Stuckart vows to stick to facts, principles that have guided his City Hall career if elected Spokane mayor

[DaLveN @CSBD]

Just before 7:45 p.m. on Jan. 5, 2015, Ben Stuckart gaveled his reputation to life.It was the first City Council meeting of the year and the chambers, usually a calm and relatively unpo[CENSORED]ted venue, were packed. More than 100 people had shown up, most to speak in favor of repealing a city law that said police would not ask people about their immigration status.They were angry and flouted Stuckart’s many requests that they follow the most basic rule of the chamber and remain quiet. Those who did wait their turn to speak railed against council members, saying their actions made Spokane “a horrible, dangerous, crime-ridden city” because “terrorists are coming over our borders, especially the southern one.”Stuckart, presiding over the meeting as council president, was in a different place. He was 43 years old, and it was his eighth day without a father, who had died after a 10-month struggle with cancer. The crowd was also touching on a foundational event in Stuckart’s life. In the mid-1980s, his family’s church, St. Ann’s Catholic Church in the East Central Neighborhood, sheltered a family of Salvadoran refugees in its basement.After a man used his 3 minutes to suggest that council members should lose their elected offices, some in the crowd applauded, goading Stuckart and his foul mood.“Nope. That’s it. Night’s over,” he said, pounding his gavel. He immediately stood up and calmly strode from the chambers, leaving it in confusion and chaos. More than four years later, Stuckart said the moment was one of his biggest regrets at City Hall.

“I came back to work too fast. I came back to work too soon after my dad died. I should’ve given myself a couple more weeks. They were saying horrible things, but I was already raw from my dad dying. I was emotionally raw,” Stuckart said. “They said awful, hateful, racist things and I let it get to me because of that. But I shouldn’t have gaveled the meeting.”Like Stuckart’s detractors before her, his opponent, Nadine Woodward, says he is too belligerent and short-fused to lead the city.“Unlike Ben, I am not reactionary, I am not impulsive and I am not vindictive,” Woodward said last week.As Stuckart faces November’s vote, he contends with a well-documented, eight-year record at City Hall. Before he was elected to lead the council, he ran an effort called the Children’s Investment Fund that would have financed after-school mentoring and family support programs. Before then, he wrote letters to The Spokesman-Review detailing his decidedly progressive view of the world.It’s a long record, occasionally punctuated by outrage. His attitude hasn’t changed much either, he said. Just his job and how people view him, a perception he said came from the meeting he gaveled to a close.Making the personal politicalIn 2008, Stuckart was director of ticket operations at TicketsWest and the only public indication of his political future was the infrequent letter to the editor. He criticized the fair-weather patriots after Sept. 11, 2001, who couldn’t be bothered to vote. He voiced support for long-shot Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich and his now mainstream Democratic positions of universal health care and free college.Another letter, from 2005, was about the nation’s economic system that “inevitably” leaves some people behind. If we reap its benefits, Stuckart wrote, “we must also accept the responsibility to care for those that the system leaves unemployed and on the bottom rungs of the ladder.” To ignore and demean the neediest in our society, was “ignorant” and “morally reprehensible.”