This day in history: Spokane City Council member, jilted by mayor, says she’s being treated as ‘first class dummy’

By Jim Kershner

From 1976: “I’m tired of being a second class councilman and a first class dummy around here.”

Those were the words of Spokane City Council member Margaret Leonard, who was frustrated because the mayor would not allow her “to schedule a closed meeting unless (she) would tell him the subject matter.”

All Leonard would say is that she wanted to hold a closed meeting “to hear complaints or charges by a public officer against another public officer.”

Their identities were a mystery, and Leonard was not telling.

Leonard also believed she was within her rights to call an executive session. She called the mayor’s refusal “an insult to my intelligence.”

She said she wanted a closed meeting to protect the reputations of those involved.

From 1926: State Sen. Reba Hurn of Spokane, a pioneering woman politician, announced that she would run for re-election.

“I feel that I have done the best I could in the position, and trust the voters will feel that their interests will best be preserved by my re-election,” said Hurn, a Republican.

She said that practically every matter that she voted on had had “two sides to the question,” and it was impossible to please everybody.

“I have therefore attempted to act on each question as presented, on its merits, determining whether I honestly believed the proposed bill (was in the) best interests of the state and voting my convictions,” she said.

Four years earlier, Hurn had become the first woman elected to the Washington State Senate.