Woodward’s hollow ring

For many voters, Nadine Woodard’s candidacy for mayor has a hollow ring to it. The roots of her campaign are sort of a mystery.

She has no civic, political, managerial or leadership experience — but she wants a big job that requires all those skills. Her campaign is practically a one-dimensional focus on homelessness where she promotes enforced ultimatums — a shallow understanding of the problem that will punish more than it will help. Most notably, her candidacy is supported massively by Big Money interests — really big.

On the flip side, she’s a pleasant person, a familiar local personality, and a capable speaker.

Makes you wonder if Woodward was recruited by big money to sell an agenda — as a good mouthpiece that Spokane voters would be comfortable with. Because, if she was always serious about homelessness, why didn’t she give the issue some special attention as a broadcaster? If she felt compelled to work on solving the problem after retirement from broadcasting, why not get involved at the grassroots level instead of trying to vault into the mayor’s office? And, speaking of big leaps, what gave her the confidence that she’d have the campaign machine and big dollars necessary for a long hard election battle — with no political history, no constituent base, starting from scratch?

Seems like somebody was giving her a lot of assurances.

At bottom her candidacy just doesn’t feel genuine. Instead it feels sort of artificial, scripted, bought and paid for.

Steve McNutt

Spokane