Six months after a newspaper outed Mayor Jim West as a closeted homosexual and accused him of offering city jobs and perks to young men in exchange for sex, residents are nearing the end of a cringe-inducing saga.

Ballots are already in the mail for a special Dec. 6 election that will decide if West remains in office or is recalled. Officials are investigating whether he abused his office.

Talk about Thanksgiving. After months of too-much-information on a host of topics, it is little wonder that some 60 percent of Spokane voters surveyed in a recent poll said they plan to vote West out of office.

"I think Spokane has been suffering from a low-grade depression," said Tom Keefe, a local attorney who is spearheading the effort to recall West.

City Councilwoman Cherie Rodgers said that West admitted to her at the beginning of the scandal that he masturbated in his office in City Hall while online. West said Rodgers had misunderstood him.

"That the mayor hoped for a sexual relationship with Witness No. 2 is evidenced by his continued sexual online chat with Witness No. 2 during the following (months)," the report said.

A Superior Court judge decided recently that while the contents of West's city-owned laptop computer are a public record, releasing the photos of men West looked at on Gay.com would violate the privacy of those individuals.

A lawyer for the newspaper asked if the photos could be released with a bar across the face to prevent identification, but Judge Richard Miller denied the request, to the relief of the West-fatigued.

The newspaper's analysis of a computer disk that West voluntarily released showed that he trolled Gay.com to look up men who lived in cities he was planning to visit.

The Spokesman-Review on May 5 began a series of stories that contended West offered young men city jobs in exchange for sex. Several young gay men told the newspaper they were offered perks, trips, jobs and appointments by West.

The newspaper also reported allegations by two men that West molested them decades ago when they were boys. West has vehemently denied those allegations.

The recall election is based on a single count alleging West misused his office by offering to help an 18-year-old man he met at Gay.com get a City Hall internship. The person the mayor thought was a young man was really a middle-aged computer expert hired by the newspaper.

For the national media, the West story was interesting primarily because he was a longtime conservative Republican state legislator who often voted against gay-friendly bills.

West also went on the "Today" show early in the scandal to explain that he voted against gay marriage and similar bills because it was the will of his constituents.

West has declined to identity himself as gay, or "psychoanalyze" himself or talk about when he knew he was attracted to men. He is not in therapy, he told The Associated Press, even though his private laundry has been hanging for months on the national clothesline.

West, who is divorced and childless, has also had to deal with a recurrence of colon cancer, which requires chemotherapy that has left him weak and nearly bald.

City business leaders, who helped West win the most expensive state Senate race in Washington history in 2002, have called on West to resign, but are not contributing to the recall.

Some of the outrage is directed at the newspaper, which critics say went too far in hiring an undercover operative, and has published 145 news articles on the case.

The mayor has so little money that his campaign to save his job features use of old "Elect Jim West" yard signs, rather than the printing of new ones.

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