(SNN Spokane) In what can only be considered a no-confidence vote for President Bush, today voters in Spokane Washington decided to recall their conservative mayor. Sixty five percent of voters in the Washington city voted to recall Mayor James West.

In many ways, West is the conservative's conservative. West is a former sheriff's deputy and Boy Scout leader. And more tellingly, he attempts to use his position to lure young men into having sex with him, offering them city jobs in exchange for... other types of jobs.

And West is not just posing as a conservative. Last spring, Spokane's newspaper, the Spokesman-Review, ran a series of articles that said West had spent large amounts of time on gay web sites and quoted three young men who said that they had communicated to him over the Internet and had been offered city jobs in exchange for sex. In addition, a large quantity of gay pornography had been found on the hard drive of his city computer.

Some considered it shocking, that someone who had advanced anti-gay legislation in the Legislature would be gay themselves. But, the legislation that West attempted to introduce specifically limited contact between gay state employees and children. And West was in a unique position to understand how someone in a government position could abuse their power to take advantage of young people.

At a press conference on Wednesday, West said that he regretted some things in his private life. "I am embarrassed by them, but nevertheless, they are in my private life," West said. Because every good Republican knows, it is unfair to accuse someone of malfeasance simply because they solicited sex from a younger person in their office.

posted by NewsBlog 5000  # Wednesday, December 07, 2005