Commission candidate pays attention to details

Todd Mielke is thorough.

As he helps his 12-year-old daughter, Ciara, shop for a fall jacket at NorthTown Mall, Mielke checks every label.

What’s the coat made of, and, more importantly, is it machine washable?

As a busy, single father, Mielke needs that jacket to be machine washable.

Life has lately been even more hectic. Republican Mielke faces off against Democrat Linda Wolverton next week in the race for District 1 Spokane County commissioner.

That same attention to detail carries over to his political life.

At candidate forums he answers questions with careful, measured responses. And Mielke made a reputation in Olympia as someone who worked hard to listen to all sides of issues and bring together Republicans and Democrats.

Career interrupted

After first working as a legislative assistant to then-state Sen. Jim West, Mielke went on in 1990 to become a state representative.

But after a promising start to his political career, Mielke changed course. Less than a year into his third term, he resigned to become a lobbyist.

Critics blasted him for taking advantage of his state contacts to win a lobbying job with pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson, shortly after working with insurance companies to eliminate state health care reforms.

He’s referred to the situation in recent campaign forums as caused by a “domestic reorganization.” Euphemisms aside, it was a divorce.

Mielke was given custody of his then 3-year-old daughter, Ciara. He says he took the lobbyist job to have more time and resources to care for her.

“He’s been the absolute most devoted father that I’ve seen,” says Spokane Mayor West.

Ciara now spends school years with her dad, and summers with her mother.

Friends at school tease her about her dad’s campaign and have given her the nickname “the president’s daughter,” Ciara says, adding that she has enjoyed helping her dad with the election.

“He’s cool. He’s not embarrassing or anything like that,” she says.

Mielke has been in a committed relationship for the past two years, but confesses that the post-divorce dating scene was at times difficult.

Some of the women he dated weren’t interested in spending time with Ciara, and Mielke says he was adamant that his daughter not be excluded.

Today, he still worries that as a single father he won’t always be able to understand the emotional signals that a mother would recognize in her teenage daughter.

“My biggest worry is that I’ll miss something,” he says.

And his lobbying work still takes him away from home for extended periods of time during legislative sessions.

Mielke’s detractors have been critical of that lobbying work in Olympia for the tobacco industry – something he did after working for Johnson & Johnson.

Mielke emphasizes that his job has been centered on making sure that tobacco settlement money won by the state was used for the purposes outlined in that settlement – chiefly keeping kids from smoking. But he does represent industry interests.

He also points out that much of his lobbying work in Olympia was done on behalf of Spokane businesses and institutions to secure state funding for things like the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture’s new building.

When asked what her father has to say about smoking, Ciara quickly answers, “That it’s bad.”

Spokane roots

Though Ciara attends Salk Middle School, just like her father did at her age, Mielke says her childhood has been different in significant ways.

His mother was a homemaker. He grew up with three siblings including a fraternal twin brother. Ciara doesn’t have any siblings in Spokane, although she has some half-siblings.

His father was a Spokane police officer.

For a time after Mielke’s divorce, he and Ciara lived with his parents, who Mielke says have been a great support.

Even today Mielke’s parents own a house next door to his own in the Nine Mile area, although they spend most of their time at their home at Priest Lake, Idaho.

While a sophomore at Shadle Park High School, Mielke was robbed at gunpoint at his job at a Baskin & Robbins.

His grandfather heard dispatchers call for officers to go to the ice cream store over his home police scanner, and quickly drove over to make sure his grandson was OK.

Mielke was unharmed, but still remembers the robbery in vivid detail, down to the way his co-worker emptied each change compartment in the cash register into a paper bag.

Should he be elected to the Spokane County Commission, Mielke says that he’ll put his consulting business aside to focus on the county’s business.

He’s well suited for the job, West says, describing Mielke as a “quick study.”

“He has a feel for local government. I saw his talent in the Legislature of working with people on both sides (of the aisle),” West says. “I know him as a fiscal conservative who knows how to work with people and bring people together.”