100 years ago in Spokane: Both daily newspapers in town spoke out against a KKK-affiliated prosecutor’s run for office

The Spokesman-Review followed the Spokane Daily Chronicle’s lead and declared Frank H. Kinsell unfit for office because of his ties to the Ku Klux Klan.

Kinsell was the Republican candidate for Spokane County prosecutor, and the Spokesman was usually a Republican-leaning paper. But the editors threw their support to his Democratic opponent.

Kinsell’s “failure to renounce (the Klan) makes it a fair inference that he is in accord with the secret political machinations of the KKK and approves its methods of masked terrorism,” the editorial said.

Th editors pointed out that 350 out of 400 Spokane members of the county bar had stated their preference for Charles H. Leavy, Kinsell’s Democratic opponent.

From the gunshot beat: Agnes Cranston, a young accountant, was walking in downtown Sandpoint when she thought she heard the report of a firearm. She felt something strike the back of her neck, but not with enough force to alarm her.

After she walked a few more steps, she put her hand to the back of her neck, and it came away covered in blood.

It turned out she had been shot, probably from a stray bullet. Onlookers took her to the hospital where a bullet was extracted.

Police conjectured that the bullet came from either a small firearm shot by accident from one of the windows downtown, or from a high-powered rifle near the edge of town.

Her condition was not believed to be serious.