West”s mayoral rival considered story

The Local Planet, an alternative newspaper that ceased publication last year, considered pursuing a story about Jim West’s personal life in 2003.

The weekly had heard rumors about West’s private life but lacked the resources to pursue the story, former Local Planet publisher Matt Spaur said.

Tom Grant, one of his reporters, also had heard that West and David Hahn, both former Spokane County sheriff’s deputies and Boy Scout troop leaders, may have molested young boys in the mid-1970s and early 1980s, Spaur said.

“We talked about the rumors and allegations involving West. But rumors and a credible story are different things,” Spaur said.

In an interview with The Spokesman-Review on Wednesday, West called the allegations of sexual molestation by two former Scouts a “flat lie,” but he acknowledged seeking out young men for sex and companionship on Gay.com and offering a City Hall internship to one of them, who turned out to be a forensic computer investigator hired by the newspaper to verify the mayor’s presence on the Web site.

Grant left the Local Planet in May 2003 to run for mayor. He ended up in a race against West that fall after the incumbent mayor, John Powers, was eliminated in the primary.

Grant, now a television news director in Casper, Wyo., questioned the timing of The Spokesman-Review stories on Spokane talk radio last week.

He said the West stories should have been published before the 2003 mayoral election because they could have changed the outcome and influenced negotiations over River Park Square, a controversial public-private partnership between the city and the owners of the newspaper.

“I think I would have made a good mayor,” Grant said.

In a column in today’s newspaper, Spokesman-Review Editor Steven A. Smith outlines the lengthy process the newspaper went through to search out sources and verify information for the West stories.

“The stories were ready when they were ready,” Smith said.

Reached in Wyoming, Grant said he met a “credible source” with information on West after the election but didn’t pursue the story. “In retrospect, maybe I should have taken him up on it,” he said.

Grant also said his mayoral campaign was approached by three people with information on West’s private life and on West and Hahn – but he decided not to pursue it.

“We decided we weren’t going to go negative,” Grant said.