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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Tilting at windmills: How a developer’s emails became the bullhorn of Spokane’s anti-progressive politics

By Emry Dinman and Alexandra Duggan The Spokesman-Review

When a woman walking to work at River Park Square this winter was dragged into an alley behind P.F. Chang’s and mugged, Spokane developer and commercial property owner Sheldon Jackson and like-minded business owners pointed to the incident as further proof of the city’s decay.

“This is why this email is so critical,” Jackson wrote to more than 400 people, including politicians, city officials, anti-progressive activists and businesspeople.

The incident added to Jackson’s vision of the city: that the “Progressive in Spokane” and “Pro criminal activists” are “ruining our city.” “Compassion” and harm reduction policies – meant to reduce overdose or disease without forcing drug users into treatment or jail – are killing people on Spokane’s streets, and incidents like the mugging were proof that the city needed to pivot to incarceration and forced rehabilitation.

Except there was no mugging. It was another faulty game of telephone, a misremembered and embellished story passed along seemingly because it proved what people already believed.

In the last year, following conservatives’ loss in 2023 of significant political power in Spokane, Jackson has become perhaps the loudest anti-progressive voice in Spokane politics, though most of the public won’t hear from him directly.

He hasn’t gained and used his influence with big ad buys or election spending like businessman Larry Stone, who has spent hundreds of thousands to attack progressives and support their opponents over the years. Jackson doesn’t testify at meetings or organize protests. Instead, he rallies people almost entirely by email.

Jackson repeatedly declined to be interviewed by The Spokesman-Review, and at one point told readers of his email not to speak to reporters without his permission.

There are many formal organizations representing the Spokane business community that, like Jackson, have highlighted crime and urban decay in the city and called on elected leadership to enact tougher policies, particularly after the hardship of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A 2021 Downtown Spokane Partnership survey of the organization’s ratepayers and newsletter subscribers highlighted homelessness and public safety as the dominant issues downtown. Overwhelming voter approval of an anti-homeless camping law in 2023 and a 2024 Greater Spokane Incorporated survey of area residents suggest those frustrations are widespread.

The Spokane County Medical Examiner’s Office recorded at least 327 people who died of overdose in Spokane County last year, a more than 300% increase from 2019. There were 160 overdose patients treated by the Spokane Fire Department in February alone, according to city data.

Downtown business vacancy has climbed to a high of 28%, and some experts have pointed to visible homelessness and perceptions of crime as contributing factors.

But Jackson’s not-quite-a-newsletter, with avid readers including politicians and prominent business owners, is distinct from other local organizations for its lax fact-checking and scathing, off-the-cuff rhetoric.

The lack of a filter in what has essentially become semi-private social media is exactly why Jackson’s email has become such an essential political hub, supporters say.

“What Sheldon does with his email is, it takes away all the corporate, ‘Oh, I got to be careful about how I offend person this, or who represented that,’ ” said Aaron Rivkin, owner of Ladder Coffee and critic of the city’s law enforcement policies. “So if anything, this is way more helpful, because it creates public discourse that shows people the truth behind what’s happening in a way that does not have to be sugarcoated or corporatized to match someone’s HR policies.”

Detractors believe Jackson has made civil discourse less civil and more uncompromising, painting the progressives in power as fundamentally “murderous” and “idiots” with anecdotes that don’t always hold up to scrutiny.

Much of the crime that Jackson and his readers describe is unquestionably real.

Some of the most dramatic claims, however, have been blatantly false.

‘Gossip versus real information’

In January, Jackson parroted a claim from local law firm Dunn and Black that a woman had been dragged into an alley downtown and mugged.

The only part of this story that appears to be true, however, is that an employee at the law firm heard a rumor from an employee of a nearby bank, that story was repeated to the rest of the firm’s staff in a memo, and partner John Black personally forwarded that memo to Jackson, who then forwarded it to his hundreds of readers.

At first, when Jackson realized he had been fed bad information, he apologized profusely and angrily, accusing others of using him to amplify anecdotes of crime and disorder and letting him take the fall if the report was flawed or untrue.

He repeatedly threatened to fold the email altogether.

“If you are passing on gossip versus real information, then you are putting everyone’s credibility at risk,” Jackson said.

One of Jackson’s readers quickly suggested the rumor had been spread based on an incident that had actually occurred in May and argued the claim of a mugging was still true.

The closest thing the Spokane Police Department could find resembling that allegation was a May 22 report from a woman who claimed to have been approached by a homeless woman who tried to hug her, and when she tried to push the homeless woman away, she received a “minor scratch.”

Police contacted the complainant and took a report, police spokesperson Dan Strassenberg said.

The law firm’s memo also told their employees the Spokane Ambassadors, the Downtown Spokane Partnership’s security and hospitality team, were “highly suggesting” that people working downtown should have a buddy system and carry pepper spray.

But Downtown Spokane Partnership CEO Emilie Cameron immediately wrote to Jackson’s readers denying that claim.

Within a couple of weeks, Jackson returned defiantly with a statement from Black.

Black, in his letter to Jackson, did not apologize for spreading unverified information. Instead, he called the “personal attacks” on Jackson, the law firm and the employee who wrote the erroneous memo “unacceptable,” noting the “downtown business core is riddled with homeless …”

“The focus on one event ignores the reality that these incidents occur almost daily,” Black wrote. “Focusing on one event, whether the specific incident did or did not happen, should not be used as an excuse to deny that a real problem exists and must be addressed.”

Jackson appeared to take this response as a triumph and dared anyone to go after Dunn and Black for sharing misleading information.

“Here you go Progressive Trifecta and media. Please kick the hornet’s nest and while you are at it you can kiss my … ” Jackson wrote. “Thank you, John Black for stating what we all see every day. No wonder you sent me the information; it might have been wrong but not far from what we deal with every single day.”

More often, when Jackson’s email is used to spread misinformation, it isn’t corrected.

Rivkin is a self-described former addict who named his business Ladder Coffee to symbolize climbing up from a low place in life. He has argued that only jail could make him get his life back together, and those sleeping or using on the streets need the same treatment.

When Rivkin was first trying to start his own business, he met Jackson, who heard Rivkin’s story of getting back on his feet and decided to loan him the money to start his first Ladder location in one of Jackson’s properties.

Since Mayor Lisa Brown took office, Rivkin has increasingly accused the city of not responding to crime at his business and of refusing to hold criminals accountable.

On Jan. 5, Rivkin claimed a group of men, passing by one of his coffee shops the day before, had pointed a gun at nearby pedestrians who then sought refuge inside the café.

“We immediately called for law enforcement, but shockingly, there was no response,” Rivkin wrote in a statement that was spread widely on social media and on Jackson’s email chain. “It’s deeply troubling that an incident of this severity didn’t prompt an immediate reaction.”

Rivkin used the incident to scold progressive council members.

“Knowing that my representative in my district doesn’t want to enforce the law I called the nearest city council member,” he added, saying conservative Councilman Jonathan Bingle responded immediately.

Jackson said the incident was “so screwed up that everyone involved should be fired, starting at the TOP.”

But Rivkin’s depiction of events barely resembles the police report. He did not attempt to verify his story before spreading it online and in Jackson’s email.

In reality, police responded within minutes, with seven officers confronting the suspect in the case.

According to the report, a group including the suspect confronted another group over a stolen bike and both brandished weapons, at least one of which was a realistic BB gun. There is no indication in the report that a couple was confronted and sought refuge in Rivkin’s shop.

In an interview, Rivkin said he was informed weeks later that police had, in fact, promptly responded, but that he “didn’t feel like I needed to” correct the story.

Instead, he blamed the police for not contacting him before he spread the misleading anecdote.

Immediately after the interview, Rivkin took to Jackson’s email to correct his prior story, though he now claims that the suspect had an outstanding warrant and was released by police anyway, justifying his frustration with the incident. The police report made no mention of a warrant and states the suspect was released because he appeared to be acting in self-defense. Court records show the suspect had already served a sentence for two prior crimes and did not have a warrant at the time of the incident.

Rivkin’s story was amplified by Christine Quinn, who has credited Jackson with inspiring her to create the law-and-order activist group Save Our Spokane.

As East Spokane Business Association Vice President Wendy Fishburne put it in a recent reply to Jackson’s email group: “Sheldon makes things loud, and (Save Our Spokane) makes things actionable.”

Quinn’s group has held signs outside city hall demanding that police begin to enforce Prop 1, a voter-approved anti-homeless camping law – several months after enforcement of that law had already begun.

Enforcement of various homelessness laws have, in fact, increased dramatically in the last year – driven primarily by a U.S. Supreme Court decision ending restrictions that had hobbled the attempted crackdowns by former Mayor Nadine Woodward, though a noticeable uptick preceded that decision. Jackson has argued that this is meaningless and demeaned citation-based enforcement of homelessness, though, notably, Prop 1 is a cite-and-release misdemeanor offense.

Bingle, who broadly praised Jackson’s email chain for getting people politically engaged, said he is concerned when unfounded accusations are thrown out by Jackson and his readers, particularly when they claim police did not respond to an incident. But he also argued mistakes are inevitable in this kind of informal setting, that Jackson tries to vet his claims and, ultimately, his advocacy is a force for good in the city.

“The Ladder (Coffee) one specifically, it’s not what it’s being made out to be,” Bingle said. “In those moments, I do find that problematic.

“But again, I would say that Sheldon is very good about vetting it. He’s not a liar,” Bingle added. “If he gets something wrong, he’s big enough to come along and say we got this wrong.”

Immediately after The Spokesman-Review interviewed Bingle, Jackson told his readers he was “pulling all requests to stay silent,” saying they should instead deliberately feed The Spokesman-Review disinformation.

“I only ask one thing, throw in some curve balls,” Jackson said. “Make up whatever you want. At least we apologize when we’re wrong.”

Becoming a bullhorn

Growing up in a rural coastal town near Aberdeen, Washington, Jackson watched his mother, grandfather and uncles die from their addictions, he told the Union Gospel Mission in a 2021 profile. “Enabling” had killed his relatives, he told the Christian homeless service provider.

He moved to Spokane in the ’90s, attracted by the city’s schools, he wrote in a recent email. He formed Selkirk Development in 2007, which had one of its first major projects building the nearly 15,000- square-foot Walgreens on the South Hill’s Grand Boulevard. Today, he has full or partial ownership of properties downtown and spanning the Spokane River, including a site next to the Podium where Selkirk is planning the ambitious Papillon Towers Development, a $109 million mixed-use high rise.

The visibility of homelessness and public drug use has negatively affected Jackson’s tenants and made it more difficult to find new ones, he often writes in his emails. After a recent stabbing downtown left one person with life-threatening injuries, Jackson mockingly wrote that “Drug addicts are not violent criminals, per Progressives” and said the incident had been a “nice added touch” while he tried to show a property.

He’s not the only prominent developer or business owner to argue crime and city leadership has hurt their investments. He may not have come to the same prominence if he wasn’t filling a vacuum once occupied by Chud Wendle, of the Wendle Motors family, and political staffer for former U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers. Today, Wendle serves as executive director of the Hutton Settlement, a foster care alternative funded in large part by a commercial property portfolio.

Hutton Settlement’s property management fees increased sharply in 2018 as they hired private security to “mitigate some of the challenges we’re facing from the transient population,” Wendle said in an interview.

Wendle already was well known as a critic of city government for their handling of homelessness and crime. But when businesses were hit hard during the pandemic, Wendle banded with other property owners, including Jackson, forming the Spokane Business and Commercial Property Council in 2021 to lobby on their behalf.

Jackson began to take long drives around downtown on behalf of the group, detailing what someone considering hosting a convention or starting a business would see. The “Morning Camping Update” included a list of locations and often crude descriptions of the people and conditions he saw there, frequently adding jabs at the city policy or service providers he blamed. Aside from a few hiatuses, this daily report has continued to this day; former City Administrator Johnnie Perkins, who served under Woodward, picked up Jackson’s route at least once, and in recent weeks Gates Security has volunteered to conduct the reports.

Then, in 2023, Wendle was “canceled,” he recently said at a meeting of Save Our Spokane.

Then-police Chief Craig Meidl was accused of giving Wendle and his group special access to police records that they then leaked for use as political ammo against those in office. Jackson also reportedly received access, but it was Wendle and Meidl who became the face of the controversy.

Wendle said the fallout from the controversy put him under immense pressure and led to a death threat. It also hurt the family auto dealership, noted Chud Richard “Dick” Wendle, who joined his son for the interview.

And when the Hutton Settlement board told the younger Wendle to step back from politics, he did, he told Save Our Spokane members.

That’s when Jackson stepped up.

Tilting at windmills

Jackson’s approach to coalition-building has been decidedly more ad hoc. His emails appear to have evolved from those early daily reports on homelessness, which he initially sent to select city council members and staff but are now sent out to every elected leader in the city and hundreds of other people.

It isn’t a newsletter or a tidy listserv that someone can click to subscribe or unsubscribe. Instead, Jackson has simply added new names over the years to an increasingly unruly “To:” line. One joked he was getting carpal tunnel trying to reach the body of Jackson’s daily emails.

Today his dispatches reach more than 400 people, including dozens of politically active business and property owners, politicians and activists. Sheriff John Nowels and Bingle regularly respond, hoping to focus Jackson’s readership on laws or policies they oppose. Spokane Chiefs and Spokane Indians owner Bobby Brett, Rencorp Realty owner Chris Batten, NAI Black owner David Black and many other prominent businesspeople read admiringly and often add their own commentary.

And though his attacks are mostly directed at progressives, not all of Jackson’s supporters consider themselves conservative. Gavin Cooley, the executive director of the conservative Spokane Business Association who backed Brown’s campaign for mayor and who’s described himself as politically left-leaning, criticized Jackson’s “misinformed” attacks on local service provider Compassionate Addiction Treatment – which Jackson has attacked for years as attracting lawlessness – but ultimately thought he was filling a “vital role.”

“It’s a two-edged sword having a forum like that that isn’t fact-checked, and you do get inaccuracies, but I do think the vast majority is true and blunt, and that bluntness might be essential,” said Cooley, who also advocates for involuntary treatment or jail for the chronically homeless.

Jackson has denied being conservative and has begun praising Democratic Gov. Bob Ferguson, who has won positive reviews from some Republicans in the Legislature for backing more funding for police and for his reluctance to raise taxes.

Jackson’s email has focused his readers’ frustration with homelessness and addiction toward specific policies they believe make those tragedies more common. Supporters have mixed reviews on how much this advocacy has changed policy, however.

Some believe the pressure he and readers put on the Spokane City Council forced council members to back down from the “homeless bill of rights,” a proposed ordinance that would have made it illegal to not hire or rent to someone because they are homeless, though others have independently taken credit for the same. A pared-back version of that law is expected to soon come back for City Council consideration.

Most recently, Jackson and his readers have turned their attention to proposals like a bill introduced in the Legislature, which was sponsored by two Democratic lawmakers from Spokane, Reps. Natasha Hill and Timm Ormsby. The bill would allow the homeless to sue cities that prevent them from sleeping on public property if the law is not “objectively reasonable,” which is not defined.

Jackson, who often expresses frustration that his readers do not do enough, wrote that “all my efforts to get you to sign up” to testify against 1380 “is not working,” and asked those reading who “don’t respect the work we are doing” to request to be dropped from the email. He called out specific organizations and every Spokane City Council member by name in a bid to pressure their testimony.

“NOW FOR THE REST OF YOU,” Jackson concluded his email. “We will have a list at the end of the day. If you do not have 30 seconds to protect yourself, why should we?” Jackson did not himself sign up to testify or register his opposition to the law in either legislative committee where it had appeared by that point. The bill has since apparently died for lack of support, which Jackson claimed was the result of the advocacy of his readers.

Bingle suggested elected leaders might be surprised by what they could accomplish by engaging with Jackson.

“If more elected officials engaged with him, maybe there’s some common ground they can find,” he said. “Because I really think that’s what Sheldon is looking for, that common ground.”

City Councilman Paul Dillon, who rode alongside Jackson for one of his daily homelessness reports, said the developer is significantly more affable in person and the two were able to discuss some of that common ground.

But behind a keyboard, Jackson transforms from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde, Dillon added.

“In a time where you constantly have to fight for the truth, to see these tactics, this misinformation, it can be really frustrating,” Dillon said. “Oftentimes the sense I get is, even if there might be something we agree on or there is support for an idea or some sensible solution, they would much rather see a progressive fail than see the city succeed.”

Not every businessman in the city agrees with Jackson’s message or finds his tactics helpful.

In the heart of downtown sits the upscale restaurant Cochinito Taqueria, and its owner, Travis Dickinson, described a city that is facing real but notably less apocalyptic problems than Jackson depicts.

“Every good city needs a downtown, and all of the problems we have aren’t native to Spokane. It’s a bigger city problem that other cities also face,” Dickinson said. “I want people to come downtown. I want people to make a day of it.”

Some guests have told Dickinson they don’t feel like coming downtown anymore, and while real conditions are contributing to this, so too is the dire rhetoric of people like Jackson, Dickinson said. And that narrative could be helping to push people to the outskirts, rather than spending their money on local businesses that need their dollars, he argued.

There are real problems, Dickinson said, but it’s not often his business needs to call police – a recent act of vandalism was the first in around six years. If police or fire are called, “the response time has been great,” he added.

Jackson and his supporters, like Rivkin, disagree.

“If you call 911, you will need to wait 1 hour 45 minutes for anyone to show up…” Jackson wrote on Sept. 7. “… Or be like Ladder Coffee who is still waiting for someone to show up after 4 weeks for an active robbery.”

Jackson has accused police and fire of wrongdoing, calling the police chief and some officers “minions” of progressive leaders, and insinuated the firefighter union supports progressive politicians to ensure job security because homeless people start fires or overdose under their watch.

Jackson and his allies regularly complain the recent surge in citations for the homeless are meaningless, arguing they need to be kept in jail or forced into treatment. After Officer Jackson Henry told The Spokesman-Review that police couldn’t “kidnap” people by arresting them without probable cause, Jackson repeatedly called for him to be suspended.

Spokane police Guild President Dave Dunkin called Jackson’s comments “reprehensible.”

“Officer Henry is a great officer. This is the guy you want to be a police officer. To take him out of context … It’s disappointing,” Dunkin said. “I don’t know what people think they’re going to accomplish by attacking officers for doing a job they are trained to do. Officer Henry isn’t out there ignoring his direction. He is doing what the community asked of him.”

Police are not to blame for staffing levels and how that may affect day-to-day operations, Dunkin argued. Using individual officers as “pawns” in political arguments, he said, “doesn’t encourage officers to get into this line of work.”

“This state has underfunded and understaffed law enforcement, and yet, it’s Jackson Henry’s fault. Explain how that makes any sense,” Dunkin said. “When (comments) like that continue … It doesn’t make things easier for us.”

Jackson’s heated rhetoric is regularly directed at anyone he thinks supports “drug addicts and criminals.” He has called leaders of the city and state the “evil Grinch” that want to steal Spokane, writing that they should be recalled, sued and charged with manslaughter.

Recently, after The Spokesman-Review published a letter to the editor that expressed support for creating legal places for graffiti to discourage illegal tagging, Jackson attacked the person who wrote it as not owning “anything of value” and being someone who “lives in their parent’s basement.” The writer was a high school student submitting the letter as a class assignment.

Jackson’s readers often seem emboldened to respond with the same level of vitriol. A former Rogers High School teacher emailed Dillon and other council members to say she hopes he, the mayor and the rest of the council get fentanyl in their stockings for Christmas.

“I’ve certainly felt the outrage machine come for me,” Dillon said. “I think it was around the holidays when I started getting these messages about how I was dangerous to children.”

Some officials, even some who will quietly criticize Jackson’s rhetoric and attacks, have taken to Jackson’s audience as a way to spread a similar message, if less aggressively. Nowels and Spokane County Chief Deputy Prosecutor Preston McCollam recently rallied Save Our Spokane members against several proposed state laws.

In an interview, Nowels said he understands the frustration being voiced in Jackson’s email threads and is glad to see people energized and trying to take action. He also noted he sometimes engages to set the record straight, particularly when law enforcement is attacked.

“That’s why I read them and respond from time to time, because if I have the information, it’s important to correct it,” Nowels said. “Councilman Dillon, to his credit, does set some things straight. I get why the (police) Chief doesn’t want to engage, but (he) should. These people will respond to open communication … Sometimes it’s more important to have that with people who don’t like you.”

Dillon thinks Jackson just wants to fight.

Five days before Christmas, Jackson wrote that a friend had recently compared him to Don Quixote, the titular character of Miguel de Cervantes’ 1605 novel whose romantic dreams of glory cause him to repeatedly fight enemies that do not exist. In the best known example, Don Quixote attempts to lance mythical giants that are, in fact, only windmills.

“Unlike the Windmills of La Mancha, the Windmills in Spokane are real,” Jackson wrote in a 10-point comparison between himself and “this fine work of art.”

“They are not giants but petty, small, individuals.”

“There are thousands of Don Quixotes working to topple the last remaining Windmills of Spokane.”

“Unlike a Windmill, the Progressive trifecta has no intrinsic value. Instead of producing they destroy.”

“The Progressive Trifecta know how to harness the wind, but most of it comes out of Sancho’s ride.”

And so on.

Dillon said the self-comparison was apt, if not in the way Jackson was suggesting.

“ ‘Arms are my only ornament, my only rest is the fight,’ ” Dillon quoted from the first chapter. “And that is such a part of being that character.”