The Washington
State supreme court has published its reasons for allowing
signatures to be collected on petitions to recall Spokane
mayor James West. Meanwhile, a bipartisan political
action committee has formed and announced Wednesday it
would begin airing pro-recall television ads. And West
asked voters for a second chance during an appearance on a
Spokane radio station.
West faces a special recall election December 6
after recall supporters collected more than 17,000
signatures to put the measure on the ballot.
Beginning in May, The Spokesman-Review
published a series of articles alleging that West used a
city-owned computer to troll a gay Internet chat room
for dates with young men, offering one a City Hall
internship in exchange for sex.
Recall organizer Shannon Sullivan began
collecting signatures after the state supreme
court issued an order August 24 that her recall charge
was legally and factually sufficient. The recall ballot
contends that West committed misfeasance in office by
offering an internship to a young man he met in a gay
chat room, in an effort to pursue a sexual
relationship. Sullivan withdrew from the recall effort
shortly after submitting her petitions last month,
leaving a void in leadership in the political campaign
to oust West from office.
The Spokesman-Review reported that David Bray,
a real estate agent and community activist who once ran
unsuccessfully for a city council seat, will chair the
Committee to Recall Mayor Jim West. The committee
includes Shaun Cross, a Spokane lawyer who ran
unsuccessfully in last year's Republican primary for the
fifth district seat in the U.S. House of
Representatives, and Tom Keefe, a former Democratic
county chairman and a fifth district congressional candidate
in the 2000 election against then-incumbent representative
George Nethercutt.
State Public Disclosure Commission documents
show West owes $85,000 to lawyers, mainly to pay for
his recall defense. Appearing Wednesday on KXLY radio,
West said he's raised about $10,000 so far for his campaign
to defeat the recall. He also said Spokane is making
progress under his leadership for the first time in
years and asked for forgiveness from Spokane voters.
"I'd hope that people will give me a second chance,"
he told the radio audience.
A caller asked West to "explain your lack of
judgment." The mayor said he couldn't, adding, "I wish
it hadn't happened."
West's lawyers argued unsuccessfully before the
supreme court, which quickly issued its order August
24 that the recall could proceed. Sullivan, an
unemployed single mother with no legal training, argued her
own cause before the justices.
On September 30 Chelan County judge T.W. Small
tossed out a petition filed by Spokane lawyer and
former city councilman Steve Eugster, who had sought
to stop the signature validation process. Eugster argued
that the signatures were collected illegally because
they were gathered before the supreme court had issued
its written reasons for allowing the recall campaign
to proceed.
The opinion issued Wednesday by Justice Tom
Chambers, with seven other justices concurring, held
that a lower court judge acted within his authority
when he corrected the ballot synopsis Sullivan submitted and
allowed the recall to proceed. "First, we note that the role
of courts in the recall process is highly limited and
it is not for us to decide whether the alleged facts
are true or not," Chambers wrote. "It is the voters,
not the courts, who will ultimately act as the fact finders."
Justice Richard B. Sanders dissented, saying
Sullivan's original ballot language had been
improperly changed by the trial court judge. "In this
state, and under our laws and constitution, public office
holders have the right to conduct their private
affairs in a lawful manner without fear of recall,"
Sanders wrote. Sanders accused the court of
misconstruing recall election laws, ignoring precedent and
embellishing evidence offered by Sullivan.
West's lawyers agreed with Sanders, saying the
court did not find that West had engaged in any
improper conduct. In a statement released Wednesday
afternoon, lawyers Bill Etter, Carl Oreskovich, and Susan W.
Troppmann said Sanders correctly concluded that nothing in
the recall petition "links Mayor West's private
affairs with the discharge of his duties."
Chambers wrote that technical violations of
recall statutes "are not fatal, so long as the
charges, read as a whole, give the elected official
enough information to respond to the charges and the voters
enough information to evaluate them." (AP)
