Sue Lani Madsen: Grass-roots politics don’t pause for off-election years
The setting was a hotel conference room. A chair with a numbered helium balloon indicated the hot seat as men and women moved from table to table seeking a potential match.
No, not speed dating. It was the Ponderosa Republican Women’s Club’s annual Filing Fling luncheon, where candidates rotate and make their case in four minutes or less.
This is grass-roots politics. Politics is a team sport, and the players are those who stay engaged even in the odd-numbered years of nonpartisan races. Independent voters too often sit on the sidelines and wait to be wooed.
A Democratic edition of a candidate forum is planned for Tuesday, providing column material for next weekend. There will be many, many more opportunities before primary ballots are out in August.
Within Spokane County, 107 candidates filed for races. This event focused on City Council races for Spokane Valley and Spokane.
Four candidates were present for three seats on the Spokane City Council – Tim Benn, Tony Kiepe, Matthew Howes and Brian Burrow. Their common theme was streets and public safety as top priorities for government.
“Look at our needs and not our wants,” said Kiepe. When asked what one thing he was hearing most frequently from residents as he campaigned, Burrow said, “Fix our potholes.”
Howes shared those priorities, plus a concern with billboards along Spokane’s arterials, questioning why the marijuana industry isn’t held to the same advertising standards as liquor and cigarettes.
Benn is running for an open seat. His neighborhood has a large concentration of businesses and buildable industrial land that needs efficient and well-maintained arterial routes, not traffic calming, said Benn. What he hears from future constituents is traffic equals jobs equals economic prosperity for the community.
Eight candidates for the Spokane Valley council attended, although one candidate sent a surrogate. One of the women at my table noticed a majority of the incumbents had been appointed, but none of us knew why there had been such high turnover. I’m unfamiliar with the background of Spokane Valley politics and just listened.
All eight candidates repeated the focus on smooth streets and public safety. Here’s what else I heard emphasized by each candidate:
Mike Munch is concerned about monitoring spending for transportation and better emergency preparedness planning, following lessons learned after the last windstorm.
Ben Wick raised thoughtful questions about the need to balance the rural feel of Spokane Valley with urban development driven by high-density housing projects.
Ron Higgins promoted the move-in-ready sites at the expanded Spokane Industrial Park as the largest industrial park between Minneapolis and Seattle.
Jill Collier stepped in to represent her husband Caleb Collier, who was at work. She described her husband’s passion for public service, demonstrated by his actions following the utility tax vote. He received hundreds of emails, and she watched him spend hours in the evenings making sure he’d responded to every one of them to explain his thoughts.
Pam Haley expressed her frustration at trying to recruit more police officers for Spokane Valley when the county, which provides contracted services, pays less than the city of Spokane. Spokane Valley can’t offer a unionized workforce a raise unless they ask for one first. She said there have been discussions about signing bonuses to get around the union barrier.
Al Merkel also pointed to Spokane Valley’s reliance on contracted services. He had ideas from his day job as a contracts and procurement officer for the Department of Veterans Affairs on how to improve contracting oversight.
Ed Pace pointed to the new City Hall as careful stewardship. The debt service payments are less than what the city was paying in rent, and they will be fixed for the term of the loan.
Rocky Sampson is a relative newcomer from Detroit who got involved for the most traditional of reasons: He complained to City Hall and then decided to jump in himself.
The decisions that affect us most directly are the decisions made locally. Not everyone can be a candidate, but everyone can pay attention. I’ve interviewed dozens of local candidates and never met one who didn’t honestly want to serve the community. Get to know your candidates.