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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883
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Jim Camden

Jim Camden

Current Position: correspondent

Jim Camden joined The Spokesman-Review in 1981 and retired in 2021. He is currently the political and state government correspondent covering Washington state.

Email
jimc@spokesman.com
Phone
(509) 879-7461

All Stories

News >  Spokane

McMorris has spying ‘concerns’

U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris said she's concerned and surprised about reports the government was spying on citizens without proper authority, and doesn't think President Bush has been as forthcoming yet as he should be. "It makes me nervous to think that our government was listening to our telephone conversations," she told The Spokesman-Review editorial board Wednesday. "I have concerns about the president exceeding his authority."
News >  Spokane

Hession becomes new mayor

Dennis Hession was en route Friday to his son's college graduation today in Omaha, Neb., when he became Spokane's newest mayor. The Spokane County election canvassing board certified the recall of Spokane Mayor Jim West at 9:44 a.m., automatically elevating Hession from his position as City Council president to acting mayor.
News >  Spokane

West departs on routine note

Jim West left his fifth floor City Hall office for the last time as mayor Thursday after a routine day. West, whose term will end shortly after 9:30 this morning when the results of the Dec. 6 recall election are certified, held his regular daily Cabinet meeting with all city department heads, discussed labor negotiations and attended a service club luncheon where the featured speaker talked about the journalism that led to his ouster.
News >  Spokane

West’s last day should be ‘pretty much normal’

Today will be Jim West's last day in office, and it probably won't involve anything special, the mayor said Wednesday. With the results of his recall election scheduled to be certified Friday morning, West said he expected to be moved out of his City Hall office by sometime late today so it could be turned over to Mayor Pro Tem Dennis Hession the next day.
News >  Spokane

Political outsiders flex muscle

Tuesday's historic recall of Mayor Jim West may signal more than just a change in City Hall. The successful campaign to oust a candidate backed for a quarter-century by the city's business-political establishment – without the help of that establishment after it asked him to leave and he declined – could change Spokane's political equation.
News >  Spokane

West challenges successor

A disheartened Spokane Mayor Jim West, reflecting Wednesday on his historic ouster from City Hall, said no one on the current City Council – including Council President Dennis Hession – is qualified to fill his shoes. "I think there are people in this community that could do a better job than anyone on the City Council," West told news reporters just hours after being recalled by 65 percent of voters who cast ballots.
News >  Spokane

Voters recall West

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."
News >  Spokane

McMorris donates $1,000 to charity

Rep. Cathy McMorris is donating to charity the money she received from a campaign committee run by a recently convicted congressman. The Eastern Washington Republican's office announced Monday afternoon that she will donate $1,000 to the Second Harvest Inland Northwest Food Bank, the same amount she received last year from a political action committee run by former Rep. Randy Duke Cunningham, R-Calif.
News >  Spokane

End in sight for lengthy recall vote

For some voters, Tuesday's mayoral recall may seem like the longest election in memory. And in a sense, it is. All voters were mailed ballots in mid-November, and some marked the single item in the special election and mailed them back immediately.
News >  Spokane

Mayor’s foes’ ad accuses him of bringing disgrace to city

A 30-second television commercial produced for the Committee to Recall Jim West has been on the group's Web site for about six weeks, but it saw only limited air time in the last week. It shows a picture of Mayor Jim West on a computer screen. Under his photo is the phrase "You still interested?" – taken from an e-mail West sent to someone he thought was a local high school senior but was actually a forensic computer specialist hired by The Spokesman-Review.
News >  Spokane

West uses selective language in appeal to keep his job

The newspaper ad titled "Be Sure to Return Your Ballot; Vote 'No' Recall," purchased by the Committee for Spokane's Progress, covered a half-page in the first section of Friday's Spokesman-Review, with a black-and-white picture and a letter from Mayor Jim West that begins "Dear Friends." The letter restates West's position on the recall, starting with an apology and a request for a second chance "to keep working for a better Spokane," and his contention that voters have not heard the full story about the allegations.
News >  Spokane

Murray says some seniors will get lost in switch to Plan D

Some of America's seniors are likely to "fall through the cracks" as they struggle with a new program to add prescription drug coverage to Medicare, Sen. Patty Murray said Thursday. With dozens of plans, several different deadlines and complicated rules and instructions, the switch to Plan D drug coverage is causing confusion around the state, the Washington Democrat said during a town hall meeting in northeast Spokane.
News >  Spokane

No back taxes owed on RPS garage

The River Park Square parking garage did not have to pay property taxes during the years it was part of a contentious public-private partnership with the city of Spokane, a judge ruled Wednesday. The summary judgment by Whitman County Superior Court Judge David Frazier, who handled the case as a visiting judge, frees up some $1.8 million that the city had set aside to pay in taxes if it lost the legal battle over the garage's former tax status.
News >  Spokane

Poll shows slight gain for West

Spokane Mayor Jim West may be picking up some support among the city's voters as the final day for the recall election approaches, a new poll shows. But he still faces ouster without a dramatic shift in voter opinions in the next week. That's the indication from a new poll conducted this week for The Spokesman-Review and KREM 2 News, which asked 1,102 likely city voters how they planned to mark their ballots in the historic recall election.
News >  Spokane

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.
News >  Spokane

Poll spells trouble for West

Mayor Jim West may need to steal a page from Richard Nixon's playbook if he wants to survive in elective office, a new poll suggests. Just before ballots were mailed last week to Spokane city voters, a survey conducted for The Spokesman-Review and KREM 2 News indicates a strong majority – 60 percent – are poised to vote to recall West. Only one voter in three told pollsters last week they planned to vote against the recall and keep West as mayor.
News >  Spokane

City union endorses West, but some cry foul over vote

Some members of Spokane's largest city employee union believe Mayor Jim West has treated them fairly and gave him a "vote of confidence" as he approaches one of the biggest political battles of his life. But others aren't as happy with West and upset at the way that vote was taken, without advance notice or ballots, and with some confusion over who was able to show their support or opposition.
News >  Spokane

Budgets are low in recall campaign

The campaign to decide whether Spokane ousts its mayor has proven to be a low-budget affair thus far. Jim West is recycling his campaign signs from 2003. His opponents have a television commercial they're anxious to run, but they don't have enough money to book the time slots.
News >  Spokane

Post-vote scenarios for council

Ballots in the all-mail recall election must be postmarked by Dec. 6 or turned in to one of three voting stations that day. If a majority of voters mark their ballots "Recall No," Jim West remains mayor with no changes to his status or his powers as mayor. Any investigations still under way would continue.
News >  Spokane

Gas tax likely to stay

Voters in the traffic-clogged Puget Sound battled Tuesday with those who drive through wide-open spaces in the rest of Washington over the state's new gasoline tax. The Puget Sound, which has more voters in those cars that choke the freeways and arterials, seemed to have the upper hand late Tuesday night. Initiative 912, which would repeal the incremental 9.5-cent gasoline tax, was narrowly losing a seesaw battle.
News >  Spokane

Indoor smoking ban gets strong support

Washington voters said no to smoking in public places and new malpractice rules for doctors, and yes to a better watchdog on government. But they seemed to be saying maybe to higher gasoline taxes, and maybe not to limits on some types of damages from medical malpractice claims.
News >  Spokane

City, union reach deal

Leaders of the city of Spokane's largest labor union have reached a tentative agreement with city officials to delay wage increases and to pay more for health coverage as a way to ease ongoing budget problems. Mayor Jim West described the tentative deal – pending approval by the City Council and membership of Local 270 – as a possible way out of the city's perennial budget crisis.
News >  Spokane

City Council races now less expensive

Winning a Spokane City Council seat will apparently cost less in 2005 than in some previous campaigns, a change predicted when voters approved the switch to district elections some six years ago. Candidates are raising and spending less, according to campaign reports with the state's Public Disclosure Commission. In part, that's a response to the shift from citywide to district races and the need to mail fewer campaign brochures and put up fewer yard signs.
News >  Spokane

With vote near, spending accelerated on initiatives

Less than a week before voters go to the polls and nearly two weeks since absentee ballots began arriving in the mail, statewide initiative campaigns are spending freely on an onslaught of television commercials and campaign brochures. The campaign over Initiative 330, which seeks to impose new limits on medical malpractice cases, has set records for campaign spending on both sides. When money from the other initiative involving malpractice – Initiative 336 – is added, the legal profession and the health care industry will spend more than $14 million this year in an attempt to rewrite state malpractice laws.