.

Kitzhaber says that Hayes will have no role in his governorship until the questions are resolved. They had announced plans to marry earlier this year but have set no date.

Kitzhaber, now 67, was an emergency-room physician when he was elected to the Oregon House in 1978 and to the Oregon Senate in 1980. He was Senate president from 1985 to 1993, when he stepped down from his Southern Oregon seat.

Kitzhaber was elected in 1994 for the first of two terms as governor. During his eight years, he and Republican majorities were frequently at odds. He issued a record 202 vetoes, three of which were overridden, and drew the nickname “Dr. No.”

After sitting out the eight years that Democrat Ted Kulongoski was governor, Kitzhaber won a record third term in 2010. He edged Republican Chris Dudley, a businessman and former professional basketball player, by just 22,238 votes of almost 1.5 million cast.

The 2010 result was the closest in a race for governor since 1956, when Democrat Robert Holmes unseated Republican Elmo Smith, who was thrust into the job when his predecessor died.

A year ago, Kitzhaber appeared to be a shoo-in for a fourth term.

Only Richardson emerged as a potential opponent, and the most recent Republican to win the governorship was Vic Atiyeh, who served from 1979 to 1987. Atiyeh in 1978 unseated Democrat Bob Straub, the most recent sitting governor to lose a re-election bid going back more than 50 years.

Richardson, 65, is a lawyer who was elected to the Oregon House in 2002. During 2011 and 2012, when the House was split 30-30, he was the House Republican co-chairman of the Legislature’s joint budget panel.

The string of Democratic governors since 1987 is the longest for the party in Oregon history.

During Kitzhaber’s first two years of his new term, he persuaded lawmakers to overhaul education and health care, despite a 30-30 split in the House and a one-vote Democratic majority in the Senate.

Lawmakers created a superboard, led by the governor, to oversee all education spending and enter into performance compacts with school districts, community colleges and state universities.

They also agreed to reshape the delivery of health care, through community-based coordinated-care organizations, for low-income recipients under the Oregon Health Plan.

But Kitzhaber’s first choice for chief education officer was Rudy Crew, who left the job after barely a year — and left a trail of questionable expenses.

While the health-care overhaul resulted in restrained costs, another part of Kitzhaber’s plan to extend health insurance coverage went awry with the failure of the Cover Oregon website.

The electronic marketplace was intended to allow individuals and businesses to compare private plans, determine eligibility and enroll online. But the website failed, and though more people were signed up for coverage through private plans or an expanded Oregon Health Plan, they were enrolled by added staff.

Richardson seized on Crew’s hiring and Cover Oregon to make his case that Kitzhaber was insufficiently attentive to details.

He also criticized Kitzhaber for the failure of the Columbia River Crossing — the proposed new bridge linking Portland with Vancouver, Wash., on Interstate 5 — even though he voted for Oregon’s $400 million commitment to the project in 2013. The project fell through when the Washington Senate failed to approve that state’s share in 2013.

Richardson offered few details of his own of his plans for education and health care.

Though he opposed Common Core — a national set of standards developed by governors and state education officials, and adopted by the Oregon Board of Education in October 2010 — Richardson said only that he supports mentoring and local control of public schools.

He also said lawmakers should fund schools first in the state budget process; state aid accounts for the lion’s share of district operating costs.