Mayoral race tops $400,000

With less than a week left in Spokane’s municipal campaigns, spending in the mayor’s race has topped $400,000 and passed the amount spent in the 2003 election. It’s not a record – at least not yet – running slightly behind the amount spent in 2000 during the city’s first campaign for a strong mayor.

One council candidate has the largest single contribution received since the city went to district elections. The Realtors Quality of Life PAC spent more than $11,000 on a mailer for City Councilman Brad Stark, which is listed as an in-kind contribution to his campaign.

Another council candidate is trying to figure out why the reports he insists have been sent to the state Public Disclosure Commission have so far not been posted on the agency’s Web site.

“I honestly don’t get what’s going on,” said Councilman Bob Apple, who insists he has reported his recent campaign expenditures. “I don’t know why it’s not showing up.”

Candidates are required to report how much they’ve raised and spent at specific points during the campaign, including a week before the election. Reports filed by computer show up almost immediately; those sent by mail sometimes take a few days.

The latest reports show incumbent Mayor Dennis Hession has raised almost $297,000, which is almost three times as much as his challenger, Councilwoman Mary Verner, who has reported just under $105,000.

Although both campaign funds are in six figures, the candidates have had to borrow money to meet some expenses at key points in the campaign. Verner loaned her campaign $4,300 before filing for office and has yet to repay it from contributions.

Hession loaned the same amount to his campaign, and has three larger loans – two of $10,000 each and a third of $15,000. None of them has been repaid at this point.

Getting loans in the middle of a campaign, and paying them off later, is legal and not unusual for high-profile races that need cash at key points in their strategic plan. Most campaign advertising must be paid for at the time it is purchased rather than on credit.

Candidates who win often have an easy time retiring debt by holding post-election fund-raisers and sometimes collect money from donors of their opponents. Candidates who lose have a more difficult time paying off loans, and sometimes the unpaid balance becomes a contribution from the lender.

Hession’s loans include $15,000 from Steven B. Smith, an executive with a company that sites and builds cellular towers, $10,000 from Thomas Paine, an Avista executive who handles the utility’s legislative affairs, and $10,000 from Michael Ormsby, a local attorney.

Critics of the city’s involvement in the River Park Square mall renovation have been quick to point out that Ormsby was the attorney for the private foundation that sold some $31.4 million in bonds to purchase the garage from the development arm of Cowles Publishing Co., which publishes The Spokesman-Review. Revenues from the garage were never enough to cover all of the facilities costs and the bond payments, which resulted in investors filing a securities fraud case against the city, Cowles development companies, the foundation and others involved in the project, including Ormsby’s firm.

A federal investigation of the garage deal is under way by the U.S. Justice Department after U.S. Attorney Jim McDevitt, who is a former partner in the same firm as Ormsby, recused himself from the investigation.

Ormsby is also a longtime participant in local politics, which started with his election to the Spokane School Board in 1975, when he was 18. In an interview Thursday, he said he has been active in politics and contributing to local, state and national campaigns for more than 30 years.

The contributions to Hession have nothing to do with River Park Square, he said.

“My loan to Dennis stems out of an over-20-year friendship,” he said. “He had to make a media buy at a key point in the campaign.”

Ormsby said he and Hession never discussed River Park Square when the securities case was pending, and Hession was a member of the council that approved the settlement. He doesn’t think he has talked about it since the settlement, but if he did it would be “just in passing.”

Hession agreed that he’s never talked with Ormsby about River Park Square. “He’s a friend of mine, and he was willing to loan me money that will be repaid.”

The contribution to Stark from the Realtors’ political action committee was coordinated with the Stark campaign to carry a similar message, said Steve Taylor, the organization’s legislative director in Spokane. It paid for a full-page, color ad that was mailed to voters in South Spokane’s 2nd District.

Taylor said the state Realtors organization considers the campaign “a key race in terms of affordable housing issues” and also has supported Stark with a cash contribution.

Councilman Apple expressed frustration that campaign expenditure and contribution summaries that he says have been mailed by members of his staff are not showing up on the PDC Web site. He said he’s spent about $2,500 on television commercials, $2,500 for a mailer to voters in Northeast Spokane’s 1st District, and $2,000 on yard signs.

His treasurer is a volunteer without previous experience in reporting campaign expenses and is filling out PDC forms by hand and mailing them in rather than filing by computer. That’s allowed under state law for smaller campaigns. He said he’s had someone else double-check to make sure the forms were sent, and “I don’t think that the people that are doing this are lying.”

Lori Anderson, a spokeswoman for the PDC, said she’s at a loss to explain how, if the reports have been sent to the right location, they haven’t been scanned and posted on the Web site. It’s just a few steps from the mail room to the scanner, she said.

“We typically do not lose things,” Anderson said.