Race to represent Spokane in Olympia features three familiar faces in area politics

Jul. 19—A former Spokane City Council president, a lawyer and a longtime health insurance agent are vying to represent central Spokane in the Washington State Legislature.

The race for Position 1 in the 3rd Legislative District isn't the first for the two Democrats and lone Republican who've thrown their hats in the ring.

Ben Stuckart, who served as Spokane City Council president for seven years before losing his mayoral bid in 2019, and Natasha Hill, a lawyer and community organizer who unsuccessfully ran to replace U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers in 2022, are each hoping to be the one to keep the seat in Democratic hands.

Tony Kiepe, a health insurance professional who unsuccessfully ran for the Spokane City Council in 2017 and 2019, is hoping to be the first Republican elected to the position since the 1980s.

Stuckart has the financial advantage in the race, pulling in nearly $94,000, around $36,000 more than Hill. Kiepe brings up the rear with roughly $7,400 in contributions as of Friday, according to the Public Disclosure Commission.

The race has not been contentious, but there have been visible tensions. The Spokane County Democrats opened an investigation into a heated exchange between Hill and the party's chair Naida Spencer at the party's booth at the Spokane Pride Festival last month.

Hill told The Spokesman-Review last month she was only trying to draw factual distinctions between herself and Stuckart. Things only got heated after Spencer tried to control what she was saying and threatened to call security, Hill said.

"I don't think they liked that I was using my voice," Hill said in an interview last month.

Hill's sister, Lacrecia "Lu" Hill, resigned from her positions with the county party following the investigation's launch, saying her values would no longer allow her to stand by the "centrist and neoliberal policies" held by most of the party, as well as the organization's "history of sexism, racism and homophobia."

The county party has endorsed both Hill and Stuckart in the race.

Why they're running

Kiepe has no misgivings about the uphill battle he faces in the race, but he's confident he has a shot. He said he decided to enter the race at the request of the Spokane County Republican Party, which has endorsed him, and to bring about change to what he called 40 years of failed policy from the Democrats who've held the seat.

"A Republican has not won this seat since 1980, but with all the issues going on right now, with inflation, the gas tax, carbon tax, issues that people are unhappy with, this gives me a good opportunity this year," Kiepe said.

He added that he has real concerns that Democrats may obtain a supermajority in the Legislature this election. They would need to flip 12 seats to do so: four seats in the 49-member state Senate and eight in the 98-member House.

Hill said she saw strong support in the district during her bid for Congress, and she's had her eye on the seat for years. She's passionate about Spokane and proud of what she's accomplished as "a girl from Hillyard."

She's committed to fighting for protected access to abortions, underserved and underrepresented communities, workers' rights and the city that raised her, Hill said.

"I really want to be that example for the communities that I belong to, that for too long, have been overlooked and left behind," Hill said. "I've really seen since 2020, essentially, with COVID and the Civil Rights resurgence, that we have a real opportunity to change outcomes for all communities here in Spokane. And I see people in this community who want to work collectively toward that."

Stuckart had stepped away from elected politics since his stint on the city council and lost bid for mayor, spending the past few years running the Spokane Low Income Housing Consortium. He said the opportunity to serve in the state House doesn't come around often, and his time on the city council and in his current role have made it clear to him just how much state decisions can impact things locally.

He touts his experience passing legislation at the city level, in the housing and education fields and relationship building in the community and halls of power as evidence he's the best fit for the job.

"While I was council president, we passed a lot of measures, hundreds of bills I sponsored over my eight years," Stuckart said. "Every public policy decision has winners and losers, and the pressure can get to you. I understand how that pressure works, and how to withstand it to pass good public policy."

On housing

All three candidates in the race pointed to housing as one of the top issues they'd focus on if elected.

Stuckart said the region and state as a whole has an "enormous need" for both market rate housing and low-income housing. He believes the latter is seriously underfunded, and would advocate for more secure funding to address that issue. He supports loosening restrictions on building that he said put undue costs on developers and have led to a shortage of apartments, homes and low-income housing.

Stuckart said he supports recent efforts in the Legislature to dedicate state tax proceeds toward the Housing Trust Fund, ensuring the affordable housing fund has a permanent source of cash. The Legislature currently provides funding through their budgeting process.

"There's a housing crisis on all levels, and the way to solve that is to build more at every level," Stuckart said, adding that doing so could help stabilize rents, market rates and assist the homeless in getting into permanent housing.

Hill said she would work to protect renters through rent stabilization legislation, but that it's only one aspect of finding solutions to addressing homelessness and higher costs of living. She would like to see the state incentivize building more.

"Rent stabilization is not going to do it on its own," Hill said. "We still have to be looking at infill, increasing supply and creating incentives for building not just market rate, not just middle and above, but also our affordable income units that we really have to get built in short order here in Spokane in order to meet the demands that we have."

While Hill said she "100% supports" rent stabilization at the state level, Stuckart believes local legislation capping rent increases can have the adverse effect of stifling development in the area. He worries a state effort would drive builders to Idaho, and said increasing supply is the best way to stabilize market rates and rents. Stuckart said he would support a federal cap because it would ensure there are not disparate markets from state to state.

Both Hill and Stuckart said they support a transitional housing model for those experiencing homelessness, as they provide resources in-house like mental health and addiction treatment, employment training and peer support programs.

Kiepe said he'd like to do away with state regulations he believes have made building any sort of housing too expensive and that leads many developers to take their business across to Idaho.

He sees the need for increasing the housing supply in the state, but said resources and programs at the state aimed at helping the homeless need to be re-evaluated to see if they are viable or a waste of taxpayer money.

"This is not my seat, this is the people's seat," Kiepe said. "I work for the people, and I want accountability. They want accountability. They want to know where our dollars are getting spent. Where is the money going?"

On public safety

Like many conservatives vying for office in the region, Kiepe said public safety is his top priority.

He decried police reform efforts passed by the Legislature in 2021 and said he was happy to see one of them overturned this year at the request of hundreds of thousands of voters statewide who signed an initiative to reinstitute police pursuits. Kiepe said more still needs to be done though to ensure law enforcement can "do their jobs to the best of their skills and their training."

Kiepe said he would support legislation that dedicated funding to assist jurisdictions in hiring more police officers, public defenders and prosecutors to keep their criminal justice systems running smoothly. He feels the state should prioritize public safety in terms of legislation as well as where to use government funds.

"I think the government's No. 1 role is protection, citizen safety," Kiepe said. "Everything else is extra. You fund that, and with all the extra money you find other places."

Both Stuckart and Hill approach public safety with a focus on the underlying issues associated with crime, like socio-economic status, addiction and education.

Stuckart said more work needs to be done to address the opioid epidemic and its effects on communities across the state. He said treatment services need to be bolstered, and the state should consider partnering with tribes to do so. Tribal health care facilities have better reimbursement rates, he said, and are open to the public, allowing for a cost-effective way to increase the number of treatment beds in Washington.

"I think we have a fentanyl crisis that everybody needs to be working on," Stuckart said.

Hill said there is a dire need to increase funding for treatment centers, and that the state "can't have the only pathway to treatment be though arrest and incarceration." Prebooking jail diversion programs and facilities for those struggling with addiction are becoming increasingly common, like the Spokane Regional Stabilization Center, but require a run-in with law enforcement to receive services.

She said addressing the opioid epidemic requires a multifaceted approach, which includes working with the Washington state Attorney General's Office to "keep these drugs off our streets and coming into our country."

"There's multiple layers to this," Hill said. "So we've got to be working collaboratively at federal, state and local levels to make sure that whatever funding we have, whatever programs we have, that they're efficient and effective."

On education

Education is important to Hill as a mother, as someone who benefited from a local, public school education and as someone who sees the value in balancing state standards with local decision making, she said

Hill said she's disturbed by the attacks levied against administrators, educators, curriculum and content in public schools, whether it's been focused on discussion about race and the country's history of racism, conversations about LGTBQ+ representation or books considered scandalous for touching on those themes.

"I am 100% behind ensuring that we have appropriate funding, that we have protections for our administrators and our school board members who have been under attack around curriculum," Hill said.

Hill would advocate for programs to support different learning styles and paths to higher education or trade schools, using much of the same data on early childhood education used by some to estimate policing needs, she said.

"The flip side of that, is that we can then use that same data to look at what investments can change that trajectory for those students and ensure that we do have a healthier, safer community," Hill said.

Both Hill and Stuckart said they would like to re-evaluate the current funding model that relies heavily on voter-approved property taxes.

Stuckart said the current allocation model leads to many school districts being overlooked.

He said the state's "paramount duty is education," which means ensuring communities across Washington have the proper funding to provide that for the students.

"We're seeing too many school districts across the state that are having funding problems, massive funding problems, and talking about closures of schools," Stuckart said. "So I really think somebody needs to do the basic, simple things like guarantee everybody free lunch at schools, that nobody should go hungry, but also we need to take on the big structural issues of funding."

Kiepe did not identify education as a campaign point in an interview, but said he supported the Legislature's adoption of Initiative 2081, which grants parents of public school students the right to review classroom materials, including textbooks and curriculum, and easily access their child's academic and medical records.

The initiative took effect earlier this year and mostly enshrined rights already on the books at the state and national level. It's drawn a legal challenge from a group of youth services organizations, a Whidbey Island school district, a former Seattle-area high school nurse and the parent of a nonbinary child who argue the measure violated the state constitution.

The basis for the unconstitutional claim is mainly procedural; the initiative did not properly identify the many existing laws it changes, according to the lawsuit jointly filed by the legal advocacy groups American Civil Liberties of Washington, Qlaw and Legal Voice.

On top of altering significant laws regarding youth privacy, implementing the initiative will lead to "harm for LGBTQ+ students, youth of color and students from other marginalized backgrounds," the ACLU said in a statement.

On the issues important to them

Kiepe said he would like to be appointed to the Health Care Committee if elected, so he could share his expertise in the field.

He would like to advocate for legislation that would make the state friendlier to insurance providers to help drive down the costs of prescriptions and health care.

"We got to pull the right experts together and talk about how we can bring costs down," Kiepe said. "And one thing we need is more competition in the state. More competition brings the prices down."

Stuckart said environmentalism and conservation would be other key areas of focus for him, if elected. He thinks the state can do more to protect natural areas, ecosystems and wild animal populations like wolves.

Stuckart said the way the state talks about waste also needs revisited. He would be interested in pursuing programs that focus on curbing the state's consumption and subsequent waste, as well as efforts to turn waste into energy, such as Spokane's Waste-to-Energy Plant, that he said often produce less carbon than the current model of shipping recycling and waste to landfills by truck and train.

"We need to be decreasing garbage, decreasing the amount we're recycling, decreasing those items, instead of just pretending we have a limitless supply that we can get rid of," Stuckart said. "I think there's a lot of really, really interesting policy things we can work on, on the environmental end."

Hill said the district has a unique distinction of being down the road from Idaho, where access to abortions ha s been heavily restricted, which has led to an influx of individuals seeking health care in Spokane.

The district needs a representative willing to fight to protect abortion access in Washington, and those traveling to the state to seek care, Hill said. She is committed to being a legislator leading that fight.

"I think it's important that we do have a woman in our delegation, given where we're situated here, next to Idaho, and the number of folks who are coming to our state for care," Hill said.

"To ensure that we're looking out for them, looking out for the folks that are already here and statewide, ensuring they appreciate what it is that Spokane needs in order to address the crisis that we have right now when it comes to reproductive health care."

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