It's a beautiful late summer afternoon and Republican Spokane County Commissioner Al French is sitting on a bench outside the Spokane County Courthouse. He's thinking about his legacy.
With 22 years in elected office — eight as a Spokane City Council member and 14 as a county commissioner — French, 73, is one of the region's longest-serving elected officials. He's also arguably one of its most powerful. He sits on numerous boards and commissions and has reshaped parts of the county.
This year will be French's last election.
"With the last couple things I need to get taken care of, I will have done what I set out to do here," French says, gazing at the Spokane County campus that's become his second home. "And then we'll quietly go off into the horizon."
If Molly Marshall has her way, French's retirement may come earlier than he hopes.
Democrats like Marshall, 55, have been trying and failing to unseat French for years. But some on the left are hopeful this election will be different. French recently became tangled in a recall effort tied to his handling of chemical contamination in West Plains drinking water, and Marshall, a retired Air National Guard member, believes voters are ready for a change.
"What really made me decide to run was the PFAS cover-up," Marshall says. "When you do something like that that affects public health and livelihood, it's clear there needs to be new leadership."
PFAS is short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a family of so-called "forever chemicals" that have been linked to heart disease, cancer and other health issues in humans. Many private and public water wells in the West Plains are contaminated with the chemicals due to their use in firefighting foam at Spokane International Airport and Fairchild Air Force Base. Some residents blame French, a longtime member of the airport board, for not alerting people to the problem and taking steps to address it when he started to become aware of it in 2017.
The contamination has become a defining issue in this year's election — a chemical shadow that threatens to cloud French's legacy in the county's District 5, which covers Airway Heights, Medical Lake, Cheney, the West Plains and other parts of western Spokane County.
French has strongly denied any wrongdoing in his handling of the response to PFAS contamination. He describes the recall effort as a "far-left political ploy." The recall wouldn't happen until after the November election.
"Things that I did, I did either under the advice of legal counsel or in compliance with the existing contracts and agreements," French says. "So I'm comfortable there's no merit to this."
POISON IN THE WATER
In 2017, members of the Spokane International Airport board, which French is and was a member of, started becoming aware that firefighting foam used in safety training at the airport contained PFAS that seeped into the groundwater in the West Plains and Airway Heights.
Fairchild Air Force Base, which is several miles west of the airport, tested for and discovered PFAS contamination from its airfield earlier that year. Those results were announced publicly, and residents who lived near Fairchild were given free testing for their private wells to see if they were contaminated.
The results of later tests conducted at the airport, however, were not announced publicly. Nor were they disclosed to any regulatory agencies.
Residents who live nearby only started to learn about the June 2017 testing last year, when a citizen obtained the results through a records request and gave them to the Department of Ecology, which promptly added the airport to the state's list of contaminated sites.
In late August, a newly formed group called the "Clean Water Accountability Coalition" filed recall charges against French, alleging that he had worked to keep PFAS contamination in the West Plains quiet to protect the airport's economic interests. French strongly denies this, and questions why other airport board members haven't faced similar criticism.
"Pure politics," he says of the recall. "It's unfortunate. I mean, I won the primary by a substantial margin, and my opponent and her supporters are desperate now."
French beat Marshall by 2.4 percentage points.
The recall effort is being led by West Plains residents, Washington Conservation Action and Fuse Washington, a progressive political organization. Both organizations involved have endorsed Marshall.
For her part, Marshall says she only learned about the recall when a reporter called her for a comment after it was announced at a news conference.
Marshall hasn't run for office before, but she's spent years organizing neighbors in the Grandview/Thorpe area while advocating for sustainable growth. She says she's hoping to recall French the old-fashioned way — by defeating him at the ballot box. But if she loses the election, and the recall ends up going to voters, she says she'd support it.
"I just want to focus on the positive and hope for the best, but I do support what they're doing," Marshall says. "Because there's been a grave injustice to these folks."
The recall charges will soon go before a Superior Court judge, who will evaluate if the allegations are significant enough to go to voters. French says he's hired an attorney and is confident the judge will toss out "this recall petition nonsense."
FLIPPING THE COMMISSION
In the past, voters were represented by three county commissioners who ran in district-specific primary elections and countywide general elections. For more than a decade, all three commissioners were Republicans.But in 2021, state lawmakers added two seats to the commission. Redistricting split Spokane County into five districts: two solidly red, two solidly blue, and French's District 5 became more mixed. All elections are now decided only by voters in each district.
French pushed back on the change. He claims his district was deliberately targeted to become more favorable to Democrats. Currently the commission has three Republicans and two Democrats who are frequently outvoted.
Marshall says she was "so surprised" when the primary results showed her just 736 votes behind French.
"I'm a no-name, and here we have a 14-year — but really 22-year — career politician," Marshall says. "And I didn't lose by that many votes. I'd call it a win."
French says he isn't worried. "My voters always vote late... we're much more targeted for the general," he says.
Jim Hedemark, a political consultant who has worked on campaigns for Democrats and Republicans in Spokane County, thinks French is on track to win. Marshall may feel like she's within striking distance because of the primary results, but Hedemark says voter demographics in the 5th District indicate that French still has an advantage.
"Does Al have to work to win this election? Of course he does," Hedemark says. "I wouldn't discount the fervor and the excitement that there is from Molly's campaign, but again, history would tend to lean towards the conservative candidate."
(Hedemark adds that the recall attempt is a "goofy machination" and an "exercise in the impossible.")
Jeff Beaulac, a data specialist who has worked on progressive campaigns in the Spokane area, thinks the race is a "true toss-up."
Republicans still have an advantage in the 5th District, but there's "a lot of negativity on Al" over the PFAS controversy, he says, and Marshall is running an energetic campaign. In order to win, he thinks Marshall will have to gain votes from people who previously supported Donald Trump.
"It's probably going to come down to within a couple hundred votes," Beaulac says.
GROWTH AND INFRASTRUCTURE
Pollution isn't the only issue separating Marshall and French.Marshall is the co-founder of Citizen Action for Latah Valley, which has advocated for a development moratorium in the Latah Valley area because of concerns about a lack of infrastructure and wildfire danger. French has been to a few of the group's meetings, but Marshall argues that the commissioner "never offered solutions, only pointed fingers."
Marshall says the sprawl problems that have troubled Latah Valley are starting to appear in other parts of the county, and that French hasn't done enough to plan for smart growth. Wildfire risk management is a major part of her platform, and she's concerned about a lack of transportation infrastructure in many areas.
"We're building these multifamily homes in areas that don't have these kinds of services, it doesn't quite make sense," Marshall says.
French is opposed to building moratoriums. He argues that they worsen the housing shortage and economic development while not actually addressing the problem. He's proposed addressing the lack of egress and adequate road infrastructure in the Latah area through a tax-increment financing district.
"New construction brings sales tax revenue, it brings property tax revenue that helps drive government services without having to increase your taxes," French says, noting that he has pledged not to raise property taxes if reelected. "Why is she standing in the way of progress?"
French boasts about his endorsements from law enforcement groups and attacks his opponent's lack of experience in elected office.
"I've led the effort to bring 6,500 new jobs to the West Plains, over $3 billion in new construction," French says. "I'm working to continue to build infrastructure to try to get ahead of growth, as opposed to reacting to growth."
CLEAN WATER
Earlier this year, French proposed a plan to address PFAS contamination by piping in clean water from the Spokane River to West Plains residents. He says it's one of his top priorities for his last term.Critics have expressed skepticism over the feasibility of the project, but French says he's confident it will happen by next summer. He says the Kalispel Tribe has already said they're "ready to move forward," and that he's hoping to time the laying of new pipe with a planned repair project on existing water lines near Fairchild.
"Now that we're aware of the problem, we're working to find a solution," French says, adding that the pandemic "created a bit of a delay."
Marshall's PFAS plan involves creating a "PFAS victims fund," joining a class-action lawsuit against PFAS manufacturers, hiring a toxicology expert and assembling a task force.
"Let's get some money flowing to those people to get them some help, because they've been waiting for seven years. It's too long," Marshall says.
French argues that the county is already doing many of those things and that other elements of Marshall's plan aren't feasible.
The recall charges highlight 2021 documents that show French blocking a vote to accept a Department of Ecology grant that would have funded PFAS testing. Spokane County's environmental services manager had pushed for the grant and told independent journalist Timothy Connor last year that he felt the project was killed in order to hide the airport's connection to the PFAS issue.
French says he stopped the grant from moving forward because he felt it would create a conflict of interest given the county's financial stake in the airport. He also felt that Ecology "was looking at the county to do Ecology's job."
When asked if there's anything he wishes he handled differently, French says he wishes he had been "much more forceful about having Ecology do their job" when the county passed on the grant opportunity.
"I think the one thing, in hindsight, I would have been much more vocal about is [telling] Ecology 'this is your money, this is your authority, you have the resources to make this happen, do it,'" French says. "If there's anything I regret, I regret the fact that I was not more vocal about that."
French's priorities for his final term include bringing more aerospace manufacturing to Spokane County and working on the county's 20-year comprehensive plan update in 2026.
"Hopefully the voters that have kept me in office will continue to hang in there with me," French says. "At least for one more term, and then I'll go quietly." ♦
