Former Spokane Councilman Jonathan Bingle running for state House seat

Just a few months after losing his bid for re-election to the Spokane City Council, Republican Jonathan Bingle has set his sights on state office, announcing a run Monday for a state House seat being vacated by Rep. Jenny Graham, R-Spokane.

“Washington is at a crossroads,” Bingle wrote in a news release. “Families are struggling to make ends meet, neighbors don’t feel as safe as they should in our community, and too many decisions are being made far away from the people who feel the consequences every day.”

Bingle expected to take more time away from politics before jumping back in, he said in a brief conversation Monday, but the news that both seats in the 6th Legislative District would be open made it clear that now was the time.

Rep. Mike Volz, R-Spokane, who has been serving double-duty as county treasurer for the past 12 months, announced last year that he would not run for re-election to the legislature in 2026, intending to focus full time on the treasurer’s office. With Graham’s announcement, both of the district’s seats are wide open.

Graham, a four-term state representative, announced over the weekend that she did not plan to seek re-election, opening her seat for the first time in eight years. Graham’s announcement was met by an outpouring of praise for her tenure from area Republicans, including Bingle in his Monday announcement.

“Jenny Graham has faithfully served the people of the 6th District with conviction and courage,” Bingle wrote in a news release. “She has been a strong advocate for our region and a consistent voice for her values.”

The 6th Legislative District includes a swath of Bingle’s old council district, Airway Heights, Medical Lake, Fairchild Airforce base and a sizable chunk of unincorporated Spokane County.

Though Bingle has often pointed COVID-era restrictions on his events business as inspiring his political involvement, he first ran for election in 2019, losing a bid for Spokane mayor in a contest ultimately won by Nadine Woodward. Two years later, he ran to represent northeast Spokane on the City Council, defeating progressive activist Naghmana Sherazi by 13 points.

Once in office, the Christian conservative quickly earned a reputation for combating with the council’s progressive supermajority, which censured him less than a month into his term for refusing to comply with the city’s mask mandate. Though rarely able to form a majority vote for his policies, Bingle was part of successful efforts to get the council to criminalize open drug use, make it an arrestable offense to be in city parks after hours, and to toughen the city’s homelessness laws.

Bingle also courted controversy last year during a fight to approve a number of protections for the LGBT+ community, including guaranteeing that city health insurance plans would cover “gender-affirming care” for city employees. Bingle opposed the ordinance and proposed an amendment to restrict trans people from entering the bathrooms of their choice, from women’s sports and from accessing gender-affirming treatments if they were under the age of 18, among other restrictions.

He crossed the aisle several times to support lowering regulatory barriers for development, including eliminating requirements for developers to build parking for new housing located near transit, eliminating height restrictions on new buildings downtown and fighting with mixed results to keep development fees low.

During his third year in office, Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers surprised the region by announcing she would not run for re-election, inspiring a wave of regional Republicans to run for her seat. Bingle was among the crowded field but got blown out in the primary, earning around 4% of the vote.

Running for re-election last year, Bingle entered election night in November with a tight lead that evaporated in the following days. By the time all the votes were counted, he had lost his re-election bid to reproductive rights organizer Sarah Dixit by a little more than one percentage point.

Despite the election loss, Bingle had quietly signaled he would likely run for office again, renaming his council Facebook page to “Jonathan Bingle – Political,” where he has railed against tax proposals and other policies coming from the Democrat-controlled state legislature.