Spokane voters favor recall of mayor

SPOKANE, Wash., Nov. 1 (UPI) -- A poll shows Spokane, Wash., Mayor Jim West, mired in a gay sex scandal, may be in deep trouble with voters.

With a recall election scheduled Dec. 6, the poll for the Spokesman-Review and KREM-TV News found 62 percent of those asked favor recall and only 29 percent support West.

"Very bluntly, it would take a real catastrophic set of events for the majority of voters to vote against the recall," said Del Ali, president of the polling company Research 2000.

As a Republican state legislator, West was anti-homosexual. But an investigation by the Spokesman-Review uncovered young gay men who said West had offered them jobs in Spokane.

West had on-line chats with one person who actually was an investigator hired by the newspaper.

West's strategy has been to point to his accomplishments as mayor and to suggest the newspaper was motivated by litigation over a development owned by Cowles Publishing, which also owns the Spokesman-Review.