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Northwest Spokanites have three choices for city council in year's only competitive primary

Candidate Interviews: Cody Arguelles
Candidate Interviews: Zack Zappone
Candidate Interviews: Christopher Savage

On this week's Inland Journal, we meet the three candidates running for a Spokane City Council seat in District 3.

Incumbent Zack Zappone sat down with SPR's Owen Henderson to talk about his first term on council and why he's running again.

SPR's Eliza Billingham interviewed Zappone's two challengers: Christopher Savage and Cody Arguelles.

Savage is a business courier who also represents the Balboa/South Indian Trail Neighborhood on the Community Assembly. He's a frequent City Council attendee and no stranger to the local election process.

Meanwhile, Arguelles is a retired Air Force survival instructor who moved to Spokane five years ago. He's preparing to open a cigar lounge in town.

The top two candidates in the August primary election will advance to the general election in November.

Next week, SPR's Doug Nadvornick will talk with the two candidates in District 1: sitting Councilmember Jonathan Bingle and his challenger, Sarah Dixit.

In two weeks, we'll conclude our series as we meet Alejandro Barrientos and Kate Telis—the two candidates running for the seat left vacant after the early departure of Lili Navarrete in District 2.

Eliza Billingham is a full-time news reporter for SPR. She earned her master’s degree in journalism from Boston University, where she was selected as a fellow with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting to cover an illegal drug addiction treatment center in Hanoi, Vietnam. She’s spent her professional career in Spokane, covering everything from rent crises and ranching techniques to City Council and sober bartenders. Originally from the Chicago suburbs, she’s lived in Vietnam, Austria and Jerusalem and will always be a slow runner and a theology nerd.

Owen Henderson hosts Morning Edition for SPR News, but after he gets off the air each day, he's reporting stories with the rest of the team. Owen a 2023 graduate of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he studied journalism with minors in Spanish and theater. Before joining the SPR newsroom, he worked as the Weekend Edition host for Illinois Public Media, as well as reporting on the arts and LGBTQ+ issues.