Candidate filing week starts Monday

Monday is the beginning of candidate filing week, which for political junkies can offer as many exciting surprises as Christmas morning for a child. Or as many jokes as April 1 in junior high school.

Spokane voters won’t know until Friday afternoon, when filing closes, whether they will have one or the other. So far in the area’s two largest cities, Spokane and Spokane Valley, competition in the municipal races is relatively sparse where incumbents are involved.

Six of seven Spokane Valley council members are seeking re-election, and none had drawn an announced opponent at the end of last week. Just three years ago, council races for the newly incorporated city drew as many as eight candidates for a single seat.

Incumbent Valley Councilman Mike Flanigan announced last week he’s not running, but so far only one person, Planning Commission member Bill Gothmann, has announced an intention to jump into the gap. All fields could improve by Friday at 5 p.m., when filing closes.

In the bigger city to the west, first-term Councilman Al French announced his re-election campaign on Thursday and also had no announced opponent.

Six years ago, French was one of eight candidates for an open, citywide seat; four years ago, he squared off against Bob Apple and won the first race in the newly formed Northeast District. Apple won the district’s other seat two years ago.

French, who campaigned against the district system when it was on the ballot in 1999, said he will run unashamedly on bringing services to the city’s poorest district during the last four years. He’ll cite job programs and work to bring development to the district that covers all of Spokane north of Interstate 90 and east of Division.

The biggest issues will be economic, he predicted, such as “How do we restore services in a fashion that doesn’t tax citizens out of their homes?” A potential sale of Albi Stadium will probably be a bigger issue in the Northwest District, where the sports facility is located, he said. The city’s new domestic partner benefits ordinance, which he supported, may come up, but he insists it’s defensible because it has low costs and “is part of a strategy of getting control of our labor costs.”

Whether a recall of Mayor Jim West makes the ballot is up to the courts, French added, but if it does “it certainly distracts from the conversation of how do we provide services.”

Councilwoman Mary Verner, appointed last year to an opening in the South District, announced her campaign this month, and has had two familiar political figures consider and then drop a campaign against her.

The first was David Elton, a self-styled political consultant who ran three years ago for a Valley council seat. Elton was most recently involved in the West recall effort, first offering vocal support for the mayor, then switching sides and offering his help to recall-sponsor Shannon Sullivan.

Elton announced he would run a campaign he didn’t plan to win – he’d already endorsed Verner – but would use it as a forum to call for West’s resignation and to criticize The Spokesman-Review for its reporting that prompted the recall efforts. There was a problem with his plan: He hasn’t lived inside the city limits for a year before filing week, which the city charter requires for any candidate for municipal office.

Former City Councilman Steve Eugster filed a candidate registration form with the state’s Public Disclosure Commission in mid-July but later decided against a run. Eugster said he was going to devote his energies to promoting major changes in the form of local government, and is considering a run for a judicial seat in the coming years.

Verner is stressing solutions over problems, mentioning in her campaign announcement that the council has settled River Park Square litigation and approved union contracts, while calling for sustainable economic development and support for neighborhood programs.

An open seat in Spokane’s Northwest District has attracted a mix of political veterans and first-timers, who are interested in the position Cherie Rodgers has held for the last eight years. Rodgers can’t run because of the city charter’s two-term limit.

Those who have at least started campaigns for the open seat are: Former City Councilman Steve Corker and former gubernatorial assistant and council candidate Judith Gilmore have both registered with the state’s Public Disclosure Commission, as have Nancy McLaughlin, a volunteer with Choice of the People which opposed the Domestic Partner Benefits ordinance, and Joyce McNamee, a health-care advocate.

But filing with the PDC does not make a person a candidate. That happens when a petition of candidacy is filed with the county Elections Office, sometime between 8:30 a.m. Monday and 5 p.m. Friday of this week. In Spokane County, the office is at 1033 West Gardner. For elected positions that come with a salary, one must also pay the filing fee of 1 percent of the annual salary.

Other positions up for election this year include council spots in all the other cities and towns in Washington. Some communities also have mayors to elect.

Also on the ballot this year are spots on the boards of school districts, fire districts, water districts, sewer districts and cemetery districts. Positions that have only two candidates at the end of filing week will skip the September primary. Those that have no candidates at the end of the week will have an extension of a few days in hopes of drawing at least one person interested in running.