Voters Oust Spokane Mayor After 7 Months of Scandal

Voters in Spokane removed Mayor James E. West from office Tuesday, capping a tawdry seven-month spectacle in which West fought to keep his job amid charges by several young men that he had pursued them sexually with offers of city jobs and internships.

Ballot counts released just after the polls closed Tuesday night indicated that voters favored ousting West by a margin of about 2 to 1 in the extraordinary recall election.

The Republican mayor, 54, must vacate the office by Dec. 16, when election results are certified.

“I said I’d abide by the will of the voters, obviously, and they’ve spoken,” West told Associated Press. “I’m at peace with their decision -- and disappointed.”

West’s troubles included a city-commissioned report that concluded he had broken state law by storing hundreds of images of naked young men on his city-owned laptop, as well as allegations by one City Council member that he told her he had masturbated in his City Hall office.

The sordid details left many voters in the normally buttoned-down city using expressions like “creeped out” and “embarrassed” to describe their reaction to the scandal, and one local columnist said West had created a “civic freak show.”

West was also widely derided as a hypocrite. When he was majority leader of the state Senate, he was a staunch opponent of gay rights, sponsoring legislation to bar gays and lesbians from teaching in public schools.

West, who once proposed marriage to a woman from the floor of the Senate (they have since divorced), also voted to prohibit state officials from distributing pamphlets on AIDS protection, denouncing the information as “something people go buy at dirty bookstores.”

West has repeatedly cast himself as a victim, blaming his troubles on what he called a vindictive campaign by the local daily newspaper, the Spokesman-Review, to investigate details of his life as a closeted gay man.

He also categorically denied the accounts of two men, both with criminal records, who told the newspaper that West had molested them when they were boys and he was a Boy Scout leader. Their accounts have not led to criminal charges.

In allegations about his more recent conduct as mayor, one young man said the mayor had offered him an internship as part of a relationship West wanted to pursue with him, while another young man, whom West later appointed to the city’s Human Rights Commission, said the mayor had offered him $300 to go swimming naked with him.

The newspaper hired a forensic computer expert to pose as a 17-year-old boy and conduct an online relationship with the mayor. West acknowledged using screen aliases such as RightBi-Guy and Cobra82nd, an apparent reference to his service as a paratrooper in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division. But he denied offering bribes for sex.

The newspaper’s action to seek out the mayor online drew some criticism from editors around the country, who said a newspaper should never misrepresent itself in pursuit of a story.

But editors of the Spokesman-Review said the unusual step was necessary to verify the online identity the mayor used in sexual banter with young men.

Although West will exit the political battlefield in Washington state’s second-largest city, his legal struggles may have just begun, as local prosecutors must decide whether to press charges.

An investigator hired by the city said West had broken state law and city ethics policies by storing pornography on his city-owned computer. West said the images were automatically saved by his Internet browser, and that he did not know they were there.

Regardless of the legal outcome, West, who is carrying on a separate medical battle with a recurrence of colon cancer, has said he plans to sue the Spokesman-Review on accusations of defamation.

“Nobody, public or private,” he said, “should go through what the Spokesman-Review has done to me as far as invading my privacy.”