Deadline Kick-Starts Campaigns Time For Candidates To Pony Up In Banner Election Year
Brace yourself. The election season begins for real Monday.
This may come as a surprise to even casual observers of local news.
Weren’t the candidates for one of Eastern Washington’s two congressional seats sparring verbally at the Rockwood Manor clubhouse Tuesday, competing to present the best vision on Medicare, campaign finance reform and honesty?
Haven’t candidates for Spokane’s strong mayor been knocking on doors, sipping coffee and making speeches around the city for weeks?
Hasn’t television been punctuated with commercials extolling or excoriating some officeholder’s stand on dams, prescription drug coverage or term limits for months?
Yes, but …
Anyone can say he or she is running for any office, anytime - even in a year when that office isn’t up for election. Would-be candidates can shake hands, kiss babies, raise money, hire staffs, make speeches, print brochures and yard signs - and drop out, as potential congressional, gubernatorial and legislative wannabes did this spring.
The true test of candidacy is the filing of a petition and the paying of a fee equal to 1 percent of that position’s annual salary.
For Congress, state, Superior Court and a few local offices such as county commissioner and the new Spokane mayor and council president posts, that must occur this week between 8 a.m. Monday and 5 p.m. Friday at state or county elections offices.
A candidate could say nothing until next Friday afternoon, file for office a few minutes before the Election Department doors shut and still pull out a victory in November.
Neighborhood activist John Talbott filed for mayor on the last filing day in 1997 and beat incumbent Jack Geraghty in November. A young attorney named Tom Foley barely beat the filing deadline in 1964 because he had car trouble on the way to file his papers but still managed to oust 22-year-veteran Walt Horan that fall.
Those last-minute success stories are rare, however. Most candidates started running months ago because they need to raise so much money and convince so many people that they are the best choice for one of several dozen offices on this fall’s ballot.
Special conditions put the number of offices to be chosen by Spokane voters at an all-time high this year.
Presidential election years always coincide with statewide elections for governor and the eight other executive offices, as well as two of the three Spokane county commissioner posts. So do elections for seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, the state House and half the state Senate.
Spokane County’s Superior Court judges also are elected in presidential years. The county bench has grown by two, to 12, since 1996.
This year, a U.S. Senate seat, four state Supreme Court seats and one state Appeals Court seat - all of them on six-year cycles - also come up for election.
And two new city positions, a mayor and a City Council president, were placed on the ballot by voters in 1999. Because of the way the law is worded, this will be the only time they will coincide with a presidential election.
Some races could be sleepy affairs through the Nov. 7 general election. Some already are hard-hitting, high-spending campaigns. Here are some of the hotly contested races that will be drawing candidate petitions this week:
Eastern Washington’s 5th Congressional District seat
Members of the U.S. House seek election every two years, so they never really stop running. But Rep. George Nethercutt was forced to announce his campaign last summer because he had to renounce a 1994 pledge to serve only three terms.
Nethercutt explains the switch as a realization that he has unfinished work to do for the district and doesn’t want to voluntarily end his service when no other states limit their members’ terms.
His decision drew the wrath of U.S. Term Limits, a national group that backed him in 1994. It also drew a larger than usual field of opponents for a well-funded incumbent. He currently faces a GOP primary challenge from former talk-show host Richard Clear, and a pair of Democratic opponents, carpenters union official Tommy Flynn and attorney Tom Keefe.
“This is not about term limits. It is about keeping your word,” Clear said last week at a forum at the Rockwood Manor retirement community.
Keefe accused Nethercutt of developing a Washington, D.C., mindset of “an unwillingness to come back home” and ignoring voters’ call in 1994 for citizen legislators.
Flynn and Keefe said they oppose term limits. Clear has signed a pledge to serve no more than five terms in the House.
But the 40 or so senior citizens at the forum seemed to care little about term limits. They asked the three challengers and a Nethercutt stand-in questions about improving Medicare, expanding prescription drug coverage, stopping the spread of AIDS and reforming campaign spending.
Spokane mayor
Mayor John Talbott, state Sen. Jim West and attorney John Powers all say the race is about leadership. That’s a given, because voters agreed to switch to a full-time mayor with strong executive powers last year, ending 40 years of a mayor who directs council meetings, shakes hands with visiting dignitaries and relies on staff for daily operations of the city.
They’ll be arguing over the best way to restore Spokane’s disintegrating roads and attract more businesses with more jobs. Underlying the campaign will be the dispute between the city and River Park Square LLC, the developer of a downtown mall, over unpaid bills for the mall’s garage.
The council president slot has attracted councilmen Steve Corker and Rob Higgins.
Spokane County commissioners
Democrat John Roskelley and Republican Kate McCaslin are finishing their first terms, and both have been criticized by builders and developers for their stands on growth issues. The county, like the city, is revising its comprehensive plan, which will direct future development in Spokane. Roskelley and McCaslin both deny they are anti-development.
The Spokane Homebuilders Association and the Committee for Accountable Commissioners, a new political action committee funded by Valley industrialist Raymond Hanson, are opposing both incumbents.
Roskelley has an announced primary challenger, Cliff Cameron, and two announced Republican opponents, Karl Wilkinson and Bill Sprague.
McCaslin picked up a primary challenger last week, businesswoman Sylvia Riddle, and has an announced Democratic opponent, Bill Burke.
U.S. Senate
Three-term incumbent Slade Gorton faces a pair of Democratic challengers, state Insurance Commissioner Deborah Senn and former U.S. Rep. Maria Cantwell. Gorton, a vocal critic of the Clinton administration on everything from taxes to environmental policy, has been leading a charge against removing federal dams on the Snake River. When federal officials said last week that any decision on dam breaching was at least 10 years away - if it ever happens - Gorton contended it was just a ploy to get Vice President Al Gore moved into the White House.
Neither Senn, who has been running for the Senate for more than a year, nor Cantwell, who entered the race this spring, is calling for removal of the dams.
Both Democrats contend Gorton has not done enough to expand Medicare and rein in spiraling health-care costs. He recently proposed a law that requires pharmaceutical companies to charge Americans no more than they charge consumers in other countries.
Cantwell and Senn discounted that as unworkable. Drug companies called it price controls and have launched anti-Gorton ads because he voted to allow American-made drugs to be reimported from Canada and Mexico.
Washington governor
Incumbent Gary Locke has a strong economy in Puget Sound, a growing state surplus and no credible Democratic primary opposition in sight.
Republicans John Carlson, a former talk show host and research institute director, and Harold Hochstatter, a state senator from Moses Lake, contend Locke may be popular on the surface, but he’s out of touch with voters who went against his wishes to restrict affirmative action, revise state spending on roads and cut motor vehicle license taxes.