SPOKANE, Wash. – Incumbent Mayor Nadine Woodward has been looking towards Tuesday night since last year.
“It’s been a very, very long campaign,” she said. “But we’re in the home stretch.”
Her challenger, Lisa Brown, who announced her candidacy on Mar. 2, has also been gearing up for election day.
“This is the exciting part,” Brown said. “I think most people have made up their minds. It’s all about voting now.”
Over the course of the campaign, Mayor Woodward has raised a Spokane Mayoral race record of $558,611, with Brown coming in right behind her at $517,070 raised. Combined, candidates have spent $984,834 so far, over $350,000 more than Seattle’s race for seat one on city council, the second-most expensive race in the state.
While both candidates acknowledge how important those funds are, with a couple of days left, Brown and Woodward’s campaigns are turning to grassroots efforts to get out the vote: going door-to-door, making thousands of calls and writing postcards.
“We need to (remind supporters to get their ballots in),” Mayor Woodward said. “Get out the vote is probably the most important thing we can do at this stage of the game.”
On Sunday, she went door-to-door in the Eagle Ridge neighborhood, giving residents a personal greeting from the mayor.
“Your ballot’s in the mail,” one of her supporters responded.
Over in downtown, Brown stopped by her campaign office while her supporters made postcards and phone calls to voters, ringing a bell and cheering every time a caller said they had voted for Brown. In her office, a whiteboard said, “16,605 postcards, 13,040 phone calls, 18,000+ door knocks. The grassroots machine at work!!”
“The volunteer effort in this campaign has really been gratifying,” Brown said. “We’ve had hundreds of people participate. It’s been thousands of doors, thousands of phone calls (and) thousands of postcards.”
Polls for the mayoral election close at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 7. You can drop your ballot off at any of these locations.
