Lisa Brown prevailing over Nadine Woodward in pivotal 2023 Spokane mayoral contest

Wash­ing­ton’s sec­ond largest city could soon have a new may­or — one with pro­gres­sive val­ues — for the first time in a very long time.

In elec­tion night returns, for­mer State Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Lisa Brown has a slight lead over right wing incum­bent Nadine Wood­ward, with 51.51% of the vote. Wood­ward, who has been cam­paign­ing for a sec­ond term, has 48.01%.

Brown has 23,217 votes in this first tal­ly; Wood­ward has 21,640. 220 write-in votes have been count­ed so far. Wood­ward’s deficit is 1,577 votes.

It’s a dis­ap­point­ing ini­tial drop for the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty and the state’s right wing, who have been repeat­ed­ly dealt a series of defeats by vot­ers in Wash­ing­ton at every lev­el going back over half a decade. They been ner­vous about Wood­ward’s prospects for months, for very good reason.

Wood­ward’s allies have been spend­ing enor­mous sums of mon­ey try­ing to take Brown down after she eas­i­ly best­ed Wood­ward in the August Top Two elec­tion. Reports filed with the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion show Brown has faced a whop­ping $401,547.89 in inde­pen­dent expen­di­tures oppos­ing her can­di­da­cy. They’ve also spent $363,127.60 in sup­port of Woodward.

That’s more than three quar­ters of a mil­lion dol­lars in all.

Allies of Brown, mean­while, mar­shaled $122,642.21 in inde­pen­dent expen­di­tures to oppose Wood­ward’s reelec­tion, and just $25,030.98 to sup­port Brown.

Brown has raised $519,056.70; Wood­ward has raised $577,321.18.

Put it all togeth­er, and that’s $2 mil­lion in receipts and expenditures.

Much of that sum went to com­pen­sate con­sul­tants, pro­duce plus air tele­vi­sion ads, and pump direct mail into vot­ers’ mail­box­es. Some was sunk into dig­i­tal ads, mass test­ing, door­belling fliers, and robocalls.

The anti-Brown mon­ey has main­ly been flow­ing through the “Spokane Good Gov­ern­ment Alliance.” Its top donors are the Gee Auto­mo­tive Com­pa­nies, FJ Con­tri­bu­tion Com­pa­ny I LLC, Lar­ry Stone, LTSK LLC, and Spar­wood Prop­er­ties LLC. Oth­er donors include Ruby Riv­er Hotel and Wash­ing­ton Trust Bank.

“They’re clear­ly try­ing to buy the elec­tion out­come that they want,” Brown told the Spokesman-Review in an inter­view last month.

“What I’ve seen so far of their ads, they’re cook­ie-cut­ter neg­a­tive attack ads, which is not sur­pris­ing, giv­en their con­sul­tants in Ari­zona and Virginia.”

Nev­er­the­less, vot­ers are back­ing Brown over Wood­ward, defy­ing the big cor­po­rate mon­ey in the race. That’s a pret­ty sig­nif­i­cant rebuke of greed and astroturfing.

Late bal­lots are not yet account­ed for, so Brown’s lead is ten­ta­tive for now. If sub­se­quent drops are favor­able to Brown, she’ll be able to declare victory.

But tonight, this race is sim­ply too close to call.