With the first results in the August 2023 Top Two elec­tion hav­ing land­ed, can­di­dates in the crowd­ed dis­trict-lev­el con­tests for Spokane City Coun­cil can now see where they stand — and so can every­one else! Here’s a look at who is most like­ly to be mov­ing on to the gen­er­al elec­tion in November.

District #1

Spokane elects two mem­bers of the coun­cil in each of the three dis­tricts it has. Cur­rent­ly, in Dis­trict #1, the seats are held by incum­bents Michael Cath­cart and Jonathan Bin­gle. Both Cath­cart and Bin­gle are not­ed conservatives.

Bin­gle made waves short­ly after his elec­tion in 2022 for refus­ing to abide by the city’s mask man­dates. Nei­ther of them attract­ed more than one chal­lenger, so they are not on the Top Two ballot.

District #2

In the con­test for Posi­tion #1 in the 2nd Dis­trict, Paul Dil­lon has jumped out to an ear­ly lead, with a plu­ral­i­ty of 41.01% of the vote.

As the Vice Pres­i­dent of Pub­lic Affairs for Planned Par­ent­hood of Wash­ing­ton and Ida­ho, Dil­lon has been a fierce pro­po­nent of repro­duc­tive rights, and has been involved in var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions in Spokane, includ­ing Pedals2People, Spokane Riv­er Clean Up, and Spokane Com­mu­ni­ty Against Racism.

He is also on the board for Greater Spokane Progress and Wash­ing­ton Bus.

Although coun­cil posi­tions are offi­cial­ly “non­par­ti­san,” Dil­lon has been out­spo­ken in acknowl­edg­ing his pro­gres­sive posi­tions. Dur­ing his cam­paign, he has earned the endorse­ments of Andy Bil­lig, Mar­cus Ric­cel­li, Timm Orms­by, and even the out­go­ing incum­bent coun­cilmem­ber, fourth-gen­er­a­tion Spokan­ite Lori Kin­n­ear, who was unan­i­mous­ly con­firmed as City Coun­cil Pres­i­dent in July (and who, inci­den­tal­ly, made his­to­ry as Spokane’s first female Coun­cil Pres­i­dent.)

If elect­ed, Dil­lon hopes to con­tin­ue the work he’s done advo­cat­ing for the home­less, health equi­ty, pub­lic tran­sit, and account­abil­i­ty for law enforcement.

In sec­ond place is Katey Ran­dall Tre­loar with 33.31% of the vote.

A teacher in Spokane pub­lic schools for nine years, Tre­loar has helped found the non-prof­it Bite-2-Go, help­ing hun­gry school­child­ren. She is also a small busi­ness-own­er, the founder of Exec­u­tive Coach­ing LLC, a busi­ness geared towards help­ing neu­ro­di­ver­gent kids over­come bar­ri­ers pre­sent­ed by their disabilities.

She has pre­sent­ed her­self as a non­par­ti­san can­di­date, claim­ing par­ti­san­ship is what has divid­ed our pol­i­tics. Yet despite not embrac­ing par­ti­san pol­i­tics, her endorse­ments have large­ly come from peo­ple who iden­ti­fy as conservative.

In her pri­or run for Spokane Dis­trict Direc­tor in 2019, she advo­cat­ed for armed resource offi­cers in schools and protest­ed COVID safe­ty pro­to­cols. She earned an endorse­ment from the Spokane Police Guild, a red flag to pro­gres­sive activists.

In third place is Cyn­di Don­ahue, with 17.17% of the vote. Don­ahue is a small busi­ness own­er with plen­ty of expe­ri­ence in busi­ness and com­mu­ni­ty lead­er­ship. She cre­at­ed a pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment series “Ampli­fy­ing Women’s Voic­es,” work­ing for non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion Ignite North­west, and cur­rent­ly serves on the Down­town Spokane Part­ner­ship Busi­ness Improve­ment Board.

Like Dil­lon, she has endorsed Lisa Brown over Nadine Wood­ward for mayor.

She has been endorsed by the Spokane Democ­rats and the Nation­al Women’s Polit­i­cal Cau­cus of Wash­ing­ton, and, if elect­ed, hopes to work on cre­at­ing walk­a­ble neigh­bor­hoods, find­ing solu­tions for home­less­ness, and part­ner­ing with region­al builders to help build afford­able housing.

In fourth place is Mike Nac­cara­to, a pur­chas­er for a ship­ping con­tain­er com­pa­ny, who is new to pol­i­tics. He has 8.26% of the vote.

He has empha­sized acces­si­ble men­tal health ser­vices, sta­ble hous­ing, increased law enforce­ment pres­ence, and tar­get­ing prop­er­ty crime as plat­form planks.

Wor­thy of note has been his tight-lipped respons­es to ques­tions about how he would approach expand­ing ombuds­man over­sight pow­ers. He has stat­ed he wants to “see how things play out first.” He favors boost­ing fund­ing for law enforcement.

The most like­ly matchup for the gen­er­al elec­tion is Dil­lon ver­sus Ran­dall Treloar.

District #3

The 3rd Dis­trict has a big group of can­di­dates with a wide range of back­grounds, com­mu­ni­ty involve­ment, ide­olo­gies, and polit­i­cal experience.

In first place tonight is Kit­ty Klitzke, with 36.16% of the vote.

Klitzke has a long his­to­ry in pol­i­cy work. She is a for­mer Army reserve medic and Ameri­corp work­er, and worked for more than a decade with Future­wise, a non­prof­it ded­i­cat­ed to cre­at­ing sus­tain­able liv­ing com­mu­ni­ties. Among her pri­or­i­ties are cre­at­ing a com­pre­hen­sive devel­op­ment plan for Spokane and con­tin­u­ing her work in envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty. She cites cre­at­ing tran­sit infra­struc­ture along­side new hous­ing as a core need for Spokane.

In sec­ond place is Earl Moore, who has 21.58% of the vote.

Moore is a precinct com­mit­tee offi­cer for the Spokane Coun­ty Repub­li­can Cen­tral Com­mit­tee. Moore dif­fers from her oppo­nents in that she believes the police are being unfair­ly tar­get­ed by calls for inves­ti­ga­tion into the police chief’s behav­iors. Indeed, her vocal sup­port for the police appears to be one of her pri­ma­ry plat­form planks — she has spo­ken out against the city council’s deci­sion regard­ing the ombudsman’s abil­i­ty to inves­ti­gate the police chief.

Her cam­paign has received con­sid­er­able dona­tions from groups that usu­al­ly sup­port Repub­li­cans, as well as the Wash­ing­ton Asso­ci­a­tion of Realtors.

In third place is Christo­pher Sav­age, a life­long Spokan­ite, cur­rent board pres­i­dent for Spokane Meals on Wheels, and ware­house man­ag­er at Project Beau­ty Share, a non­prof­it pro­vid­ing make­up and hygiene prod­ucts to low-income people.

Sav­age has 17.43% of the ini­tial vote.

This isn’t his first bid for office in the Lilac City. Sav­age has run for Spokane City Coun­cil three times before, and is a reg­u­lar at city coun­cil meet­ings. He agrees with Moore that the inves­ti­ga­tion against Mei­dl is a “witch hunt.” He has also earned the endorse­ments of local Repub­li­cans like Mike Fagan and Bob Apple.

In fourth place is Este­ban Here­via, who has 15.51% of the vote.

Here­via has served as Pres­i­dent and CEO of Spokane Pride, help­ing lead the largest Pride cel­e­bra­tion in Spokane’s his­to­ry, an event that drew over 50,000 peo­ple. He cur­rent­ly serves as the Strate­gist for Health Jus­tice and Belong­ing at Wash­ing­ton State University’s Col­lege of Med­i­cine at their Spokane campus.

His plat­form planks are root­ed in pro­gres­sive val­ues. He believes in region­al solu­tions to home­less­ness, police account­abil­i­ty mea­sures, and rolling back poli­cies such as the “Parks After Dark” ordi­nance, which unfair­ly crim­i­nal­izes home­less­ness. He earned the endorse­ments of the Spokane Coun­ty Young Democ­rats, Wash­ing­ton Con­ser­va­tion Action, and the LGBTQ+ Vic­to­ry Fund.

In fifth place is Dar­ren McCrea, with 4.45% of the vote.

McCrea’s cam­paign was mem­o­rable, owing to his use of imagery from Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax, and phras­es such as “With respect and ded­i­ca­tion, I’ll rep the pop­u­la­tion.” McCrea is a mem­ber of the Colville Con­fed­er­at­ed Tribes, and is a long-time cannabis activist. He opened SpoCannabis, the first med­ical mar­i­jua­na dis­pen­sary in East­ern Wash­ing­ton, in 2003. He advo­cates for the legal­iza­tion of psilo­cy­bin, as well. Like the Dr. Seuss char­ac­ter, McCrea cares about our trees. He is a pro­po­nent for city mea­sures to mit­i­gate cli­mate dam­age and for­ti­fy local forests. McCrea, to date, hasn’t report­ed rais­ing any money.

In sixth place, with 4.32% of the vote, is Randy McGlenn, a for­mer chair of the Lib­er­tar­i­an Par­ty of Wash­ing­ton. McGlenn is cur­rent­ly com­mu­ni­ty assem­bly rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the West Cen­tral Neigh­bor­hood Council.

Oth­er posi­tions he has held include act­ing as Chair of the East Cen­tral Neigh­bor­hood Coun­cil, Chair of the Com­mu­ni­ty Assem­bly Admin­is­tra­tive Com­mit­tee, and Chair of the Cit­i­zens’ Trans­porta­tion Advi­so­ry Board. McGlenn has empha­sized address­ing prop­er­ty crime, eco­nom­ic growth, and homelessness.

It’s look­ing like it will be Moore ver­sus Klitzke this autumn. Klitzke’s first place posi­tion is secure. Sav­age and Here­via are hun­dreds of votes out of sec­ond place and it would be dif­fi­cult for either of them to catch up to Moore.

The key issues facing Spokane

Times are chang­ing for the Lilac City, and the city’s dis­course reflects that.

Spokane is the sec­ond largest city in Wash­ing­ton. Accord­ing to data from the 2020 Cen­sus Bureau, Spokane’s pop­u­la­tion grew by near­ly 15% since 2010.

Spokane has, in some ways, always felt like it was try­ing to be Seat­tle or Portland’s younger sib­ling – imi­tat­ing their aes­thet­ics and lifestyles, but with few­er peo­ple and few­er cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions. The boom, it seems, has final­ly arrived.

But that doesn’t mean Spokane has been pre­pared for growth. Hous­ing and rental devel­op­ment has lagged behind the influx of people.

In 2021, Spokane had a 1.1% apart­ment vacan­cy rate, mak­ing apart­ment hunt­ing a nerve-wrack­ing affair for the aver­age cit­i­zen. For those with­out hous­ing, there are sim­ply not enough shel­ter beds to meet the com­mu­ni­ty’s needs.

Pub­lic safe­ty is also a con­cern. Spokane’s prop­er­ty crime rate rose near­ly 30% in 2022. At the same time, the city has strug­gled to address prob­lems with its police force. Police Chief Craig Mei­dl has been accused of inap­pro­pri­ate com­mu­ni­ca­tions, prompt­ing the Coun­cil to autho­rize the ombuds­man to inves­ti­gate his con­duct.

Who­ev­er is elect­ed to gov­ern Spokane this year will play a deci­sive role in deter­min­ing the direc­tion the city takes through the remain­der of the 2020s.