Spokane County Democrats delayed investigation into heated June exchange between Legislative candidate and party chair

Months after leadership of the Spokane County Democrats said it would imminently release an investigation into a heated exchange between Natasha Hill, a candidate for state House, and county party chair Naida Spencer, the party has clarified that it will not do so before the November election, if at all.

Hill and Spencer were involved in a nearly hourlong row in front of the county party’s booth at the June 7 Spokane Pride Festival. At the time, Hill was still competing with former City Council President Ben Stuckart to be the top Democrat in the general election; Hill, the former interim editor of the Black Lens, defeated Stuckart by 270 votes and will face off with Republican Tony Kiepe in November.

(The Black Lens receives some volunteer production assistance from current and former members of The Spokesman-Review newsroom but is independent from the paper.)

Some who witnessed the incident said Hill had been hostile at the event, yelling disparaging remarks about Stuckart in front of the party booth and accusing Spencer of racism for attempting to stop her.

Hill and her supporters claimed the candidates was only attempting to campaign and draw factual distinctions between herself and Stuckart, and that Spencer had inappropriately escalated by threatening to call security.

At that point, the county party had endorsed both Hill and Stuckart.

Spencer declined to provide an account of the incident at the time, citing an independent investigation that she said would be completed before the end of June. Christin Crowder, second vice chair of the county party, later stated that the investigation may take longer than initially expected.

The Spokesman-Review attempted for months to clarify the status of the investigation and initially did not receive a response. Hill said in a September interview she was not aware of any investigation taking place.

Party leadership did attempt to respond to The Spokesman-Review in late September, but texted a phone number that does not receive texts.

On Friday, party Vice Chair Patrick Miller said that Hill and Spencer had initially agreed to delay the investigation until after the primary election.

“Yes, people need to be informed,” Miller said when asked if it was appropriate to withhold the report until after the election. “We did feel there was already coverage of the event, but also having multiple endorsed candidates in the race, we didn’t want to present bias into the race.

“We did not want to interfere with that election,” Miller added when asked to clarify.

After Hill won the primary in August, Hill and Spencer again agreed “to not finalize anything” until after the general election, Miller said.

Witness statements were collected in the weeks following the June event, but four months later the party has not formed a “grievance committee” to review those statements and make a determination, Miller added. He said that early statements offering a timeline to resolve the investigation were “made with a sense of optimism about how easy and straightforward a process it would be.”

Miller declined to commit to an investigation report being released.

“We are committed to resolving it,” he said. “That may be either through mediation or through a formal investigation or a public statement, though we are looking at mediation routes as well.”