County GOP names new chairman

Stung by losses in legislative and county races last month, Spokane County Republicans have reorganized and picked a new chairman and vice chairwoman.

Curt Fackler, a consultant on business taxes and former candidate for state and local offices, won a close race for the top spot in what he described as a contest between religious conservatives and younger, more centrist party members. Although religious conservatives won the chairman’s post, centrist Republicans picked up other leadership positions.

Fackler, who said he received more support from “the older, pro-life” party members, beat county Commissioner Todd Mielke by two votes in the annual meeting of precinct committee officers earlier this month.

Mielke said he was trying to push Ronald Reagan’s vision of a “big tent philosophy” for the Republican Party and a recognition that not all GOP officials will agree with every plank of the platform.

“There is a debate about how pure you’re going to ask everyone to be,” Mielke said. “I’m not asking people to change their principles.”

Local Republicans were “obviously very disappointed” by losing two races in the 6th Legislative District, which hadn’t elected a Democrat since 1938, and three-term incumbent County Commissioner Phil Harris’ loss to Democrat Bonnie Mager, Fackler said.

“Election night was a wake-up call,” he said.

Fackler, 51, is a former B-52 navigator who operated a finance and insurance business in Spokane after leaving the Air Force and has worked with the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. He ran twice for state insurance commissioner, most recently in 2004, when he said that office needed to be more business-friendly and the state should reduce the number of mandatory services an insurance carrier must offer to operate in Washington. He also ran for Spokane school board in 2001, and sought the appointment to fill the opening left when Jim West left the state Senate to become Spokane mayor.

Part of the problem in the 2006 election was low Republican turnout, he said. That may have been made worse by some longtime poll voters who protested the county’s all-mail voting system by not sending in their ballots.

“People were just turned off, I think on both sides, but more on the Republican side,” Fackler said.

Another factor in Fackler’s election as chairman may have been concerns over Mielke heading up the party when he is scheduled to run for re-election in 2008.

Mielke said he planned to do “the groundwork that needed to be done” in 2007, then step aside in 2008 and let the party’s vice chairwoman take the top spot.

But the local GOP suffered from a series of leadership changes over the last two years. Mike Casey, who was elected in late 2004 to the two-year term, resigned to work in Gulf Coast communities hit by Hurricane Katrina; vice chairwoman Nancy Mortlock stepped in temporarily until retiring County Sheriff Mark Sterk was elected in late 2005. But Sterk retired from the job several months later, citing poor health, and Mortlock took over on a permanent basis through the election.

With all the changes, some things fell through the cracks, Fackler said. The party Web site, for example, was still listing events from 2005 late into the 2006 campaign.

Getting a better Web site is “one of the first things on my agenda,” he said.

Next year probably won’t be a busy partisan year because all scheduled elections are for nonpartisan positions such as mayor and city council, Fackler said. But 2008 will have a presidential election, plus precinct caucuses, the biennial county convention, and a state convention held in Spokane.

Shannon Kelly, who ran the Eastern Washington campaign for U.S. Senate candidate Mike McGavick, was elected the county party’s vice chairwoman. Jim Robinson and Catherine O’Connell were re-elected as county representatives to the state committee, the governing body for the state GOP.

Spokane County Democrats are expected to elect a new leader in January. Chairwoman Sharon Smith, who was named the Woman of the Year by state Democrats earlier this fall, has said she will not seek a second term.