McCollam gets most votes among Republican officers to Spokane County prosecutor's office

Yahoo

7 hours ago

Aug. 16—The search for Spokane County's top prosecutor is entering the final stretch.
More than 120 Republican precinct committee officers gathered in Mead Saturday morning to deliberate and nominate three candidates to lead the Spokane County Prosecutor's Office following Larry Haskell's resignation in July, leaving 1 1/2 left in his term.
Nearly 80% of the officers voted for the current Spokane County Acting Prosecutor Preston McCollam in the first round of voting. The party also agreed to back Assistant Washington Attorney General Steve Garvin and attorney Marshall Casey for consideration.
Spokane County commissioners will chose among the three to fill the remaining part of Haskell's term. Next year, voters will fill the position.
When someone vacates an elected partisan position like county prosecutor, state law dictates that the outgoing official's party names up to three replacements for the county's top legislative body to choose from. If the county commission is unable to make a selection, the decision goes to the governor.
Spokane County Republican Party Chairman Rob Linebarger stressed the importance of the constitutional responsibility put before the assembly at the start of the meeting.
"We have an 'Article Two, Section 15' duty to nominate three people, three qualified people, to fill the vacancy of the county prosecutor," Linebarger said, referring to the state Constitution. "And the legislative body in the county, which is the county commissioners, also have that same duty to appoint."
An hour and 50 minutes after those remarks, the Spokane County GOP voted to end the meeting, list of candidates in hand.
Only three candidates were nominated , meaning the list of attorneys the Spokane County Commission will consider was rounded out relatively quickly. Of more interest Saturday morning in the Mead Union Event Center was who among the trio Republican leaders favored most.
Garvin and McCollam have hit the campaign trail hard already, securing donations and endorsements, even though voters won't decide between them till the August 2026 primary election at the earliest. McCollam, head of the criminal side of the prosecutor's office since 2023, has raised more than $25,000 for his campaign, according to the Washington Public Disclosure Commission. In an interview last week, Garvin said his campaign total is over $30,000, around $22,000 of which has been reported. Garvin spent nearly 20 years in the prosecutor's office before joining the state's legal team in 2022.
Republican precinct leaders voted in a blind-ballot vote on pink slips of paper, the first of three rounds of voting to decide who would fill each slot following speeches from the candidates and the precinct committee officers who nominated them.
Nearly 80%, 97 of the 124 counted ballots, carried McCollam's name.
In his remarks, McCollam touted his 12 years as a prosecutor in Benton and Spokane counties, the support he's received from regional law enforcement and his two years leading the office's 102 member team taking on criminal prosecution. His time at the helm has included successfully advocating to the county commissioners to bring salaries for prosecutors and public defenders more in line with other Washington counties, to grow the victim and witness advocates team and to introduce a facility dog to assist those advocates in particularly delicate cases.
He said his office is growing, working hard and consistently punching above their weight, filing over 3,900 felony cases last year. He said Snohomish County, larger than Spokane County by more than 300,000 residents, filed around 1,500. Pierce County, population 940,000, filed 3,400.
"And they have twice the lawyers that I have," McCollam said.
If appointed, McCollam said he would be a wise steward of taxpayer dollars, work to bring a new jail and treatment facility to address overcrowding in the jail and partner with regional legislators to make drug possession charges felonies again — which would allow his office to prosecute them in Superior Court rather than most cases landing in Municipal Court where the city of Spokane's prosecutors practice.
"As your county prosecutor, I serve the entire community, and I submit to you that I have been fighting for you in this role," McCollam said. "I'm excited about where we're going to take this office."
Sheriff John Nowels nominated McCollam in his capacity as a precinct committee officer, saying he has the integrity, character and proven track record to lead the office. Nowels already endorsed McCollam for the 2026 ballot, alongside former Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich, former Spokane police Chief Craig Meidl, and all four unions representing Spokane County deputies, Spokane Police Department officers — and the upper command units for both agencies.
"It is no mistake that every law enforcement association in Spokane County has endorsed Preston McCollam to be our prosecuting attorney," Nowels said. "They know he has the leadership necessary, and he knows how to keep our law enforcement and our community safe."
The assembly elected to hold a standing vote for the second and third nominees. Casey, a former Court of Appeals judicial candidate currently with Sweetser Law Office, conceded to third in his remarks, and used most of his allotted 10 minute speaking time reflecting on the opportunity the precinct committee officers had before them. He acknowledged he was in the running solely to fill the third spot.
Garvin, 55, said he sees an urgent need for change in Spokane, and by extension the prosecutor's office. As examples, he said he's heard from crime victims that feel shut out of their litigation, and pointed to the over 300 people in Spokane County who died of drug overdoses in 2024 and the downtown office vacancy rate of nearly 30%.
"If we do not change the direction we are headed, guess what?" Garvin said. "We'll get where we're going."
He said the office has a long standing "bad habit" of not filing cases in a timely fashion, and he's worked before to tackle back logs efficiently as a former leader in the office on property crime and juvenile cases. Before joining the prosecutor's office in 2003, he spent six years as a deputy district attorney for San Diego County, California. He's been with the state Attorney General's Office since 2022.
Garvin also laid out an ambitious plan to sue the city of Spokane on his first day as prosecutor to address what he described as "lawlessness," "we see in the streets."
"It's the same playbook that was run to shut down Camp Hope," Garvin said. "We do not have to be victims of the poor management of the city, and by bringing real time justice and swift and certain justice, we will address these urgent problems in our community."
The city of Spokane, under former Mayor Nadine Woodward, entered into litigation against the state of Washington in 2023 over the large homeless encampment on parcels owned by the Washington Department of Transportation in the East Central neighborhood known as Camp Hope. The suit eventually led to a judge-ordered clean up plan agreed upon by both parties.
It's not clear whether Garvin in his capacity as county prosecutor would be able to enter into litigation on behalf of the county on his own accord. It would likely take a vote from the Spokane County Commissioners, who hold final say over most all county business.
Following the meeting, Linebarger said he was pleased with the selections, and the engagement from party members in what is an important part of democracy, and an important issue for Spokane County residents.
"Safety and crime, that is what people are passionate about," he said.
Republican party leaders got underway with the search last month, with a 10-member vetting committee meeting with Garvin and McCollam ahead of the vote. The process was fair, thorough and impartial, he said. It all went relatively smoothly, aside from the bevvy of early endorsements before the assembly made their nominees, including from Commissioners Mary Kuney and Al French, who have lent their backing to McCollam.
While he acknowledges their right to endorse as citizens, Linebarger said members of the public share a base level distrust in government that spans all political persuasions. He said the early endorsements adds an air of impropriety, of bias, that fuels that sentiment; to endorse ahead of the party's selection meant McCollam all but secured two of the three votes necessary to appoint him.
"I wish they hadn't done that," Linebarger said.
Saturday marked the second time this year the Spokane County GOP has gone through the process. Congressman Michael Baumgartner left his post as county treasurer in January shortly before his swearing in as a member of Congress, which spurred a search and January meeting in which the party whittled eight candidates to three. State Rep. Mike Volz, who's served as second-in-command in the treasurer's office since 2011, eventually got the nod from the county commission to lead the office in the interim.
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