As we headed toward this year’s city elections, I asked long-time journalist and Spokane historian Bill Stimson if we could re-publish his ten-part series on Spokane’s political history, “Insiders and & Naysayers.”
The articles were originally published by Camas Magazine in June, 2000, just when Camas and KXLY-TV 
were breaking apart the River Park Square scandal that had thrown the city into a tempest of litigation and finger-pointing. To be sure, “Insiders & Naysayers” was fascinating, then, as a guide to understanding how the traditional battle lines in Spokane politics were complicating the RPS imbroglio. But it’s also just a fascinating tour, from the days of Frederick Post’s flour mill in 1875 to the “City Changes Overnight,” election of 1999 that brought a new generation of “naysayers” to power, however briefly.
Bill was not only more than happy to let us re-publish the series, but wrote a new introduction that offers his current take on what, in 2000, was “a civic controversy the likes of which [Spokane] had never seen before.”
Bill’s introduction and the ten articles have their own cupboard in our Kitchen Table feature section under the “Spokane: A Political History” tab.
–Tim Connor, CFJ Communications Director.
No comments yet.