Want to read some lukewarm, semiarticulate chat transcripts between a secretly gay Republican mayor and the guy hired by the newspaper to pose as an 18-year-old gay stud? Right here, baby. Jim West has, according to the slightly stodgy local rag the Spokesman-Review, has now admitted to soliciting young-guy action on Gay.com, more than once, particularly from an 18-year-old teen to whom he offered an internship and lots of nifty perks, who was then substituted for an expert hired by the Review to draw West, quite literally, out of the closet. It's all over the Spokane papers - er, paper. But that's another column.Īnd now, this: Jim West, the Republican mayor of Spokane, a longtime serious player in regional politics and the former majority leader of the state senate and a potential Republican gubernatorial candidate and apparently one of the fiercest and most hot-tempered and most powerful Republicans in the state of Washington, is in deep trouble.Ĭlaims are now rampant that West has used his position of power for years, even since the '70s, ever since he was a Scout leader, ever since he was handing out cute plastic trophies to young preteen boys exactly like me and actually to me in particular (I won a couple - what can I say?), West has used his position to lure men and teenage boys into having sex with him. Jim West was also a sheriff's deputy, a community activist, outgoing and up-and-coming, and at that time was apparently slowly wending his way into local politics, and I have vague memories of him being very nice and well liked and I definitely recall him standing up there more than once, on the little elementary school stage, handing out cheesy plastic trophies to the wide-eyed boys at the Pinewood Derby, the geeky annual Boy Scouts model-car race that was the only part of the Scouts I actually cared about or remember in any detail, except for the waking nightmare that was Boy Scout summer camp, which I hated like white-hot death.