Candidates Stampede Into The 3rd State’s Poorest District Has Attracted A Crowd Of House And Senate Hopefuls
The state’s poorest district has a wealth of politicians hoping to represent it in Olympia.
Ten candidates will soon be canvassing the 3rd Legislative District, looking for votes in Spokane’s core neighborhoods.
The district, which covers downtown Spokane and the city’s central neighborhoods, will be the county’s busiest political turf this year.
Four candidates made Friday’s filing deadline for each of the two open House seats. Another two politicians are dueling for the district’s lone Senate spot.
The district’s 102,000 residents can expect to be bombarded with yard signs, telephone calls and doorstep campaign pitches as the Sept. 17 primary nears.
Wringing campaign dollars out of voters is likely to be difficult in perhaps the poorest district in the state, where two out of every five citizens receives some form of welfare or other public assistance.
The 3rd’s heavyweight bout is the Senate race that pits incumbent Republican John Moyer against Democrat Lisa Brown, a two-term state representative.
Moyer has a huge early financial lead over Brown in what is traditionally a Democratic district. As of the latest filings, Moyer had raised $34,500 for his re-election campaign, compared with about $6,000 for Brown.
Of the three Democrats vying for 3rd District House Seat No. 2, Jeff Gombosky appears to have the broadest support so far.
The 25-year-old neighborhood activist has corralled more than 50 individual contributions totalling about $6,000.
By comparison, the most recent filings indicate only a handful of contributions to the campaigns of Democrats Val Smith, a retired social services administrator, and to Spokane attorney Lonnie Sparks.
Sparks, who Spokane County Commissioners recently appointed to fill Dennis Dellwo’s vacated seat, has the most money out of the three Democrats with more than $7,000, but the biggest chunk came in a $6,500 loan he secured for his campaign fund.
Republican Ken Whitehall, who will take on the Democratic primary winner in November, has raised about $1,000, $200 of which came from tire store magnate Duane Alton, whose latest run for Congress was in 1994.
In the other 3rd District House race, three Republicans are jousting for a shot at Democrat Alex Wood, the former KXLY talk show host.
Wood had raised more than $4,000 as of the latest filing.
Republicans Asa Jay Laughton, Brendon Hill and Keith Landrus had raised little or no campaign cash by the latest filing.
, DataTimes