Saturday, November 21, 2009

A SPOKESMAN-REVIEW INVESTIGATIVE REPORT

Voters recall West

Vast majority favor removal of Spokane's chief executive

By Jim Camden / Staff writer

December 7, 2005

Spokane voters ousted Mayor Jim West Tuesday, ending the political career of one of the community's longest serving elected officials.

In a historic special election, just under two-thirds of voters agreed with a recall measure that accused West of using "his elected office for personal benefit." Only about 35 percent agreed with West's response to the charges, in which he denied using his office for personal gain, apologized for "errors in my private life" and asked for their permission to continue "to make Spokane a better place to live and work."

"I'm at peace with everything," West said in a telephone interview about an hour after the results were released. Asked about his plans for the future, he said he planned to brief City Council President Dennis Hession, who will take over at least temporarily, on several ongoing projects.

After that, he said, "I get to enjoy a private life for a while."

In Northwest Spokane, at a gathering of volunteers who collected signatures to put the recall measure on the ballot, supporters chanted "Leave our city; leave our city" as the results were announced. Recall author Shannon Sullivan broke into tears and was embraced by her closest allies.

"I'm really pleased," said Sullivan as the television cameras trained their lights on her. "It's been a long, hard seven months."

In West Central, members of the campaign committee that took over the recall effort once Sullivan got it on the ballot gathered separately. Like the campaign itself, their election night vigil was a low-cost affair of peanuts and pizza on tables covered with plain brown paper. Raucous cheers and a shout of "65 percent" greeted the announcement of the results.

Shaun Cross, a member of the Committee to Recall Jim West, said the margin of support for the recall was even greater than he expected.

"It shows character counts," Cross said.

From Indian Trail and Hillyard to the South Hill and East Central, voters across the city handed West a crushing defeat just 25 months after they elected him mayor with a strong mandate. The recall measure passed every precinct in the city by at least 57 percent; in some voting districts in the middle of the South Hill, the heart of the legislative district he represented for nearly 20 years, he lost by more than 70 percent.

The results won't be final – and West will remain in office – until Dec. 16 when the election is certified. Elections officials will continue to count the ballots that come in by mail, but West faces an almost mathematically impossible task because ballots from more than half of the city's voters have already been counted.

Elections officials say they have about 3,500 ballots still to be processed, and that's not enough to change the results. Even if all of the remaining 50,000 ballots were to come in, West would need more than 67 percent of those to be against the recall.

West himself was resigned to his loss on Tuesday night, saying that the "voters had spoken" and the figures don't matter. Asked what he thought the voters were saying, he paused.

"That they want me to go away," he said with a chuckle. Then he added: "I can't read their minds."

The recall was sparked by stories The Spokesman-Review began reporting on May 5, which documented allegations that West had offered gifts or city positions to young men he had met over the Internet in exchange for sex.

In its first reports, the newspaper explained how West had offered a City Hall internship to someone he had met through Gay.com who he thought was a high school senior from south Spokane. That person was actually a forensic computer specialist hired by The Spokesman-Review to confirm another young man's account of a previous meeting with West, whose legislative career included votes against gay rights issues.

After the newspaper published its first stories, other men came forward with additional allegations. One, Ryan Oelrich, said after he'd been appointed by West to the city's Human Rights Commission, West offered him $300 to swim naked with him.

But it was West's online conversations with the computer expert – West used the computer nickname "the RightBi-Guy"; the expert went by "Moto-Brock" – which formed the basis of the recall charge that the mayor "used his elected office for personal benefit."

Sullivan, a single mother and former floral shop owner from north Spokane, became the unlikely catalyst for the recall. A few days after the newspaper began publishing stories about West, she went to the County Elections office to sign a recall petition. When she was told none had been filed, Sullivan drafted one, then defended it against West's team of lawyers in a Superior Court hearing.

A visiting judge said her charge involving "Moto-Brock" was sufficient to put the recall measure before voters, although he rewrote it significantly to add details. Sullivan helped defend the petition against West's appeal to the state Supreme Court, then led a petition drive that collected more than 17,000 signatures to put the measure before voters.

Those signatures couldn't be verified in time to put the measure on the Nov. 8 general election ballot, so County Auditor Vicky Dalton scheduled it for the city's first major all-mail election. Voters got their ballots on Nov. 19, and thousands put them in the mail the very next day.

Neither West nor the recall supporters could raise large sums of money for their campaigns. In late September, West sent a letter to longtime supporters saying he hoped to raise $150,000 to mount a successful campaign and counter almost daily coverage by the newspaper. According to his most recent campaign spending reports, he raised less than $20,000.

Tuesday he said didn't concentrate on the campaign to defeat the recall. "I focused on my job as mayor."

The recall committee raised about $8,000, but Tuesday's vote count made clear that the vote hinged not on yard signs or television commercials, but on a public sentiment that Spokane needed a new leader.

"I don't care how good a job you're doing. The streets could be paved with gold. If you're not a good guy, you can't lead," said Dan Lambert, a committee member.

The recall campaign brought together a diverse group of local politicians and activists, Democrats, Republicans and independents who had little in common before joining the cause to oust West. Committee chairman David Bray said he hopes there are other projects they can work on together in the future.

"Maybe we'll call it the Zorro Club, and every time we're needed we'll pop up with a sword and mark a Z on a building," Bray said.