Few In Towns Hear Call To Serve In Elected Office Challenge Of Officeholders A Rarity, And Many Positions Draw No Candidates

The throw-the-bums-out attitude may have prevailed in last fall’s national elections, but small-town politics are far more cordial.

The season’s slogan might as well be: If you want the job, you can have it.

From Metaline to Malden, rural Eastern Washington elections officials are overseeing a festival of incumbents as rural officeholders stand to march back into office with few challenges.

In more than a dozen mayoral and town or city council elections, incumbents didn’t even bother to file for re-election since state law lets them keep their seats if they are unopposed.

With numerous offices going begging after last month’s regular filing period, auditors in Whitman, Ferry and Lincoln counties are seeking more candidates in special filing periods through Wednesday. Pend Oreille County had a special filing period last week.

“It’s really hard in small areas to get people to volunteer for these things,” said Ann Swenson, Pend Oreille County auditor.

It’s gotten harder still in recent years, said Donald Timm, chairman of the Harrington School District, where there are no candidates for four board positions.

“I guess people have gotten too busy for the time,” he said.

For the most part, town positions are unpaid but demand regular attendance at monthly or twice-monthly meetings. Then there are countless street-corner and coffee-shop conferences with constituents concerned about roads, wells, sewer lines and barking dogs.

It can get to be pretty thankless, said Ralph Thompson, former mayor of Farmington and now a member of the town council.

“There’s nothing in it,” he said. “All you get is static from other people if you aren’t doing things right.”

Small-town governments also face the challenge of drawing a higher-than-average rate of civic involvement from local residents. Four percent of Farmington’s population of 125 sits on the five-member city council. In Spokane, meanwhile, there more than 180,000 people and only seven city council seats.

With little growth in most rural areas, holding elected office generally is left to retirees and “whoever they can arm-twist into doing it,” said Pend Oreille County’s Swenson.

She’s seeing a dozen mayoral and city council incumbents go unchallenged this fall, while four offices have unchallenged newcomers running for election and two offices have no candidates at all. The only council contest is between Cusick incumbent Robert Konkright and challenger Sherry Porter.

In Whitman County, 30 incumbents are running unopposed for mayor and council seats.

“Most of the candidates we shoot before they get in to register,” joked Larry Dickerson, the unchallenged mayor of St. John.

Actually, small-town politics often are so civil that residents simply will wait until an officeholder steps down rather than run against him or her.

St. John’s Virginia Schneidmiller waited for years to run for the City Council but figured “someone’s already been doing it for so long - 20 or 30 years. So why fight it?”

Eight years ago, she became the first woman on the town council when she ran for a position Dickerson had vacated to become mayor.

That so few people decide to challenge incumbents may well be a sign that, at the local level, government works well enough that few voters feel there are bums in need of throwing out.

“It’s on a personal basis,” Schneidmiller said. “You know everyone who lives in your town. Maybe you can talk things out and try to get it settled without having to try to take the office.”

, DataTimes