Spokane May­or Nadine Wood­ward’s polit­i­cal future is look­ing increas­ing­ly bleak after an appear­ance along­side white suprema­cist Matt Shea, a for­mer state leg­is­la­tor, at a Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist ral­ly in Spokane on Sun­day, August 20th.

Dur­ing “Let Us Wor­ship”, Wood­ward and oth­er Repub­li­cans gath­ered onstage to receive a bless­ing from Shea, fol­low­ing a thun­der­ous ser­mon replete with fire and brim­stone metaphors. (Joseph Peter­son, a local design­er who cap­tured much of the events on video and post­ed them to Twit­ter, reports the group “ask­ing God to ‘Sweep our city like a fire sweeps through the woods.’”)

The ral­ly was held as smoke from two dev­as­tat­ing wild­fires enveloped the city: the Ore­gon Road fire near Elk and the Gray Fire fire in Med­ical Lake.

Both fires result­ed in enor­mous struc­tur­al dam­age. The Gray Fire dis­placed an esti­mat­ed 5,000 peo­ple in a coun­ty already strug­gling beneath the weight of a hous­ing cri­sis. On Sat­ur­day morn­ing, Mead’s air qual­i­ty index (AQI) exceed­ed 500, mark­ing it as a city with some of the worst air qual­i­ty in the world.

As of press time, the Ore­gon Road Fire had burned 10,817 acres and is 83% con­tained. The Gray Fire, which incin­er­at­ed 10,085 acres and destroyed 240 homes, is 93% con­tained. The fires, which also claimed sev­er­al lives, were declared a state-lev­el emer­gency by Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee.

Wood­ward attempt­ed to dis­tance her­self from Shea fol­low­ing the event.

“I am deeply dis­turbed that Matt Shea chose to politi­cize a gath­er­ing of thou­sands of cit­i­zens who joined togeth­er yes­ter­day to pray for fire vic­tims and first respon­ders,” said Wood­ward, in one of her few pub­lic state­ments since the event. “I attend­ed the event with one pur­pose only and that was to join with fel­low cit­i­zens to begin the heal­ing process.”

These com­ments were met with increduli­ty across the Inland North­west, giv­en that the event was not spon­ta­neous, but rather long planned.

It was orga­nized by Sean Feucht, a right wing pas­tor and musi­cian who earned a rep­u­ta­tion dur­ing the pan­dem­ic for his bom­bas­tic con­certs held in protest of COVID-19 phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing safe­ty mea­sures. Feucht con­tin­ues to be a promi­nent voice in the white Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism move­ment, an ide­ol­o­gy stat­ing that Chris­tian­i­ty should be the foun­da­tion of America’s – if not the world’s – laws.

For read­ers who are unfa­mil­iar with Matt Shea, he is a far-right, mil­i­tant white suprema­cist with a his­to­ry of polit­i­cal vio­lence, and who has long advo­cat­ed for a fas­cist theoc­ra­cy. Since enter­ing pol­i­tics, Shea has ped­dled con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and called for split­ting off East­ern Wash­ing­ton into a new state called Lib­er­ty.

Shea made nation­al head­lines in 2018 when it was revealed he was behind the dis­tri­b­u­tion of a man­i­festo titled “The Bib­li­cal Basis for War,” in which he out­lined the strat­e­gy for a “Holy Army,” con­demned repro­duc­tive rights and mar­riage equal­i­ty, and called for the killing of all males who do not yield to bib­li­cal law.

Shea gained fur­ther atten­tion in 2019 when an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion con­firmed his involve­ment in the infa­mous armed takeover of Oregon’s Mal­heur Wildlife Refuge in 2016, led by Ammon Bundy. The inves­ti­ga­tion fur­ther detailed his direct involve­ment in two oth­er acts of domes­tic ter­ror­ism, lead­ing to his expul­sion from the House Repub­li­can cau­cus, despite his refusal to resign.

Shea chose not to run for reelec­tion to the Wash­ing­ton State House in 2020, and has since been act­ing as the pas­tor for the Covenant Chris­t­ian Church. Read­ers can read the Cas­ca­dia Advocate’s cov­er­age of Shea’s actions here and here.

Among the voic­es demand­ing account­abil­i­ty from Wood­ward was for­mer City Coun­cil Pres­i­dent Ben Stuckart, who ran against Wood­ward for May­or in 2019. The Spokesman Review quot­ed Stuckart as say­ing: “You don’t go to white Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist events, put on by Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists and not expect the Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists to be there.”

Lisa Brown, Woodward’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger, also expressed skep­ti­cism towards Wood­ward’s claims, point­ing to her and Shea’s on-stage embrace.

It is also worth not­ing that in the abun­dance of prayers held that night, there were no words spo­ken for the first respon­ders or vic­tims suf­fer­ing outside.

So much for join­ing the com­mu­ni­ty in healing.

Wood­ward also said: “I am opposed to [Shea’s] polit­i­cal views as they are a threat to our democ­ra­cy, and I regret my pub­lic appear­ance with him. I was not aware that he would be at the event last night and it only became appar­ent as I was walk­ing on stage that he would be lead­ing the prayer. I should have made bet­ter efforts to learn who would be speak­ing at the event.”

Yet this was no last-minute proposition.

Shea con­firmed on his pod­cast, Patri­ot Radio, that Wood­ward accept­ed the invi­ta­tion to Let Us Wor­ship far, far in advance.

It would be impos­si­ble for a rea­son­able per­son to mis­take a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist ral­ly for a prayer ses­sion for the vic­tims of a dis­as­ter that had not yet come to pass at the time it was sched­uled. What is more, giv­en Feucht’s mil­i­tant, extrem­ist far-right ide­ol­o­gy, it is dif­fi­cult to see how Wood­ward could not have antic­i­pat­ed, at min­i­mum, the tone and tenor of the ral­ly when she agreed to attend.

Even if Wood­ward were to have some­how missed Shea’s involve­ment, why didn’t she leave once she saw him present? Or at any point dur­ing the event, with its anti-LGBTQ+ remarks and its extreme right-wing rhetoric?

The obvi­ous answer: she did­n’t regret going to the event until after it was pub­li­cized that she’d been there and the crit­i­cism came rolling in.

Wood­ward was already fac­ing a tough gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign to win a sec­ond term, as evi­denced by her loss to Brown in the August Top Two election.

Now her elec­toral prospects look even dimmer.