Last minute pocketbook-peeking of city council candidates

Hopefully by now, you’ve received your ballot and have either put it in the mail already, or are planning to deposit it in a dropbox by 8 pm on Election Day — next Tuesday, November 4.

Since we put out our first campaign finance story two weeks ago, the six candidates running for Spokane City Council races have been busy campaigning, debating, fundraising and spending money. Here’s an update on the state of their war chests, independent expenditure funding flows — mostly to efforts in favor of one candidate — and what kinds of marketing materials campaigns have been spending cash on going into the last leg of the race.

Raw campaign contributions

When we looked at campaign contributions data a few weeks ago, District 2 candidate Kate Telis was in the lead, followed by District 3 candidate Christopher Savage. In the newest batch of PDC reporting, Council Member Jonathan Bingle, who is running to retain his seat in District 1, has shot to the top of the leaderboard with $118,141.51 in funding.

Everyone else has stayed roughly the same in rankings, though all candidates have gained an additional $7,000 to $30,000.

Swipe to see changes →

<noscript><img src="https://www.rangemedia.co/content/images/rangemedia-co/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/49_thumbnail.jpg" width="100%" alt="visualization"/></noscript></div> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>When compared to city council race spending from 2023, not much has changed as far as individual rankings go: 2023 District 2 candidate Katey Treloar is still an outlier. One other note of interest: the entire crop of 2025 candidates has out-fundraised three of the six candidates from 2023.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The crop of candidates for 2023 raised $554,111.08 in total, excluding the high-spending race for council president that saw conservative challenger Kim Plese raising more than $250,000. <strong>The 2025 candidates as a whole have now surpassed that, raising $613,461.98</strong> <strong>in total. </strong>This may be a symptom of an off-year election: funders don’t need to pour money into the city council president or mayoral races, so they can focus spending on individual council seats.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p><em>Swipe to see changes →</em></p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:html --> <div class="flourish-embed" data-src="story/3412460"><script src="https://public.flourish.studio/resources/embed.js"/><noscript><img src="https://www.rangemedia.co/content/images/rangemedia-co/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/50_thumbnail.jpg" width="100%" alt="visualization"/></noscript></div> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Unlike 2023, when spending was concentrated mostly in District 2, spending is a lot more evenly distributed across the three city districts, which may indicate heightened competition. The biggest shift was in the District 1 races, where both Bingle and Sarah Dixit have outraised their 2023 counterparts by at least $20,000.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p><em>Swipe to see changes →</em></p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:html --> <div class="flourish-embed" data-src="story/3412462"><script src="https://public.flourish.studio/resources/embed.js"/><noscript><img src="https://www.rangemedia.co/content/images/rangemedia-co/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/51_thumbnail.jpg" width="100%" alt="visualization"/></noscript></div> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":3} --> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Contributions vs. expenditures</h3> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>As campaigns race for the finish line, it’s always interesting to look at their spending strategies. For half of the candidates — Sarah Dixit, Kate Telis and Alejandro Barrientos — the strategy seems to be to keep spending to about two-thirds to three-fourths of their contributions, which held true two weeks ago and again in the most recent reporting.&nbsp;</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>In District 3, the only race with a primary, the two candidates have opposite strategies. Challenger Christopher Savage seems to be going with a “spend whatever you’ve got,” approach. He spent almost everything he’d raised during the primary and had to start over in the generals, where he consistently spent money as it came in, leaving little in the tank. Incumbent Zack Zappone has been much more conservative in his spending, both in the primaries and the general election.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Zappone and Bingle, the only two incumbent candidates, have similar spending strategies. They are the only two candidates to have spent less than half of the money they’ve raised at this point. Behind the scenes, politicos have speculated that both men are prepping for future runs before their four-year city council terms would be up, and if so, leftover campaign contributions would carry over to future runs.&nbsp;</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p><em>Swipe to see changes →</em></p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:html --> <div class="flourish-embed" data-src="story/3412484"><script src="https://public.flourish.studio/resources/embed.js"/><noscript><img src="https://www.rangemedia.co/content/images/rangemedia-co/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/52_thumbnail.jpg" width="100%" alt="visualization"/></noscript></div> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":3} --> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Independent Expenditures</h3> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>In the last two weeks, independent-expenditure spending has ramped up.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Unlike campaign contributions that go directly to your political campaign of choice, independent expenditures aren’t limited to any kind of contribution caps. They also can’t go directly into the war chests of any specific campaign (or even be spent in coordination with campaigns). Instead, they are a way that Political Action Committees (PACs), special interest groups and the wealthy can funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars into influencing the results of elections.&nbsp;</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p><em>Swipe to see changes →</em></p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:html --> <div class="flourish-embed" data-src="story/3412572"><script src="https://public.flourish.studio/resources/embed.js"/><noscript><img src="https://www.rangemedia.co/content/images/rangemedia-co/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/53_thumbnail.jpg" width="100%" alt="visualization"/></noscript></div> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Right now, the biggest financial beneficiary of this spending is Alejandro Barrientos. When we published our previous coverage, two PACs had spent nearly $100,000 on positive Barrientos messaging and another $32,750 on negative messaging about his opponent Kate Telis. Now, PACs have spent more than $150,000 on positive Barrientos messaging, and over $65,000 on anti-Telis messaging.&nbsp;</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>All but $43,000 of the pro-Barrientos spending has come from the <a href="https://www.pdc.wa.gov/political-disclosure-reporting-data/browse-search-data/committees/co-2025-23450#contributions">Spokane Good Government Alliance</a>, a PAC that historically donates to conservative candidates, which received $120,000 in contributions from conservative megadonor (and Barrientos’ boss) Larry Stone this election season alone.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The PDC data is also starting to reflect a little bit of spending from Democrat-aligned PACs on their candidates of choice, with small bumps in spending on all three candidates endorsed by the local Democratic party. Zappone is so far the biggest beneficiary of that spending, though the <a href="/pac-responds-to-complaint-over-mislabeled-mailer/">biggest headlines</a> were for an anti-Bingle mailer printed with a design error saying the attack ad was paid for in part by the local firefighters’ union, which endorsed Bingle.&nbsp;</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>A breakdown of all campaign spending, factoring in both campaign contributions and independent expenditures can be found below.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:html --> <p>​​ </p><div class="flourish-embed flourish-chart" data-src="visualisation/25944245"><script src="https://public.flourish.studio/resources/embed.js"/><noscript><img src="https://www.rangemedia.co/content/images/rangemedia-co/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/54_thumbnail.jpg" width="100%" alt="chart visualization"/></noscript></div><p/> <!-- /wp:html --></body>