When your ballot landed in the mailbox a little over a week ago, it was probably hard to locate in the pile of campaign leaflets telling you to vote a certain way. A box checked for Paul Dillon, the progressive candidate from District 2, “will endanger our children.” A yes vote on Measure 1 is a “blank check” for lawmakers to build unwanted jails. Lisa Brown and Betsy Wilkerson, depicted in black-and-white like nickelodeon villains, “OPPOSE BANNING ENCAMPMENTS NEAR WHERE OUR KIDS LEARN AND PLAY.”
In addition to the mailers blooming from our mailboxes, ads also appear during commercial breaks, in your morning newspaper (if that’s still your thing) and on the web.
Not all campaign messaging is gloom, of course — some advertisements support candidates, rather than tar the opponent. Flip over the “ENCAMPMENTS” card, and you see flattering photos of Mayor Nadine Woodward, council president candidate Kim Plese and city council candidate Katey Treloar, who have staked out tried and true anti-crime territory for the November 7 election and promise to do things like “protect our communities from repeat offenders,” per the mailer.
Given the content, you might think that ad was sent by Woodward, Plese or Treloar: mayoral candidates will sometimes reach out on behalf of their down-ballot allies to give them a boost, and all three candidates are conservative (though Treloar seems to be courting South Hill liberals by using woke language like calling her opponent Paul Dillon “straight identifying”), and although these are nonpartisan races, who are we kidding? Maybe it was sent by the local chapter of the Republican Party.
The answer, though, is neither. The Spokane Good Government Alliance sent this mailer to over 40,000 Spokane households.
Spokane elections mirror national races: more money than ever is spent on campaign messaging. Much of this money manifests in what are officially called “independent expenditures,” or IEs, which are campaign messaging bought by a person or a corporation that is separate from a campaign, and the spending party did not collude with the candidate they support.
So how do you know if you’re hearing directly from a candidate you support (or can’t stand) or one of their perhaps deep-pocketed boosters? It can be hard to tell at first, but language in these materials can help you figure it out. Sometimes you must flip it over to see it, others you have to squint, but it’s required to be there.
You can tell a certain message is an IE if the message advocates for or against a specific candidate and does not align itself with a campaign. On an IE message, you will find, somewhere in the text of the message, the equivalent of “NO CANDIDATE AUTHORIZED THIS AD. PAID FOR BY [INSERT ORG NAME HERE].”
You won’t find any mailers sent by both a candidate and a group like SGGA — that would constitute coordination between the campaign and the independent group, which would violate campaign finance laws.
You can tell the “extreme” anti-Dillon mailer is an official communication of the Katey Treloar campaign not because her name is huge on the back side (IEs can and frequently do loudly promote candidates they like). You can tell it’s from Treloar because it says so, in tiny letters, in the return address, reading: “Paid for by Katey for Spokane,” which is Treloar’s campaign.
Another mailer, supporting Kim Plese, who’s running against Wilkerson for city council president, as someone who “will support our police to keep us safe” and “create more affordable housing to reduce homelessness” seems more complicated. Prominent text says Plese is “ENDORSED BY SPOKANE POLICE GUILD.” Is this an independent expenditure, made by that union? Well, no. The return address reads “Paid for by Plese for Spokane,” Plese’s campaign.
The mailer pillorying Brown and Wilkerson is produced by the SGGA, a Political Action Committee (PAC) funded by a number of businesses and wealthy names youll probably recognize, like Larry Stone — who has personally spent enough this election season ($275,000, and potentially counting) to pay off most of an average Spokane mortgage. SGGA has spent more than $1.35 million boosting conservative Spokane candidates.
On the other side of the aisle, Citizens for Liberty and Labor, a PAC run by the former firefighter’s union president Sean Doyle, has spent nearly $90,000 on the mayor’s race. The vast majority of that amount, $80,023.91, took the form of attack ads against the incumbent Mayor Nadine Woodward.
If an advertisement addresses a ballot measure rather than a candidate, the message will also say who paid for it. The mailer opposing the Measure 1 sales tax increase that would generate $1.7 billion in revenue over the next three decades for jail construction, among other things, is by the group Justice Not Jails, which was formed specifically to oppose this issue.
The point is to look past the bold fonts and exclamation points to the fine print. Do that, and you’ll see the messenger(s) behind the political messages vying for your vote.
Good luck, and vote hard.
A previous version of this story linked to the 2022 PDC page for Citizens for Liberty and Labor, and incorrectly listed the president as Randy Marler, who stepped down last year.
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