The following is presented as part of The Columbian’s Opinion content, which offers a point of view in order to provoke thought and debate of civic issues. Opinions represent the viewpoint of the author. Unsigned editorials represent the consensus opinion of The Columbian’s editorial board, which operates independently of the news department.
With 2022 in the rear view mirror, this is an appropriate time for a brief look back on what the editor at my first newspaper used to call a Sergio Leone review — the good, the bad and the ugly.
The successful congressional campaign of Marie Gluesenkamp Perez was good on several levels. A body like the House of Representatives should be a cross-section of America. It’s about to add a Hispanic, blue-collar working stiff, wife and mother. That’s rare for either party in that august body, and good for the republic.
Even better, in beating Republican Joe Kent, a Trump favorite and sometime COVID conspiracist, Gluesenkamp Perez not only defied the odds but made national and state political observers look like doofuses for writing her off and proclaiming the Southwest Washington district solid red Republican. In truth, it’s a “leans swing” district that had a moderate Republican for 12 years.
To his credit, after a recount confirmed he had lost, Kent conceded.
The last of the state’s emergency declarations expired at the end of October, but while lifting it was good, an emergency that lasts for 2½ years isn’t an emergency and insisting that it is is bad. The Legislature had some proposals on how to put limits on the governor’s emergency powers but the failure to come to a consensus on major changes is just as bad.
In an emergency, government agencies tend to rush money to people in need. In 2021, some $37 billion in federal funds flooded into Washington — also good — but a state auditor’s report in August said some of those relief programs had significant problems accounting for the way that money was spent — definitely bad, considering that money came from all of us.
In what may have been the worst political investment of 2022, Spokane County auditor candidate Bob McCaslin, who had raised questions about the elections process, paid $3,017 for a hand recount of five precincts after losing to incumbent Democrat Vicky Dalton by 1,183 votes. The county recounted the 2,347 ballots from those precincts, all of which Dalton won. She still won them, by the exact same number totals as originally reported.
The ugliest political thing to happen in 2022 was ongoing spurious election denial. While not perfect, elections throughout Washington continued to be well-managed. Some candidates ran for various offices as election deniers, and while most lost their campaigns they helped stoke the conspiracy embers in the social media universe.
The special race for the state’s top election official, the Secretary of State, got a bit ugly when the head of the state Democratic Party accused the independent candidate, Julie Anderson, of being a closet Republican, when in fact she has more historic ties to Democrats.
On a nonpolitical note, the ugliest thing to happen in the Inland Northwest was clearly the murder of four University of Idaho students in November. But a runner -up would have to be the way some news organizations and online “sleuths” treated the ongoing investigation, tossing out theories that impugned the victims’ roommates and friends, as well as faculty and practically anyone they came in contact with prior to the murders.
The best good at the end of the year was Friday’s announcement by Idaho law enforcement of a suspect in custody — someone who apparently escaped the notice of the online Sherlock Holmeses and Agatha Christies.
Remembering Joe McKinnon
2022 also closes with the death of Joe McKinnon, a longtime political activist and one of the godfathers of Spokane Valley incorporation.
McKinnon was the director of the former Museum of Native American Culture before serving as the Spokane chairman for Dixy Lee Ray’s successful gubernatorial campaign in 1976. After she won, he served as Ray’s Eastern Washington representative, a position that hadn’t existed previously.
“He always had his finger on the pulse of Spokane,” Kay McGlocklin, a longtime friend and political ally, said last week.
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