New Window Of Opportunity For Hasson Quirky Former Commissioner Moving To Midwest, Where Wife Takes New Job

Spokane won’t have Steve Hasson to chase through the window any longer.

The outrageous, ambitious Hasson, who sometimes entertained and sometimes infuriated Spokane during eight years as county commissioner, is moving to the Midwest.

The move ends speculation that Hasson, who lost the commission seat to Kate McCaslin last year, would run for the state Senate.

Hasson will follow his wife, Janet Hasson, to Cincinnati, where she will be director of circulation, sales and marketing for The Cincinnati Enquirer. Janet Hasson leaves the position of associate publisher of Spokane’s Journal of Business, a post she has held since March 1996.

Predicting his wife is “going all the way to the top,” Hasson said he’s going along for the ride. His plans are uncertain, but he said he wants to get a master’s degree and maybe teach college students and write a book.

Hasson, 46, said there’s no telling whether he’ll run for office again. But, he added, politics is “in my blood.”

A long-shot candidate in 1988, Hasson waved his way into office, standing on street corners as some drivers flashed obscene gestures and tossed garbage at his feet.

For the next two terms, his frequent stunts were the topic of front-page stories, talk-jock commentary and breakfast table wisecracks.

The day he vomited into his dress shoe, Spokane learned the news from rock-and-roll disc jockeys. When he jumped through a first-floor courthouse window in search of privacy, television cameras and reporters chased him into the street.

It made news when he called the beleaguered Walk in the Wild zoo “a concentration camp for animals” and said of late-Commissioner Pat Mummey, “she’s having a bad-hair day.”

Although he and Mummey never hid their disdain for each other, Hasson since has said he regrets the latter comment, made when Mummey was undergoing chemotherapy for the cancer that killed her.

Civic boosters grimaced when Hasson told a California newspaper that Spokane is culturally deprived. But Hasson refused to repent, saying he hoped the comment would “wake them up to the fact that it’s true.”

During an interview Wednesday, Hasson was not thinking of escape. A Spokane native whose childhood was spent in 10 states and 16 schools, Hasson said he learned early “to shift gears when it’s time to shift gears.”

Still, he added: “I’m sure going to miss Spokane. It’s hard to leave your home.”

, DataTimes