Champion of fiscal-conservative causes Duane Alton dies at 88

A tire salesman, who twice got within a few percentage points of beating Tom Foley in races to represent Spokane in Congress and later challenged attempts all over the state to raise funds for schools, died last week.

Elvin “Duane” Alton, founder of Alton’s Tire and Automotive Center and a financer of conservative politics, died on Feb. 17. He was 88.

“He was very conservative and concerned about his community,” former Spokane Valley Mayor Diana Wilhite said. “He wanted the best for the community, from his perspective. I didn’t always necessarily agree with him, but I appreciated his passion.”

Alton was born in 1936 in tiny Atkinson, Nebraska, a town that counted 1,306 residents as of the 2020 Census.

He later enlisted in the U.S. Air Force on May 27, 1955, and was honorably discharged on Dec. 27, 1958, according to a candidate profile he provided The Spokesman-Review decades ago.

His military career apparently brought him to Spokane, where he attended night classes at Eastern Washington University and Whitworth University, which was then known as Whitworth College.

In 1958, he married his first wife, Blanche, who previously had three children, Pamala, Greg and Douglas, whom Alton listed as his children on his campaign disclosures. The couple later had sons Matthew and Troy.

In 1964, Alton opened the first Alton’s Tire store, which would eventually grow to 13 locations in Spokane and North Idaho before he sold them in 2008 to Billings-based Tire-Rama Inc.

Plane crash candidacy

Just weeks before the 1976 election, Republican candidate Charles Kimball was killed in a small airplane crash on Aug. 31.

Republican leaders put forth 39-year-old Alton as their standard bearer to take on Democrat incumbent Thomas “Tom” S. Foley who was running to retain his seat in the U.S. House for the 5th District of Washington.

“I really believe in all my heart that Tom Foley can be beat,” Alton said in 1976. “If I didn’t think I could beat Foley, I would not run.”

Alton, who would later become a Trustee of the Freedom Foundation, ran on a platform of smaller government and fewer taxes. At the time, he had three tire shops operating in Spokane and Coeur d’Alene.

“We need to let the free enterprise system in the U.S. run … with as few controls as necessary,” he said during the campaign.

Alton said he would be in favor of amending the U.S. Constitution to end federal deficits, which he blamed for causing the high inflation at the time. “I would be in favor of such an amendment if no other way could be found to force Congress to balance the budget,” he said.

Foley won the 1976 election with just over 58% of the vote compared to Alton’s showing of just under 41%.

Two years later, with years to allow voters to get to know him, Alton challenged Foley a second time.

In the August prior to that election, according to Spokesman-Review archives, Alton called for a complete elimination of the food stamp program and grants for the National Science Foundation. He also called the Occupational Safety Health Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency “squanderers of taxpayers’ money.”

“Mr. Alton’s position is far too extreme in political circumstances, even in the Republican Party, to represent the people of the 5th District,” Foley said in response.

“If trying to leave more of the taxpayer’s dollar in his pocket, if trying to stop inflation is extreme, then he’s right,” Alton countered.

During the campaign, Alton got $1,400 donation from Citizens for The Republic, a group set up by soon-to-be President Ronald Reagan. With that support and with the help of others, the tire salesman nearly completed the transaction.

Foley won the election by just a handful of percentage points, 47.9% to Alton’s 42.7%, with the other 9.3% going to an independent candidate.

“When you lose, you lose and you don’t feel good about it,” Alton told a Spokane Chronicle reporter on Nov. 8, 1978. “I’m just going to go back and sell some tires and keep some food coming.”

The loss would be Alton’s last major foray into politics except for a truncated run as an independent for state office in 1984 and a 1994 primary loss to George Nethercutt, who that year finally unseated Foley.

Antitax crusader

According to court records, Duane and Blanche Alton divorced in 1989. He later remarried Andree Rabe in April 1993.

But publicly, Alton never missed a beat challenging anything that could raise taxes, even if he wasn’t the one affected.

In 1991, he became the co-chairman of the Truth About Coliseum Taxes, which was a group opposed to a proposal to use sales taxes to replace the Spokane Coliseum with the Spokane Arena.

“It’s not a crap shoot, it’s economic rape,” Alton said in a Sept. 14, 1991 article. Alton complained that increasing taxes to pay for a facility that a private enterprise couldn’t pencil out was “morally wrong.”

A year later, Alton targeted the $18 million effort to upgrade the Spokane County Fair & Expo Center.

“When is the rape of Spokane taxpayers going to stop?” Alton asked. “There is no economic development created when you take money from people to spend it on a project they do not want.”

But Alton took particular interest in funding efforts to kill school bonds and levies.

In a 1994 letter to the editor in The Spokesman-Review, Alton claimed that the state was wasting taxpayer dollars on education.

“Some $2,000-plus per student is swallowed up by the bureaucracy” in Olympia, he wrote. “What we need is less bureaucracy, not higher property taxes. Less bureaucracy will raise the standard of education; more taxes will not.”

Over the next two decades, he became one of the prime financers of campaigns against school tax proposals in almost every area school district and even districts in places like Battle Ground, on the state’s west side.

For instance, in 2011 the Citizens for Responsible Taxation, which was nearly completely funded by both Duane and his son, Matt Alton, warned voters of Orchard Prairie about a “sneak election” that would raise their property taxes $2,490 for a home valued at $100,000.

The actual figure was $249.

“The fact that it has grossly incorrect figures really disturbs me,” Dan Cutler, a school board member said at the time. “I don’t mind people sending out fliers saying to vote no, but to send it out with false figures in it is really unethical.”

As recently as 2022, the elder Alton was the largest single donor to local campaigns over the prior 15 years. At that time, he had given more than $70,000 to candidates and measures.

Wilhite, the former Spokane Valley mayor, said donations are the lifeblood of most local campaigns.

“Unfortunately, these days, you have to raise a fair amount of money” when you are running for state office, she said. “People who are willing to donate to campaigns are special people.

“Duane, if he felt you met the guidelines he felt were necessary, he was very willing to donate,” Wilhite continued. “So, he was generous in that respect.”

Efforts to reach Duane Alton’s friends, colleagues and family were not successful on Monday.