Mccaslin’S Latest Divorce Difficult Linda Mccaslin Wants Money For Leaving Her Career, Expenses

Linda Callahan McCaslin says she sold her Seattle home, put her career as a deputy prosecutor on hold and moved to Spokane at the urging of her husband, state Sen. Bob McCaslin, only to be stunned by a request for divorce.

Early in their 28-month marriage, she even ran for the state Supreme Court at his urging, she says in her recent divorce filing. But he “decided he would not support me once I had gotten into the thick of it,” and she was left with heavy campaign debts.

Callahan McCaslin, 43, filed for divorce this week in Spokane County Superior Court. McCaslin, 73, had previously filed for divorce in Lincoln County, and the two are scheduled for a hearing this month.

The two agree their marriage is “irretrievably broken,” and should be dissolved. But while McCaslin’s request for a divorce offers few details, Callahan McCaslin contends that she deserves financial assistance to cover the costs of giving up a home and a career for him.

“My husband remained insistent that I come to this jurisdiction to reside with him in order to support him in his political career and live with him as his wife,” Callahan McCaslin says in her divorce request. “He felt it was inappropriate that his wife lived in Seattle while he lived here.”

Both were reluctant to talk at length about the pending divorce. On the few points they did discuss, they strongly disagreed.

“We shouldn’t have been married,” McCaslin said Thursday. “We didn’t match. It’s just incompatibility.”

Replied Callahan McCaslin: “We got along fine.”

The two met in early 1997 in Olympia. Linda Callahan was the new attorney for the state Senate. Recently widowed, Bob McCaslin was beginning his fifth term as the senator from the Valley’s 4th Legislative District. After the session, she was hired as a King County deputy prosecutor, and the two were married in December of that year.

In 1998, Callahan McCaslin took a leave of absence from her prosecutor’s job, “to pursue my husband’s desire that I achieve an elected position,” she said in her divorce filing. She ran against Supreme Court Judge Barbara Madsen, losing in the primary.

McCaslin said Thursday that he didn’t tell his wife to run for the office.

“I suggested she file for it. It was her idea to run.”

There’s a distinction, he said. In 1990, an unknown attorney with a common name, Charles Johnson, defeated Supreme Court Chief Justice Keith Callow. Johnson filed but never campaigned, and in the view of McCaslin and many political observers, got lucky thanks to his common name.

McCaslin said he paid his wife’s filing fee, and some other early expenses, and urged her to seek some key endorsements. State Public Disclosure Commission records show he contributed about $1,750 to the campaign.

Those same records show Callahan McCaslin spent $18,800.

“It’s true that he wanted me to file and not run,” Callahan McCaslin said Thursday. “I don’t do anything halfway. I would not put my professional reputation at risk by just filing and treating the Supreme Court as a lottery.”

After losing the primary, Callahan McCaslin went back to work as a King County deputy prosecutor. Last December at her husband’s urging, she resigned, sold her home, gave up her pet and moved to Spokane, she says in her court filing. The two went to Olympia to prepare for the legislative session, but McCaslin’s house on Sullivan Road sold and she returned to Spokane. She closed that deal, bought them a new house and moved into it, then returned to Olympia.

“My husband thereupon told me he wanted a divorce,” she said in her filing. “I am absolutely stunned.”

Replied McCaslin: “It wasn’t out of the blue to her.”

This will be McCaslin’s third divorce, from his fourth marriage.

One of his wives, Wanda McCaslin, whom he divorced and remarried, died in 1995. His other wife, Kate McCaslin, has supported him in past campaigns, and he supported her successful bid for Spokane County commissioner.

“My past dissolutions have been amicable,” he said.