Former Rep. Duane Sommers dead at 82
The ability to blend a strong conservatism with an amiable pragmatism carried Duane Sommers through two stints in the state House of Representatives.
Sommers, who died this week at age 82, often seemed “kind of a fatherly,” said Spokane County Commissioner Todd Mielke, who served with him in the House in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
They first met when Mielke was an aide to then Sen. Jim West, and he recalled one time being sent to Spokane to fill in for his boss at a town hall meeting that Sommers was co-hosting. A group of motorcyclists showed up at the meeting, angry over a recently passed helmet law. The discussion got hot, some of the motorcyclists started swearing.
Sommers calmly but forcefully told them the audience included parents and children who had other issues to discuss. “’We’re not going to tolerate that kind of language’ he told them. ‘We’ll end this meeting if we have to,’” Mielke recalled. The motorcyclists settled down and the meeting continued.
A Spokane native, Sommers married Wanda Mae Roberts in 1953, and they had four children. He had retired from a management position with the state Department of Social and Health Services and from the Army Reserve, where he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, when he first ran for the House in 1986 as a social and fiscal conservative. He wanted to cut the size of government, opposed abortion and assisted suicide. He won an open seat in the crowded field in South Spokane’s 6th District, and was easily twice re-elected.
“He was a very pragmatic person,” Mielke said. “He knew what battles you had the potential of making headway on.”
Dennis Dellwo, a Spokane Democrat who served in the House with Sommers, called him a very honorable person who was always pleasant to be around.
“He was easy to talk with, even though we disagreed on many things,” Dellwo said. “When you disagreed, you got the feeling he’d talk about it and come up with something that worked. It was not ‘My way or no way.’”
In 1992, Spokane’s population had not grown as fast as King County, and Eastern Washington had to ship one of its legislative districts west. Lines were redrawn that combined much of the 6th District with parts of the 5th, where Mielke was a freshman House member. Sommers said he would retire and told Mielke he should run for the seat.
Sommers instead ran for Congress against then-House Speaker Tom Foley, but didn’t make it out of the primary, and a few months later was elected Spokane County Republican chairman. In 1995 when Mielke resigned from the House to take job as a lobbyist, Sommers was appointed to the seat, which he held through 2000.
He made an unsuccessful run for Spokane mayor under the old city manager system in 1997 and retired from the House in 2000, but won the county assessor’s job in 2002, defeating a two-term incumbent. He instituted a series of technology and service improvements in the office but two years later, he resigned that post to take care of his wife Mae, who was in poor health. Mae died in 2009, and he remarried in 2012 to Ellen Tibbert.
Services are tentatively scheduled for Sept. 12, with arrangements being coordinated by Hazen and Jaeger Funeral Home.
