SPOKANE, Wash. – If you’ve tuned into any Spokane television channel in recent weeks, you’ve likely seen a Michael Baumgartner campaign ad saying that he “brought [a] medical school to Spokane.” Did he?
Sort of. While Baumgartner was a Washington State Senator, he primary sponsored a bill bringing a community-based medical school to Spokane. The accompanying House version of the bill primary sponsored by State Rep. Marcus Riccelli (D) is the version that was ultimately signed by Governor Jay Inslee (D) in 2017.
NonStop Local reached out to WSU’s Spokane campus to request a list of important civic and community leaders involved in bringing a medical school to Spokane and has yet to receive one back.
However, the Baumgartner campaign cited a 2015 WSU Spokane blog post crediting Riccelli, Baumgartner and Inslee jointly for helping secure the funding for the law school as validation for the campaign ad’s claim.
Riccelli argued that no one person should take credit for the funding and called the medical school coming to Spokane a community accomplishment.
“The WSU Medical School was a community wide effort, and it is wholly inaccurate to say one person ‘brought’ it to Spokane,” Riccelli said.
Riccelli’s full remarks offering his assessment of how the medical school came to be, including the work of Dr. Elison Floyd, is attached to this article.
“I do feel Mike Baumgartner was a strong partner and I am not going to rewrite that history just because he is a member of a political party I do not belong to and running for Congress (and I do not support his bid). However, it is again wholly inaccurate for him to claim he solely brought the WSU Medical School to Spokane,” Riccelli said.
Campaign advertisements are expensive and short. Politicians need to pack a lot of information into them in a short amount of time, meaning they sometimes describe nuanced issues in simplistic shorthand.
While the claim that he “brought [a] medical school to Spokane” doesn’t include the work of fellow lawmakers, the WSU community or the staff who now work at the law school, it is true that he was at the forefront of policy discussions that led to the WSU Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine.
