Six candidates vie to represent northwest Spokane in city’s most crowded race

The race to represent northwest Spokane is the most crowded local election this year.

Esteban Herevia, who until recently served as president and CEO of Spokane Pride; Christopher Savage, board president of Meals on Wheels Spokane; and Randy McGlenn II, former chair of the state Libertarian Party, were the first to announce their candidacy.

They were followed into the race by environmental advocate Kitty Klitzke; retired respiratory therapist Earl Moore; and Darren McCrea, who opened Eastern Washington’s first medical marijuana dispensary.

They’re all running for a seat in District 3 held by Councilwoman Karen Stratton, who will reach her term limit at the end of the year. District 3, which has two seats, is also represented by Councilman Zack Zappone, whose term is not up until 2025.

The district stretches north from the Spokane River and west of Division Street, and after redistricting in 2022 also includes Browne’s Addition. Growth has outstripped infrastructure improvements in some parts of the district, particularly in the North Indian Trail, Five Mile and West Central neighborhoods, according to the district’s incumbents.

Herevia

Esteban Herevia is hearing from voters that they don’t trust the City Council, and he wants to change that, though he’s light on details on what he’d do .

“For community members to feel like they’re not a part of the process, or to feel like decisions are being made on their behalf that don’t actually benefit them, that’s kind of big,” he said.

He relayed a story of a voter who’s concerned about increasing housing density, losing parking spaces and losing the character of their neighborhood. He’s heard from some in neighborhoods where denser development, including with apartments over commercial buildings, should be explored in a scalable way.

“I always try to listen first, to ensure that folks feel like their voices are represented,” he said. “Because at the end of the day, these systems are supposed to work on behalf of our community members.”

He’s concerned about the city’s budget, and wants the council to consider when it could be possible to send social workers or those with EMS training to respond to certain crises in order to relieve pressure on a strained police department.

He supported a recently approved contract with the police guild and wants to see staffing increased, but notes some in the community lack trust in the police.

“So how do we actually write the contract that allows for all of it to be accomplished?” he said. “I just have more questions about that, and I’m really excited to get the opportunity to jump in and tackle it.”

He’s concerned about a proposal to raise taxes to pay for higher compensation packages negotiated for a number of city unions, but does not have any concrete proposals for how he would address the city’s budgetary concerns.

“I don’t have access to the budget,” he said. “I wish I did. And I wish I understood that.”

When told that the city’s budget is publicly available online, Herevia said he was more interested in trying to understand the concerns of various shareholders and the reasoning behind the City Council’s decisions.

“I’m learning as much as possible and I want to make sure that I’m going in with as much openness as possible into the situation, while also making sure that I have a I have a good understanding of why decisions have been made,” he said.

He conceptually supports a regional approach to homelessness, but is concerned about the speed with which the organization is trying to get off the ground. He doesn’t believe the organization can be successful without a new mayor, saying he thinks Lisa Brown would be best equipped to navigate those negotiations.

Herevia remains committed to running for City Council, despite concerns raised by a former Whitworth University student who publicly accused him of fostering an inappropriate relationship with them while Herevia was employed at the school in a supervisory role .

Chandler Wheeler, who uses they/them pronouns, claims that Herevia abused his role as a mentor of a young student facing housing and financial insecurity after coming out as trans to their family, fostered an increasingly close relationship with inappropriate physical contact and told Wheeler to lie to others about their relationship.

While employed by the college, Herevia brought Wheeler to a downtown bar and bought them alcohol when he was 27 and they were 19. In an interview, Herevia admitted he purchased alcohol for Wheeler.

Herevia has denied he had any romantic intentions, but acknowledged he should not have purchased Wheeler alcohol or had them sleep on his couch. He recently released a statement addressing the accusations, though Wheeler has taken to social media to say Herevia continues to dodge accountability.

Klitzke

Kitty Klitzke is deeper in the weeds of public policy than most candidates for local office.

She will talk at length about the pros and cons of traffic circles versus traffic signals, about the history of the city’s approach to bike lanes and pedestrian safety, and the minutiae of land use.

Updating the city’s comprehensive plan, a sprawling document that shapes the trajectory of growth within the city by influencing land use and development regulations, would be one of her top priorities if elected, she said. It’s a complicated and critical process Klitzke feels particularly suited to tackle, she said, having served as the program outreach director for the Lands Council and worked on land-use issues for 15 years with Futurewise, a nonprofit focused on protecting farmland and natural resources.

Though she has little experience in elected office, Klitzke is no stranger to local government. She has served as chair of the city’s Community Assembly Pedestrian, Transportation and Traffic Committee, as well as a regional food policy council.

She led the Complete Streets Spokane group, which spearheaded a successful campaign to pass an ordinance by the same name that required bike and pedestrian infrastructure be included during street reconstruction. She also helped lead the 2016 “Yes for Buses” campaign for voter approval of funds for new Spokane Transit Authority buses and the City Line, which officially launches Monday.

People involved in politics tell Klitzke she’s campaigning on boring issues, she said, but with whom voters she’s spoken have been keen to talk about land-use and transportation issues. She’s heard numerous concerns about traffic safety and reckless driving, particularly farther north.

She wants to find ways to pool city revenues beyond the dedicated traffic calming fund to pay for infrastructure that could mitigate some of these safety concerns

She notes that dedicated traffic enforcement patrols have been disbanded to reallocate officers elsewhere, and to restore the city’s traffic enforcement unit. In part, she wants to address this by increasing staffing and by finding ways to use nonpolice resources, such as social workers, to respond to some calls.

She’s supportive of a community policing model, saying she believes there are often circumstances when a light touch could be as effective as arrests, but acknowledged increased staffing is needed to take some of the strain off existing officers before asking them to respond to such calls.

She supports a regional approach to homelessness, though she is skeptical of the governance structure currently being proposed, believing that more representation for service providers and small cities in order to have their buy-in.

“We have to balance getting everyone to the table to agree to it, getting all the jurisdictions to be willing to put their money in it,” she said. “I would also like to see the business community contribute to it.”

Klitzke is the best-funded progressive candidate in the race and has raised only slightly less than Earl Moore. She has received major support from Sharon Smith and Don Barbieri of the Smith-Barbieri Progressive Fund, the Spokane Firefighters Union PAC, and has also received donations from mayoral candidate Brown and the Washington state Democratic Central Committee.

McCrea

Darren McCrea has long been a major advocate for medical marijuana and launched SpoCannabis, the first medical marijuana dispensary in Eastern Washington. A former addict, he believes many of the city’s public safety and homelessness problems could be addressed upstream by treating addiction.

But by far the foremost issue of his campaign is climate change.

McCrea, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, has been issuing dire warnings about a changing climate and its consequences, pointing to cratering insect populations and arguing forests across the planet are on the verge of collapse. His observations on these issues have been incorporated in numerous articles, including in The Spokesman-Review and in Western Forester Magazine, and more can be found on his YouTube channel.

“It took us 20,000 years to elevate our levels of CO2 from 180 to 280 parts per million,” he said. “We started burning fossil fuels 260 years ago, and we increased CO2 levels by 50% in those 260 years.”

Unlike many politicians talking about climate change, McCrae doesn’t bring up the city’s incremental sustainability plans, electric vehicles or solar panels. Many of the worst consequences are already baked in, he says, and instead he focuses on mitigation and addressing particular issues.

His proposals are radical, arguing the city should manually fertilize its trees, arguing rising CO2 levels are causing them to grow faster than existing soil nutrients can sustain, and calls for plans to address coming catastrophe. He wants the city to invest in insect farms to supplement flagging populations, to subsidize area farmers to adopt sustainable practices, and prepare for future industrial collapse by purchasing horse-drawn tilling implements.

He doesn’t have all the answers, he says, and so he would put together a task force to come up with creative solutions.

Evidenced by the plentiful yard signs adorned with Dr. Seuss’ Lorax, several roadside billboards and banners, McCrea has been spending money in this election to get his name out. But two months after entering the race, he has not submitted legally required reports to the state Public Disclosure Commission identifying how much he has raised and from whom.

“What does that make a difference?” McCrea said in response. “I’ve voted for many years, and I’ve never looked to see where people are getting their money.”

He says that he would treat the legal requirements of the city differently, arguing he is the only one that could be negatively affected by failing to file his campaign reports.

McGlenn

Randy McGlenn II, former chair of the state Libertarian Party, was the first to announce his candidacy to represent northwest Spokane.

Along with Christopher Savage, McGlenn is one of two candidates for the district who has previously run for public office, having made three unsuccessful runs for state legislature against Rep. Marcus Riccelli, D-Spokane.

But in his first run for city office, McGlenn says he want put party politics aside, and said he was inspired to run for council after witnessing the contentious fight between state and city leaders over Camp Hope.

“Voters are looking for someone to be on city council that wants to work with everyone and doesn’t continue the politics as usual, and really works to, even though this is a nonpartisan race, reach across the aisle, so to speak,” he said.

He supports a regional approach to homelessness, though he acknowledges he’s not familiar with the details currently proposed. He is concerned about how the budgeting process would work, though believes it is too soon to know.

“We know government always throws something at an issue and then ends up retooling it as they go, so I think that everything will always be kind of a work in progress,” he said.

He’s concerned about the city’s budget, and says he wants to look at the City Council office for cuts, specifically pointing towards the policy adviser position filled by Christopher Wright.

“Looking back 10 years, City Council budget has ballooned quite a bit,” he said. “I would really like to challenge the thought behind why that was necessary and especially in such a short period of time.”

He wants to look at reorganizing city staff to increase efficiency, as well as streamlining the permitting process to speed up development and bring in more tax revenue for the city, though these are largely the purview of the mayoral administration.

He believes the city relies too heavily on utility fees and other regressive revenue streams that disproportionately burden lower-income households, and would want to explore exemptions that could lighten that load.

Though McGlenn was born in Tacoma, he was 3 months old when his family moved to Spokane. He joined the U.S. Army in 1994, working for four years the “paper pusher arm” of the institution processing assignments and promotions. He went back to school in 2000 to pursue an education in technology, and has worked various positions since graduation in tech, including programming, networking and business technology solutions.

Moore

In campaign literature, and occasionally in City Hall, Earl Moore calls the current City Council majority divisive and unwilling to support the Spokane Police Department or cooperate with the mayor.

In early May, she led dozens of supporters of police Chief Craig Meidl that packed a meeting when the City Council was considering a nonbinding resolution to investigate his communications with local business owners.

But Moore has said in interviews she has no “bones to pick with anybody,” on the council, arguing the city has made good strides on public safety and homelessness.

If elected to City Council, Moore says she would take direction from her constituents and the experts. If her constituents disagree with each other, or with the experts, she says she would take the path she believes best benefits the city.

She is glad to see the City Council approved a contract with the police guild. She wants to better support the police but says she isn’t familiar with the rules and regulations enough to know what she would do differently, beyond vocal support .

She wants to support a burgeoning regional coalition to address homelessness and argues the city needs both accountability and compassion when dealing with those living on the street but does not know how she would address those issues. Ditto on the city’s housing crisis, which voters have told her has become a growing strain on their lives.

“But those are things that I will learn when I sit on City Council,” she said. “I don’t have big plans and big ideas where I’m going to step into the City Council and change the city – that’s not my job.”

“I don’t claim to know all of the answers,” she added. “But my goodness, I will work so hard to find them.”

While new to elections, Moore is not new to advocacy. She was long involved with the Respiratory Care Society of Washington, eventually serving as president of the eastern chapter, then state vice president and finally state president. She said she helped successfully lobby in Olympia for smoking to be banned in airplanes, restaurants, bars and other enclosed locations. Later, with the American Association for Respiratory Care, she lobbied in Washington, D.C., for numerous health issues, such as affordable oxygen for people in home health care.

Like a number of other candidates in races across the city, Moore calls herself nonpartisan in campaign signs and flyers, though she is a Republican precinct committee officer and lead’s the race’s fundraising due primarily to support from Republican politicians and right-leaning business interests.

Savage

Since he announced his candidacy to run for office, Christopher Savage has had a better in-person attendance record at City Council meetings than some at the dais.

Savage has been a ubiquitous presence at the council’s legislative meetings and can occasionally be seen at briefing and study sessions that typically draw few other than city staff.

“I think that is paramount to try and figure out the solutions here, because that’s the only way that we’re going to figure it out, is if you have the data so that you can actually make the solution,” he said.

Savage is one of the only candidates for the district who talks at length about significant policy issues that can be arcane to many voters, such as the Growth Management Act and the city’s comprehensive plan. He wants to work on reforming the GMA, which he believes overly limits development and hampers the city’s ability to address the housing crisis.

“We need to increase the artificial ring around Spokane that has been imposed on us by the Growth Management Act to help control urban sprawl,” he said.

While he’s wary of sprawl, Savage also doesn’t believe current incentives are enough to encourage infill development within the city’s urban core, though he also favors bolstering those incentives.

Savage says he’s heard from voters afraid to come downtown due to safety issues, and wants to see better staffing for the police department. While he’s averse to new taxes, he supports putting a levy on the November ballot in order to pay for recently approved raises and hiring incentives for the department.

“We need to go above and beyond because of what the culture is like and how the police are perceived,” he said. “And we need to change that perception, because right now there is just not enough incentive for some of the younger people to even start thinking about a career like that.”

Savage places blame on the council for contributing to a negative perception of local police, saying he would work to improve morale. He wants to strip some power of the Office of the Police Ombudsman, potentially by replacing some of its authority with an independent Inspector General, which Councilman Michael Cathcart recently pitched.

Savage believes some of the city’s budgetary concerns could be addressed with cuts, and he would look first to cut positions in the council’s office.

He supports efforts to create a regional coalition on homelessness. He questions if Spokane can mirror the Houston model due to more restrictive development regulations.

A former Lyft driver, Savage works at Project Beauty Share, a nonprofit that provides hygiene and beauty products to disadvantaged women and families. He serves as the community assembly representative for the Balboa/South Indian Trail Neighborhood Council.