This story was written in partnership between RANGE and FāVS News, a nonprofit newsroom covering faith and values in the Inland Northwest. Learn more about FāVS’s work here.
In a sanctuary in one of Eastern Washington’s largest churches, John Scherling led five GOP candidates seeking a House seat in Washington’s Sixth Legislative District in a prayer that squarely identified the enemies of American values.
“We ask for thy blessings on all of us as we support and defend our candidates and representatives across this county and in our battles against the workers of evil, against leftists and progressives and anyone who desires our harm or that of our children and our community,” Scherling, a Catholic and the secretary for the Spokane County Republican Party, prayed.
Praying at a lectern in one of the Calvary Spokane’s secondary sanctuaries in front of about 30 people hoping to learn more about the candidates sat at round tables distributed through the space, Scherling kicked off the forum by posing what seemed like a litmus test to the candidates: what values would underpin your actions in office if you win?
One by one, each candidate told the room that Jesus Christ would guide their hand when legislating.
“I have strong faith in Christ, and that is the root of our Judeo-Christian ethics,” said Alan Nolan, who promoted his military service and his work on the Mead School District Board of Directors to erode queer rights for students in the district. “Beyond that I define myself as a Christian.”
Jennifer Morton, an Airway Heights City Council Member and Air Force veteran who was adopted as an infant by Eastern Washingtonian parents from a Haitian orphanage, said she would dedicate her public service to the Christian deity.
“If it is God's will for me to be in the state legislature, then I'll be able to represent him and the Sixth District in an honorable and principled way,” she said.
Church, state & a sullied pulpit
The county Republicans and other conservative organizations have held similar events in churches and specifically at Calvary Spokane before, but GOP events in Christian spaces have increasingly become a mainstay as Christian nationalism has taken power across the country. And while the candidates themselves may not identify as Christian nationalists — Bingle, for example, is the son of pastor but bristles at the label — Christian nationalist values were front and center throughout the forum: The church should provide charity. Good schools teach Christian values.
But there were two elephants in the room Tuesday night, one in the form of the classic GOP logo. That one was obvious. The other went unacknowledged: decades of sexual and spiritual abuse allegations against one of Calvary Spokane’s pastors, Ben Ortize, detailed in the Christian church watchdog publication The Roys Report earlier this year. Ortize denied the allegations in a sermon after the story was published.
Scherling told RANGE he didn’t know anything about the allegations.
Two vacated seats up for grabs
Candidates are looking to win one of two positions in the state House of Representatives representing much of the rural — and consistently conservative — territory north and east of the more liberal Third Legislative District that covers most of Spokane proper. Both positions will be vacated by the incumbents Mike Volz, a Republican who sits in Position 1 and is leaving that post to run for Spokane County Auditor, and Jenny Graham, who announced in February that she would not seek a fifth term but did not give a reason.
The Republicans seemed to want to keep a tight lid on the event; the audience was barred from recording and taking photos, but Scherling reluctantly allowed RANGE to record audio.
Jonathan Bingle, the former Spokane City Council Member and a conservative who was unseated in November by the progressive reproductive rights advocate Sarah Dixit, is running for Graham’s seat against Independent Aaron Croft and Democrat Julia Payne.
The Position 1 race is much more crowded: Nolan, Isaiah Paine, Sueann Davis and Jennifer Morton are competing for Volz’s seat against Democrats Nicholette Ocheltree and Michaela Kelso.
Only the Republican candidates were invited to the event, Scherling told RANGE, meaning Bingle had no competition, while his fellow panelists vied against each other. On August 4, voters will choose two candidates for each seat.
Seats in the legislature are precious to Republicans in a solidly blue state, and Paine encouraged the room of about 30 potential constituents to unify behind one of the Republicans for the Position 1 seat. If they don’t, he warned, the conservative vote might split so dramatically that the two Democrats could end up vying for the same seat, taking a position Republicans have held for since 2009.
“It would be really not good losing a seat in Olympia,” said Paine, who’s served as vice and interim chair of the Spokane County GOP and works in public affairs for the Spokane Homebuilders Association.
Drown it in the bathtub
Many of Scherling’s questions focused not on lawmaking but law dismantling:
Q: What gun restrictions would you cut? A: Davis and Morton: all of them.
Q: What is the first thing you would cut from the state budget?
A: Morton: “government involvement in healthcare.” Nolan: “50% of [state Attorney General] Nick Brown's budget for the attorney general. … All they're doing is suing the federal government over ridiculous stuff.” Bingle: anything that doesn’t relate to infrastructure or keeping people physically safe. Paine: implement an “all-cuts” budget.
Q: What is your position on state environmental regulations that affect farmers and rural landowners?
A: Bingle, referring to the forever chemicals crisis on the West Plains: ”They poison your wells — or they poison your land accidentally through PFAS. And then suddenly it's not their problem. It's their land when you're trying to do something good. It's your land when something bad happens, when they've done something bad to you.” Davis, referencing state and national requirements for some development projects: ”My parents are cattle ranchers. You hear EPA, you hear SEPA, NEPA, you hear all these terms, and I would say repeal the Growth Management Act,” the state law that governs how local communities develop.
‘Parental rights’ vs. health care for kids
The candidates also railed against protections for children’s bodily autonomy, asserting that parents should be in control of their kids’ health care, including gender-affirming care.
“If I could have my magic wand, [state school’s Superintendent] Chris Reykdal and [the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction] would be gone,” Davis said. She argued the state doesn’t do enough to protect “parental rights,” which amounts to the idea that parents have the legal right to make decisions on their children’s behalf.
The idea of parental rights is a flashpoint in modern politics. Proponents say parents need to know what’s happening in all aspects of their kids’ lives. But critics say it stems from the notion that children are property and that faith communities use parental rights to restrict young people’s spiritual and personal growth as well as their medical safety.
Washington allows children in certain circumstances to seek medical care — including gender-affirming care — without the knowledge of their guardians, especially in cases when parents don’t want their children to identify as transgender. Conservative Christians across the state mobilize nearly every year to erode those protections for kids. This year, the conservative advocacy group Let’s Go Washington is circulating a potential ballot measure that would require schools to let parents opt out of programs they don’t like and review children’s medical records and educational materials.
Nolan said Washington should adopt a state version of the Trump administration’s Education Freedom Tax Credit, which allows people to donate up to $1,700 to a “scholarship-granting organization” for a tax write-off of the same amount. The money then goes into scholarships for nontraditional public school programs: after-school activities, private school tuition or home-schooling expenses.
The conservative Fordham Institute says the credit bloats bureaucracy and will decimate public budgets without providing any benefit to schools.
Bingle, who sends his son to a private Christian school, sang the praises of private education.
“I pay $9,000 a year for [him] to go to school,” Bingle said. “He has a class size of 14. He comes home. He knows the Bible. He's singing Christian songs. He's learning everything. We were at the mall today. My son was trying to play hide and seek with somebody, and he told one of the other kids, ‘Well, just count to 20.’ This is a 6- or 7-year-old girl, and she couldn't count to 20. … That's our public school system, OK?”
Church-related abuse, which was the subject of recent state legislation, did not come up in the forum.
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