The Inlander11%
The two Washington state representative seats in the Sixth District lack incumbents; meet the nine candidates hoping voters will choose for the general election 11%
By Colton Rasanen25%
7/23/2026, 8:30:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 33 faulty reasoning types, including Anecdotal, False Dilemma, and Self-Serving Bias, with Appeal to Emotion as the most egregious example at 9.7% saturation with 232 hits. Analysis detected 2,334 faulty-reasoning hits from 2,380 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 27.7% and a BS Rank of 11% (18,952 of 21,180 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 89.50% of the article peer group.
Voters in Washington’s 6th Legislative District — which covers Airway Heights, Medical Lake, Four Lakes, Nine Mile Falls, Indian Trail, Five Mile Prairie, parts of north and northeast Spokane and parts of northwest Spokane County — are preparing for a new pair of representatives to take office.
But first, they need to narrow each race to the top two vote-getters in the Aug. 4 primary election.
There are six candidates in the race for Position 1, which has been held by Republican state Rep.
Mike Volz since he took office in 2017.
Three candidates are competing for Position 2, which has been held by Republican Rep.
Jenny Graham since 2019.
Although the 6th District is reliably red — a Democrat hasn’t been elected there since former Rep.
John Driscoll beat John Ahern by less than 80 votes in 2008, and in 2024 Volz and Graham each beat their Democratic opponents with more than 60% of the vote — the Washington Legislature is solidly blue.
That means Democratic (or independent) candidates will need to convince Republicans in the district to vote for them, while Republican candidates, if elected, would need to convince Democratic legislators to work with them to pass any bills.
For reference, during his five terms Volz was the primary sponsor for 11 bills that became state law and a secondary sponsor for 46 that were successful.
In her four terms, Graham was a secondary sponsor for more than 100 bills passed into law, but only three of the bills she was the primary sponsor for became law.
(Both signed onto a number of adopted resolutions honoring significant figures or yearly holidays.)
By comparison, Spokane’s Democratic Rep.
Natasha Hill was the primary sponsor of seven bills that became law and the secondary sponsor of well over 100 bills that passed, all in her first term.
Each candidate the Inlander interviewed said they would have no problem working across the aisle to find solutions that work for those living in Eastern Washington.
Learn more about all nine here.
POSITION 1
ALAN NOLAN, 56, REPUBLICAN
After 23 years in the Air Force piloting many types of aircraft, Alan Nolan and his wife moved to Spokane County and opened interior design and construction firm 509 Design in 2015.
In 2023, Nolan was elected to the Mead School Board, ousting Denny Denholm who had never faced an opponent in his 25 years in the position.
“What we’ve been able to do on the school board is a lot of the reason why I’m running and think I can be effective,” Nolan says.
“One of the things that I’m very proud of is the last levy, which was approved by the community in 2024.”
(The $91.6 million levy passed with 53% of the vote.)
Nolan has focused on fiscal responsibility, accountability for the use of state taxpayer money, and wants to cut costs for families and small businesses.
But when asked about his top priorities, he says recently he has shifted his focus to oppose Spokane Transit Authority’s Proposition 1 (see story on page 12), which asks voters to continue a 0.2% sales tax that they approved in 2016.
“That wouldn’t be a legislative issue; this is one of those things where, as a community member, I’ve taken that on because there’s a significant amount of tax fatigue,” he explains.
Nolan says he intends to finish his four-year school board term, so if he’s elected to the House he’ll fill two elected positions at once like Volz has done since he replaced U.S.
Rep.
Michael Baumgartner as Spokane County treasurer last year.
ISAIAH PAINE, 41, REPUBLICAN
As the Spokane Home Builders Association’s government affairs director from 2020-21 and its strategic and public affairs officer since 2024, Isaiah Paine has been hyperfocused on housing policy in the state.
A father of four, Paine also has experience in directorial positions at True Hope Church and was vice chair of the Spokane County Republican Party from 2017-19.
He’s running for election to create a more affordable state where more people have the opportunity to buy a home.
“Making home ownership available to more people is the gateway to the middle class.
… All sorts of socioeconomic indicators go up with home ownership, and a large number of small businesses are started in part using a home equity line of credit,” Paine says.
“I want a Washington [where] people can afford to and want to live in the future.
I know I’m not alone in that.”
To do that, he thinks the state should cut housing regulations and taxes.
“There’s a national stat: $130,000 of every home is fees and regulatory compliance,” he says, referring to a report from the National Association of Home Builders.
“I don’t think that should be zero, like safety is a good thing, but we’re looking at, you know, a third of the cost of the home in Washington state.”
As for taxes, Paine supports updating the state’s business and occupation, or B&O, tax to apply only to profits rather than revenue, and he supports Initiative 645, which will ask voters in November to repeal the state’s 9.9% income tax on household wages above $1 million.
JENNIFER MORTON, 44, REPUBLICAN
For the last six and a half years, Jennifer Morton has served on the Airway Heights City Council.
An Eastern Washington University graduate raised in Davenport, Morton spent 22 years in the Army and Air Force Reserve.
The first person in her family to graduate from college, own a business, buy a home and run successfully for office, Morton says her tenacity is what makes her the best person to represent the 6th District.
“I think it’s everybody’s responsibility to be a positive impact on others, so I just want to be able to do that on a greater scale,” she says.
Morton’s top priorities include increasing police officer and first responder presence in the 6th District and pausing taxes to reassess, audit and repeal them where possible.
“Our community just loves our police because they’ve been intentionally building relationships with residents.
… Public safety is foundational to a thriving community, so that’s why it’s one of my priorities,” she says.
“The state Legislature has continued to add more taxes, and it is just not affordable for the common person.
… We are in such a wonderfully resource-rich state, there’s literally no reason anyone should be struggling to pay your bills, to put gas in your car, to buy groceries.”
Unlike Nolan, Morton hasn’t decided if she’ll complete her term in Airway Heights if elected to state office, but she tells the Inlander she would resign from the City Council if holding both seats hinders her work.
POSITION 2
MICHAELA KELSO, 56, DEMOCRAT
Michaela (pronounced Michelle) Kelso was born and raised in Spokane, but after experiencing a bout of homelessness as a teen she moved to live with her grandparents in Dallas.
After earning a doctorate in philosophy at Columbia University and starting a jewelry business on Etsy, she moved back to Spokane.
Once here, she became a vocal advocate protesting in support of Planned Parenthood and starting the Facebook group 500 Drag Queens Strong to oppose the 500 Moms Strong group that fought against drag queen story hours.
“Local activism really changed the trajectory of my life,” Ocheltree says.
She was a persistent voice for progressive policies at Spokane City Council meetings after that, and in 2022 she took a position as former City Council member Jonathan Bingle’s legislative aide.
Later that year, she became the council’s manager of housing and homelessness initiatives.
Now, she’s running in the 6th District because she thinks she can flip the seat for the Democrats, especially as she anticipates well-known Republican Bingle winning the other position.
Ocheltree sees the intertwined topics of housing and homelessness as her top priorities.
“By moving to a more performance-based building code and by trying to strip away some of those well-intended but poorly stacked regulations, we can get to a place where it’s cheaper to build affordable housing,” she says.
“Everybody’s impacted by homelessness… and I think that one of the main things that we can do is start to have more upstream solutions to prevent homelessness from happening in the first place.”
SUEANN DAVIS, 61, REPUBLICAN
Sueann Davis was born and raised in Spokane County.
She’s a farmer, a grandmother, and worked in the Deer Park School District as a secretary and substitute paraeducator for 15 years.
She was also a two-term Deer Park School Board member two decades ago.
At the time she ran for school board solely because the seat was open, but now she hopes voters send her to the House to cure Washington of its ills.
“Washington state is broken.
The taxation is out of control.
The spending is absolutely out of control,” Davis says, “and my perspective is, ‘If it’s affecting me, it’s affecting everybody around me.’”
Davis’ top priorities include education reform and cutting taxes, such as the state’s new income tax for millionaires and/or gas taxes under the Climate Commitment Act.
“If I had a magic wand, I would eliminate OSPI,” she says, referring to the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.
“I just think it’s full of waste.
It’s way too big.
There’s so [many] unfunded mandates.”
School leaders in the Inland Northwest have lamented the amount of education requirements created without monetary support behind them.
Those are passed by the Legislature, not OSPI.
“But OSPI lobbies for those mandates,” she argues.
“We’re so caught up in things that aren’t basic education that we keep falling in state rankings.”
(Last month, the Washington State Standard reported that Washington’s education had fallen from 27th in the nation to 31st.)
AARON CROFT, 48, INDEPENDENT
Across all legislative races in Spokane County, Aaron Croft is one of two candidates who identify as independent.
He says that distinction is important as he believes the tribalism the two-party system has fostered prevents action in the state Capitol.
“We lose out when we keep sending these reliable ‘no’ votes to Olympia,” Croft says, referring to the Republican minority members who vote along party lines.
Croft says the skills he picked up in his 22-year Air Force experience, which ended at Fairchild Air Force Base, will make him an effective representative if voters choose him.
As someone in the middle, he thinks he’ll be able to listen to voters in the district while working more closely with the state’s Democratic majority.
Healthcare and the cost of living are among Croft’s biggest priorities, but he also thinks whoever is elected in this race needs to work to turn down the temperature in the Legislature.
“We have to be able to work across the aisle, so we can get back to that exchange of ideas this country was built on,” he says.
For healthcare, Croft supports automatic enrollment in the state’s basic health plan (with the ability to opt-out), strengthening the Washington Health Care Cost Transparency Board’s authority to keep excessive costs in check, and providing more incentives for rural providers in Eastern Washington.
JONATHAN BINGLE, 39, REPUBLICAN
Before Rogers High School graduate Jonathan Bingle ever endeavored for political office, he co-founded a church (now called Genesis Church) with his father and started an event company after launching Bent Trivia nights.
Yet once the pandemic began, Washington state shut down nonessential businesses, which included Bingle’s Bent Events.
“We had a very big thriving business.
We were buying office space in the Flour Mill.
You know, we had 13 employees.
We had three franchises that we were starting up,” Bingle says, “and then overnight, with the swipe of a pen, that was basically taken away from me and my family.”
That inspired his run for Spokane City Council in 2021, in which he received 1,300 more votes than his competitor Naghmana Sherazi.
However, he came up short in his bid for reelection against Sarah Dixit last year, losing by about 150 votes.
Soon after Rep.
Graham announced in February that she wouldn’t run for the seat again, Bingle announced he’d try.
Bingle says his top priorities are to reduce government regulations, spending and taxes and to invest further in public safety infrastructure.
“I would work hard to repeal the income tax that was just passed.
I would work hard to repeal the Climate Commitment Act, and in general just reduce the size and the scope of government because we have plenty of money coming in,” he says, adding later that he wants to drastically reduce spending for homelessness services in the state, too.
JULIA PAYNE, 45, DEMOCRAT
Julia Payne knows she’s fighting an uphill battle as a Democrat in the 6th District, but that has not deterred her.
A Medical Lake High School graduate, Payne has volunteered with Spokane Pride and Spokane AIDS Network for more than a decade, serving as Pride’s vice president for a year in 2023 and spending the rest of her time taking care of her kids while bouncing between jobs.
“After I got connected with Planned Parenthood, I went to the Capitol for three years on their lobby days,” Payne says.
“So, I would go and it was extremely frustrating to me that I traveled clear across the state, stayed overnight, left my family behind, all of this for a 15-minute appointment that more often than not, the representatives canceled at the last minute or said they couldn’t make it to.”
Being more available to voters is just one reason she’s running for Graham’s open seat.
One of Payne’s top priorities is to reevaluate how the state approaches accessibility for those with disabilities.
She argues legislators should move to a more responsive approach, rather than a blanket approach.
“As a wheelchair-user, I need a little more space in the main thoroughfares and whatever office I’m in, but that doesn’t mean that everybody’s office has to be wheelchair accessible.
At least one bathroom needs to be accessible to me, but not every bathroom has to be accessible to me,” she explains.
“A lot of Spokane is historic buildings, and we need to take that into account when we start talking about accessibility.”
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