A savvy West turns to the cameras

Jim West’s fight to save his career morphed last week into a campaign by a veteran politician to try to change public opinion.

West’s appeal on Monday of a recall petition set up a three-day media blitz in which he sought to refute aspects of a scandal that has dogged the 54-year-old mayor for two months.

Critics said West is choreographing a wide-ranging public relations campaign and seeking to divert attention from a central fact: that he used the Internet and the trappings of his office to attract young men for personal relationships.

West said he’s trying to defend himself – as every American has a right to do – while seeking fairness in a recall process that could effectively end his 27-year political life.

“The Spokesman-Review is not the judge and jury, and its accusations are false,” he wrote last week in a guest column on the newspaper’s Opinion pages.

Voters may well end up being West’s jury if the Washington state Supreme Court approves a recall petition that passed muster with a Benton County Superior Court judge last month.

The Supreme Court on Friday said it would consider when to hear the appeal at a meeting July 14.

As in his earlier political races, West’s future hinges on winning just over 50 percent of the votes in a recall election to stay in office. Only this time he’s not running against an opponent. If anything, he’s running against a part of himself.

After filing his appeal with the state Supreme Court on Monday, West went before television cameras in a pair of videotaped interviews. They were aired in segments on KXLY and KHQ on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and heavily promoted as TV news exclusives.

In the KXLY interview, the mayor appeared in the richly appointed grand hall of the Glover Mansion – one of Spokane’s most venerable buildings. The setting was chosen after West’s lawyers negotiated ground rules for the interview, including an understanding the mayor would not talk about his potential legal cases.

West reportedly agreed to the interview because KXLY and The Inlander were about to release results of a poll that showed 61 percent of residents believe the mayor should resign.

The subsequent interview with KHQ occurred after the station learned about the KXLY-Inlander arrangement and persuaded West to give it an equal opportunity. KHQ’s polls have shown that 67 percent of residents want him to resign.

West said he wanted the public to hear directly from him about why he appealed the recall, but he didn’t want to undergo another free-for-all press conference like one June 3 that erupted in bouts of shouting.

City Councilwoman Cherie Rodgers, one of the mayor’s chief critics, said she believes that nearly everything West does in public is part of a calculated strategy to keep his office. He has appeared at neighborhood council meetings, visited Councilman Bob Apple’s working-class bar in Hillyard, and ordered department heads to submit their top accomplishments by the end of last week.

“I can’t believe he blamed the newspaper,” Rodgers said last week. “That’s vintage public relations. He’s trying to deflect all the attention away from what he did.”

In his public statements, West has expressed concern that the wording of a potential recall ballot is prejudicial. He is expected to seek a rewording of the language in his appeal.

Under state law, visiting Judge Craig Matheson was required to correct inadequacies in the original charge submitted by the county prosecuting attorney’s office.

The prosecuting attorney submitted this ballot synopsis to the court:

“James E. West, mayor of the city of Spokane, committed acts of misfeasance in that: He solicited internships for young men for his own personal uses.”

Matheson changed the synopsis to read:

“Between March 8, 2005, and April 9, 2005, Mayor James E. West used his elected office for personal benefit. On March 21, 2005, he authored a letter intending to help obtain a student internship with the city of Spokane for a person he believed to be an 18-year-old high school student. During a series of Internet conversations, before and after the letter, Mayor West sent a photograph of himself to the person, raised issues of sex, discussed dating and urged the person to keep Mayor West’s identity a secret. Mayor West admits these conversations. Offering to help obtain a student internship with the city of Spokane under these circumstances was an improper exercise of an official duty.”

West’s attorneys are expected to argue that Matheson went beyond his authority with such a substantial rewrite. West, in his guest column in Tuesday’s Spokesman-Review, said he was seeking “a more accurate ballot title.”

Rodgers said she believes West’s appeal is part of a delaying tactic intended to buy him more time so he can attempt to sway public opinion.

In his KXLY interview, West said the station’s poll showed 45 percent of residents favored his recall versus 28 percent who are against it, and 27 percent who are unsure. Those in favor are still not a majority, he said.

His emerging campaign appears to center on these themes:

“He has made mistakes in his private life and has asked for forgiveness.

“The Spokesman-Review has pursued him unfairly by hiring a computer consultant to pose online as a high school student and has made false allegations. The newspaper has shredded the truth “into a hundred small pieces and rearranged it to fit their agenda and theories,” West said.

“While the scandal may have hurt his effectiveness, his accomplishments in office so far prove he is still the best mayor the city has had and that he’s done nothing to make him unfit for office.

West seems to ignore or gloss over other issues:

“Damage to the city’s reputation.

“Persistent calls from political civic leaders for his resignation, and his own resignations from several civic boards.

“Awkwardness resulting from his public appearances and the reluctance by some organizations to extend him invitations.

“His behavior online and the propriety of seeking sex from young men.

The newspaper hired a computer consultant in late 2004 after a teenager, who is now 19, said he went on a date and had consensual sex with West after meeting him in a gay Internet chat room. The young man said West was using the screen aliases “Cobra82nd” and “RightBi-Guy.”

In an interview last week, the 19-year-old said, “What happened between him (West) and me actually did happen. I’m a real life person. I met the mayor online, and he asked me out on a date, and I went with him.”

The young man, who has not been identified by the newspaper, said if The Spokesman-Review hadn’t hired a consultant to verify his experience, West “would have called me a liar and tried to discredit what I was saying occurred.”

The computer expert was not initially told that West was being investigated by the newspaper but asked only to identify who was behind the screen names.

Rodgers, who said she has pored through the transcripts, said the apparent double life of the mayor should not be ignored.

“There’s this good Jim and this bad Jim,” Rodgers said.

“It’s the good Jim who is the mayor, and it’s the bad Jim who gets on the Internet and spends time in gay chat rooms and has sex with an 18-year-old … I think that’s pathological behavior.”