John Craig

The man who calls himself the "sheik of Springdale," Dawud Ahmad Abdur-Rahman, has tied the Springdale municipal election in knots with a last-minute challenge that has confounded officials. On the day after the Nov. 4 election, Ahmad challenged the absentee ballot of Don Wilma. That still-uncounted ballot could be the deciding factor in the Town Council race between Lowell Peterson and Vickie Denman and, indirectly, in Dan Hite's one-vote mayoral victory over Floyd Pope.

Odessa Mayor Denny McDaniel conceded near the end of a 4-1/2-hour hearing Wednesday that he lived near Airway Heights, about 60 miles away, during most of his current term in office. "Yes, sir," McDaniel said when Lincoln County Prosecutor Ron Shepherd asked whether McDaniel's residential connection to Odessa for about 1-1/2 years was a post office box.

Ron McCoy widened his narrow lead over Lew Arnold in the Chewelah mayoral race when absentee ballots were counted Tuesday, but the Springdale residents may not know for months who their new mayor is. McCoy, a manager at the local Safeway store, added seven votes to his election night lead over Arnold, who is a newspaper columnist for the Chewelah Independent. The final count was 458-424.

Some voters here say they felt intimidated when they handed their ballots to poll worker Terry Payne, who also was a candidate in a contested school board race. "A lot of us don't think she had a right to be there," Wellpinit resident Iva Rajewski said. "It made people really nervous about voting at all."

1. McDaniel 2. A majority of the Odessa Town Council believes Mayor Denny McDaniel moved out of town in 1996 when he bought this $157,000 house near Airway Heights. Photo by John Craig/The Spokesman-Review

School officials throughout Stevens, Pend Oreille and Ferry counties gathered here Tuesday to plead with their legislators for help with a funding crunch the Legislature helped create. Colville School Superintendent Rick Cole said a levy-equalization bill that 7th District legislators helped pass this year failed to help most of the schools the legislators represent. The bill actually increases the gap between wealthy urban school districts and their cash-starved rural counterparts in the 7th District, Cole said.

Ferry County has a new deadline for complying with the state Growth Management Act and a plan to get the job done. Prosecutor Al Nielson said a consulting attorney is putting finishing touches on a revised plan for limiting growth in rural areas.

Three separate tests have eliminated a Cusick school bus as the cause of an illness that caused most of the junior high girls volleyball team to vomit on the way back from a match at Wellpinit. Although carbon monoxide poisoning was suspected at first, no exhaust gas leak was found in inspections by the district's bus superintendent, a Washington State Patrol vehicle inspector and an Educational Service District 101 industrial hygienist.

Voters in Chewelah, Springdale and Kettle Falls won't be sure about some of their new leaders until Stevens County election officials count absentee ballots Tuesday. In Lincoln County, Sprague residents will have a better idea about their cliffhanger mayoral race today when more absentee ballots are counted. Up to 31 ballots could be returned before the election is certified next Wednesday. On election night, write-in candidate Barbara Danner held a 93-90 edge over incumbent Mayor Evalyne Tabor.

County races Chewelah mayoral candidate Ron McCoy had a razor-thin lead over Lew Arnold with two of the city's three precincts counted at press time. McCoy, a Safeway manager, and Chewelah Independent newspaper columnist Arnold both outpolled incumbent Mayor Gloria Davidson in a three-way primary. Arnold had a six-vote edge in the primary, but Davidson threw her support to McCoy. Also in Chewelah, Gene DuCharme had an almost 2-1 lead over recently appointed Councilman Chalmer Jones.

Stevens County Sheriff Craig Thayer and Prosecutor Jerry Wetle are working on a proposal to get the sheriff out of the dog-catching and cat-auctioning business. They want the county to consider establishing dog and possibly cat fees to build an animal shelter and hire an animal control officer.

No place else in Lincoln County is producing the political fireworks of Sprague. Here is a roundup of other races: In Davenport, the question of joining the federal flood insurance program divides Eleanor MacDonald and James Allison, who are competing for a vacancy on the City Council. MacDonald, 72, thinks the city should fix its sewer system on its own, without federal financing or flood insurance strings that come with it. Allison, 35, said MacDonald mistakenly believes her family's downtown appliance and floor-covering store would be required to get flood insurance and the city needs federal sewer grants. MacDonald served 22 years on the council before stepping down two years ago. Now she is convinced the council needs "a mature woman's opinion" and her "common sense." She has operated and sold several businesses, including Ellie's restaurant, and now works with her husband, John, in John's Appliance.

Sprague, the little town that looks so tranquil from Interstate 90, has the most contentious election campaign in Lincoln County - between a pair of grandmothers. Beyond the steepled white church everyone sees from the freeway, the town of 453 is torn by a nasty whisper campaign against incumbent Mayor Evalyne Tabor.

Kettle Falls voters, in addition to choosing a new mayor, must decide Tuesday whether to fill a council position with a woman they voted out of office or with an enigmatic friend of far-right Stevens County Commissioner J.D. Anderson. In Springdale, residents must choose a mayor from two familiar councilmen who represent opposite sides in the town's sharply divided politics.

Ferry County commissioners moved Monday to settle a growth management dispute that could cost the county millions of dollars in state-shared tax money. Commissioners voted to hire a Seattle land-use attorney to draft comprehensive-plan language that will satisfy state requirements to restrict urban-style development in rural areas. Attorney Sandy Mackey is to be paid up to $3,000.

Stan Kukucka, a juvenile corrections officer at the new Martin Hall in Medical Lake, swabs living quarters for future detainees. Photo by Sandra Bancroft-Billings/The Spokesman-Review

A Stevens County child rapist got twice the standard maximum sentence Wednesday after a judge read a journal in which the man described how he progressively taught a 14-year-old boy new sex acts. David M. Greene, 55, was sentenced to 22-1/2 years in prison for his guilty plea to one count of second-degree child rape and two counts of third-degree child rape. State guidelines called for a range of eight to 11 years.

FROM FOR THE RECORD (Friday, October 24, 1997): Correction Husband misidentified: Ione mayoral candidate Cindy Thompson's husband, Stan, was misidentified in a Thursday article about Pend Oreille County candidates in the Nov. 4 election.

Lew Arnold lives in a studio apartment at the back of the newspaper office where he is a columnist. Photo by John Craig

McCoy

School officials here are investigating the possibility of carbon monoxide poisoning after most of the Cusick Junior High girls volleyball team got sick on a bus ride. Parents and team members said up to 15 out of 19 people aboard the team bus suffered nausea and headaches on the way back from matches at Wellpinit on Thursday.

A man who eluded police in a car chase and later was shot to death while breaking into a house near Clayton, Wash., was mentally disturbed, authorities said Thursday. The man was identified as Duane E. Salsman, 35, a transient who had lived in Washington, Alaska and Illinois. Before suffering a breakdown four years ago, he had been known as a religious man with a home, family and no criminal history.

A rifle-carrying man who was shot to death while breaking into a Stevens County home Monday night may have eluded police in a car chase 21 hours earlier. Authorities were still waiting Wednesday for state Trooper Bob Fiorentino to determine whether the dead burglar is the same man he stopped for erratic driving. "There is a good likelihood that it may be the same individual," said Sheriff Craig Thayer.

Murderer-rapist Curtis Buckner will not get a new trial on grounds that he was improperly convicted here in 1989 with the first use of genetic evidence in a Washington court.