Who’s Really Running in the August Primary?
It is time check out the Election Landscape--here’s how
All politics are local, but with our ever more nationally focused news coverage it often harder to learn about the candidate for local office in this August’s municipal primary—who might live in your neighborhood and with whom you could meet face-to-face—than it is to focus on the newest candidate for the U.S. Presidential election that is more than a year away.
In mid-July, if you’re a registered voter in Washington State, a primary election ballot for municipal races will appear in your mailbox. Now is the time to pay attention. You can avoid what used to be my response to the municipal primary ballot: “Huh? There’s an election this year?”
Fortunately, thanks to county and state websites it is now possible to orient yourself in the election landscape without relying on what you’re fed by local media. The goal of this blog post is to orient you to official sources of information by using the City of Spokane municipal elections as an example. (I expect that many other states maintain similar official databases, but, confusingly, each state has its own rules and requirements dating back to our founding as a nation, a fact that emphasizes the importance of paying attention to local and state governance.)
In the State of Washington, the office of the Secretary of State (SOS) maintains an online tool for voters, vote.wa.gov. Visit the site and enter your voter information. Then, in the left hand column click “Who Filed”. Voila! Up pops the list of candidates who will appear on your primary ballot. This list is gathered by the SOS from data supplied by each county’s elections office. “Filing week” with the county elections offices was May 15-19. Only candidates who filed during that week will appear on the August primary ballot—there is no more guess work about who’s running.
In my case, living in the City of Spokane City Council District 2, there are seventeen candidates running for six elective offices. (Two are Superior Court [county-wide] judges who are running unopposed, so the list is effectively fifteen candidates among whom I get to choose for four elective positions.)
That is still too many names to keep track of, so I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that you can glean a pretty clear idea who is serious and competitive among these candidates by researching public records. By law, the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission (PDC) maintains a database of campaign contributions at PDC.wa.gov. Once a candidate starts accepting campaign contributions they are required to register and file reports with the PDC at regular intervals. As a rule, any truly viable candidate for elective office will have filed with the PDC and started reporting well before the May county elections office “filing week”. (Also note that some aspirational candidates file with the PDC and then never get around to filing with the county elections office to appear on the ballot.)
PDC.wa.gov takes some getting used to. Once you’re there, click “For Voters and the Public” in the upper lefthand corner. Then, under the heading “Political Disclosure Reports”, click “Candidates”. On the resulting page you’ll need to enter 2023 for the “Election Year” and (in my example) “City of Spokane” for the “Jurisdiction”. (This search function is quite fussy. One needs to keep playing with it. For example, it likes “Spokane Co”, but not “Spokane County” for “Jurisdiction”. “City of Spokane” also pulls up “City of Spokane Valley”.)
So where does that leave us with, say, the race for Mayor of the City of Spokane?
Five names will appear on the August primary ballot, but only two, Lisa Brown and Nadine Woodward, have raised campaign funds to date, 158K and 312K, respectively. (Tim Archer reported $150, apparently from a relative, Frances Archer.) Archer and the other two, Stevens and McKann, may share a debate stage with Ms. Brown and Ms. Woodward, but seem highly unlikely to mount any sort of effective campaign. (Note: Legally one must report one’s own monetary contributions to one’s campaign. Lack of reporting any contributions at all suggests a complete lack of a serious campaign effort.) In our current voting system (as opposed to ranked choice voting) these extra three who will appear on the ballot along with Ms. Brown and Ms. Woodward are likely, at most, to serve only as potential spoilers, siphoning votes from the likely frontrunners. (It is interesting to note that three more aspirants for the mayorship who signed up earlier with the PDC never filed with County Elections—Casillas, Kleven, and Legault. None reported raising any funds either.)
Similarly, Betsy Wilkerson and Kim Plese are the only two reporting campaign contributions to the PDC to date, 52K and 91K, respectively, for the position of City Council President of the City of Spokane. Andrew Rathbun signed up with the PDC on May 22nd, seemingly as an afterthought after filing with county elections. Mr. Rathbun raised significant funds in the 2019 election cycle as a candidate first for Mayor and then for City Council Member from District 3 (NW). He made it to the November general in District 3 but lost to Karen Stratton for the City Council position. This year he bears watching, but he seems to be off to a very late start.
There are six City Council seats in the City of Spokane, two from each of three Districts (click here for a map). One seat from each District comes up for election in consecutive odd-numbered years. This year it is “Position 1” from each District that appears on the ballot.
In District 1 (NE Spokane) Lindsey Shaw and Michael Cathcart have both raised funds. No one else is on the ballot.
In District 2 (South Hill plus) Paul Dillon, Cyndi Donahue, and Katey Treloar have all raised campaign funds. Mike Naccarato reports none so far (although he has a campaign website on which he apparently spent some money)—and only signed up with the PDC last Friday, June 2.
District 3 (NW Spokane) is swarmed with candidates. Seven are signed up with the PDC, six of whom filed with Elections. Of those six, four report raising campaign funds, Esteban Herevia (13K), Kitty Klitzky (3.5K), Christopher Savage (8K), and Randy McGlenn (4.1K).
I urge you to do your own homework to see who will appear on your ballot. Take the opportunity to meet and talk with the candidates. Visit their campaign websites, their Facebook pages, their blogs. These are local candidates, after all. That’s the point. Support the ones you like by talking them up with your friends and acquaintances, by posting about your support on social media, by making a campaign contribution, and/or working with their campaigns. This is democracy at work. It’s messy and complicated—but it’s the best system around. If we don’t participate we will lose the whole “By the People” piece upon which our country was founded.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. While I believe that the reported campaign contributions can tell us who is actually mounting a potentially viable campaign, the absolute amount of money a campaign has amassed is no guarantee of success. That success will depend on how the money is spent balanced against many other factors—especially the participation of the electorate.
P.P.S. The order in which I listed the candidates for City of Spokane elected offices above is the order in which I would currently rank them if we had adopted ranked choice voting. Each front runner (and sometimes the second listed) in my ranking is someone I have met and whose work and qualifications I respect. I reserve the right to change my ranking—but I would be surprised if I do.