Recall budgets are low but high profile

Spokane Mayor Jim West has raised far less money than he once hoped to fight his potential ouster by voters. But it’s still more than twice what recall supporters have collected with a week left in the election.

West, who wrote supporters in September that he thought he’d need $150,000 to beat the recall, has just less than $19,000. He’s spent about $12,000 on radio commercials and about $3,000 on polling early in the campaign.

“I never had a budget for $150,000,” West said Tuesday.

Although he sent out the fund-raising letter in late September, West said he was unable to follow up with phone calls to solicit money.

“We’ve gotten out what (message) we could,” he said. “I’ve been more focused on running the city than running the campaign.”

The Committee to Recall Jim West has raised about $7,300 in cash, with the biggest contributions – a total of $4,000 – from Craig and Jo Ann Lovik, who live outside the city limits and own Dotzup.com, a computer search engine and commerce site.

Efforts to contact the Loviks were unsuccessful, but recall committee member Shaun Cross described them as personal friends who “feel pretty strongly” that West should leave office and who had heard Cross talk about the problems of raising money for the campaign.

Also contributing to the recall was the state Democratic Party, a longtime political foe of the former GOP legislator. Lorie Dolan, who previously challenged West for his state Senate seat and now serves as an adviser to Gov. Christine Gregoire, also contributed to the recall.

The recall also has some GOP support. Cross is a former Republican congressional candidate, and Gretchen McDevitt, a longtime Republican activist who supported West in past legislative and mayoral campaigns, contributed this month to the campaign to oust him.

Along with the cash contributions, the recall committee received $20,000 in production services from Hamilton Studios, which designed a Web site and produced a television commercial more than a month ago. Until recently, however, recall supporters didn’t have enough money to put the commercial on the air.

The committee spent $6,000 to air the commercial through Wednesday, campaign chairman and treasurer David Bray said. Although Election Day is Dec. 6, ballots are being cast mainly by mail, and Bray said he thinks most voters will have mailed their ballots by the middle of this week.

“It’s been exactly the kind of campaign I anticipated all along – low-key,” Bray said.

West agreed the recall is “a very different kind of election.” He couldn’t think of another election in which the names of contributors were read on the radio, as has happened regularly on KGA’s Mark Fuhrman show.

West said some of his contributors have been threatened with boycotts of their businesses. “That’s not what the public disclosure law is for, so you can intimidate people out of contributing,” he said.

West’s biggest contribution remains $2,000 from Karin Weaver of Hoodsport, Wash., who is his former mother-in-law.

“Maybe that says something about my character,” he said of his ability to raise money from a former in-law after his divorce.

He’s also spent $1,500 of his own money; received $1,500 from his father, Jack West; received $500 from his brother, John West, as well as from his ex-wife, Ginger Marshall; and received $100 from his sister, Kathy West.