How a hug and a prayer took over Spokane’s mayoral race

In the Aug. 1 primary, incumbent Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward and former State Commerce Director Lisa Brown took the top spots and began preparing to face off for the November general election.

Then, a viral moment involving a display of endearment between Woodward and disgraced former State Rep. Matt Shea at an Aug. 20 event added a new layer of interest to the race.

“She got on stage with him and he endorsed her and prayed for her,” explained Nate Sanford, city hall reporter for The Inlander. “And she hugged him as she left the stage…a lot of people were pretty quickly questioning why she was choosing to associate with him.”

While Spokane’s mayoral office is technically non-partisan, this recent controversy underscores how politics are anything but missing from the race.

The event on Aug. 20, called “Let Us Worship,” was hosted by musician and self-described Christian nationalist Sean Feucht. Feucht brought Shea, who in 2019 was found by an independent investigation to have planned and engaged in multiple acts of domestic terrorism against the U.S. Government, on stage.

The same House-commissioned investigation looked into Shea's distribution of a pamphlet titled "The Biblical Basis for War," in which he advocated killing non-Christian men. Shea claims the literature was a sermon taken out of context, but the report prompted the GOP caucus to expel him.

The ripples of Shea's prayer for Woodward spread quickly. The story hit The Washington Post and Rolling Stone, and Woodward’s challenger, Lisa Brown, has been quick to use photos from “Let Us Worship” for her campaign.

Woodward, who has positioned herself as a moderate, law-and-order conservative, had denounced Shea at the time the investigation report came out. And amid this latest controversy, Woodward denied knowing that Shea would be at “Let Us Worship” and said she regretted going to the event. She also called Shea's politics a "threat to our democracy.”

But her interaction with Shea on Aug. 20 has left some skeptical about how much ideological distance exists between them.

“She participated in Spokane’s Pride March this year, but I think a lot of people in that community are maybe questioning her commitment to that after getting up on stage with this guy a minute after he was saying [disparaging] things about homosexual marriage,” Sanford said.

While Shea is overwhelmingly regarded as being “politically toxic,” Sanford said, not all of Woodward’s constituents are misaligned with him.

“There definitely is a sort of farther right contingent of voters that the mayor probably wants to attract,” Sanford said. “In the primary, she had a challenger who was running to her right and criticizing her on a lot of things, like vaccines and stuff like that.”

Woodward’s base, however, is mostly conservative-leaning voters who are primarily concerned with public disorder safety, he added.

“She's pushed for giving tougher penalties for public drug use and possession and the ability to detain and arrest someone who's using drugs in public,” Sanford said. “She has also been pushing to enforce the city’s sit-lie ordinance, which is a law against sitting or lying down on the sidewalk. That's all stuff that involves police and detention.”

Brown, a Democrat, has taken more of a public health stance on those issues, and has been critical of Woodward’s approach.

“Over the past four years, I think everyone would agree that [homelessness has] just gotten significantly worse in the city of Spokane,” Sanford said.

And amid the latest buzz, Brown has also come down on Woodward for her friendly interaction with Shea.

“The Mayor should be disavowing Matt Shea, an anti-woman anti-LGBTQ extremist, associated [with] political violence,” Brown tweeted on Aug. 20. Instead she is on the stage with him while fires rage in our county. Time for new leadership in #Spokane.”

“This is definitely a pretty big hiccup for the mayor's campaign, and it'll be interesting to see how that kind of progresses,” Sanford said.

Listen to the full segment by clicking the play icon at the top of this story.