Brian Dansel, not Jonathan Bingle, ranked highest by Spokane County GOP after error found by party

Apr. 15—The Spokane County Republican Party has issued a correction: Ferry County Commissioner Brian Dansel, not Spokane City Councilman Jonathan Bingle, received the party's highest score for a candidate running to represent Eastern Washington in Congress.

Dansel received a score of 99.3%, not 89.2% as the party reported Friday when it published those scores online. The error, discovered Sunday after Dansel inquired about the candidate vetting committee's analysis, was due to an incorrect input in the Excel document used by the committee to score each candidate, said Rob Linebarger, chair of the county party's candidate and marketing committees. In two cases, scores for Dansel were replaced by zeroes, dropping his overall score by 10.1 points.

Linebarger said there had been little time between when those scores were submitted to him and when they were published online, and that he had not been able to fact check them in the "10 minutes" he had. Party leadership has spoken with both Dansel and Bingle about the situation, Linebarger added.

"We communicated extensively with Jonathan Bingle, and he's accepted the circumstances," he said. "It's unfortunate, but numbers get revised all the time."

The mistake was isolated and no other scores were affected, Linebarger said, adding that the party will be transitioning to a new system so the error won't be repeated.

In a Monday press release, Linebarger noted that the ranking and vetting process, inspired by the neighboring Kootenai County Republican Party, was newly adopted this year by the Spokane County GOP in order to decentralize the endorsement process.

"As a member of the Spokane County Republican Party Board, prior to the conservative grassroots ascension into the majority of that 18-member Board on December 10, 2022, my observation was the endorsing process was tightly controlled by a few 'moderate or Mainstream Republican' influencers from the Board..." Linebarger wrote.

No congressional candidate was endorsed last week, as no one received a majority vote of precinct committee officers; the county party will decide on an endorsement at its June 13 meeting.

Dansel, who the vetting committee called principled and experienced, said he was thrilled to have been ranked highest by the county party.

"I think it's great to be from outside of Spokane but be able to relate so well to the people of Spokane County," Dansel said. "It shows the diversity of my campaign and the approach I'm taking. I'm thrilled that I connect with the grassroots members of the party."

Bingle, who The Spokesman-Review reported Sunday had been ranked highest, said he was surprised at the size of the error. He said he had requested and received approval from the county party before sending out a Friday press release touting his leading score.

"Don't get me wrong, I really like Brian Dansel, and he deserved the correction, but 10 points is a big swing," he said.

He added that he has requested a copy of Dansel's scorecard to better understand the error.

"There are people who just care about the community, trying to do a service to the party and the county," Bingle said. "It's a big job, sometimes mistakes happen. I just want to see it, obviously."

On Monday, the Spokane County Republican Party issued a press release asking for a correction and clarifying a handful of other issues with the published analysis of each candidate.

For instance, the committee questioned if state Rep. Jacquelyn Maycumber, who received a score of 82.5%, was "possibly buying influence." Maycumber's record as a successful fundraiser "may have been misinterpreted by the team," Linebarger wrote in the county party's Monday press release.

"After speaking with the Vetting Chair and Representative Maycumber in detail it is clear to me this 'perception' is more about the overall corrupt influence money has in our process and the result the leverage large dollar donations have on our elected officials and not directed at Representative Maycumber's character or service," Linebarger continued.

The party also reiterated that publishing that Spokane County Treasurer Michael Baumgartner had voted for a cap-and-trade bill was incorrect.

"This was a mistake made by the Vetting Chair, corrected at the meeting and since corrected in the Vetting Summary document," Linebarger wrote."

In another case, the party acknowledged that Medical Lake Mayor Terri Cooper was not a judge as the vetting committee had originally written. Cooper served nearly 20 years as a court commissioner in Cheney, a lay judicial officer empowered to oversee civil and criminal cases that did not go to jury trial.

Those vetting summaries, which provided the scores and some of the committees' thoughts about each of the candidates for multiple races, including for Congress, were pulled from the county party's website on Sunday. Linebarger said that there had been complaints, not from the candidates but from people within the party who believed it wasn't made clear those summaries would be published and were frustrated that they could damage their preferred candidate.

Linebarger added that he wasn't sure if those summaries would be republished, but said that in the future the party would make it clearer to its members that the summaries would be published.

The county party also took issue with The Spokesman-Review's reporting about the candidates' positions on abortion, arguing that the party's inquiry of candidates on its questionnaire, "When does life begin and at what point does the government have a duty to protect it?" is distinct from asking the candidates their positions on abortion.

That question incorporates other issues as well, such as assisted suicide and other forms of euthanasia, Linebarger said, and was deliberately written not to include the word "abortion." Linebarger said this was part of a "marketing effort" to reframe the "sanctity of life" issue.

"It's strategic and tactical for us to defuse the abortion issue," which Linebarger said was "hyperbolic on both sides."

All of the candidates wrote they believe life begins at conception and that the government has a duty to protect life from that point, with the exception of retired law enforcement officer Jody Spurgeon, who believed abortion should be allowed for at least the first six weeks after conception, and cattle rancher Michael Schmidt, who believed abortion should be allowed to save the life of the mother. Several candidates explicitly mentioned how this belief impacted their views on abortion. Baumgartner was the only candidate to explicitly mention euthanasia, while Bingle wrote that government protections extended until "natural death."

The county party also believed that it was incorrect to clarify that candidates believed the legal rights of American citizens were granted by "the Christian God," as opposed to just "God," as nearly every candidate wrote. Spurgeon was once again the only exception, naming only the U.S. Constitution — or "man," as Linebarger put it — as the sole source of American rights.

"We didn't say from 'a Christian god,' we say our rights come from God," Linebarger said. "We are accepting of all faiths, whether Christian or Muslim, whatever. They have their god as well."