John Waite is one of the few candidates in memory to make mental health part of his platform. It is courageous because many people are afraid of mental health issues because they don’t take the time to understand what mental illness is or how it affects our community. Ignorance of mental health and how it works has had devastating results all over the country and certainly in Spokane. Thankfully, here people began to push back after the Otto Zehm tragedy.
Kelly: Why is the mental health issue so important to you?
John: I have family and friends that have dealt with these problems. It’s life altering and it’s destructive. I think our system doesn’t deal with it well. I think our city and our county and our state don’t deal with this well. There are people who are disenfranchised who don’t have a voice to speak for themselves. Working downtown for 35 years, a bunch of my friends and family have worked for Spokane Mental Health. Watching them be, like, slowly eroded is crushing. Watching people walk around dealing with their issues, but they don’t have the resources, and the infrastructure needed to deal with those problems. Having people trying to self-report when things are going really bad, but the system’s not even built to take them.
Kelly: You talk a lot about fiscal management in government. In the past, candidates with those similar interests were probably those ones interested in cutting budgets for mental health. How do you rectify that to voters you might otherwise appeal to? What is your plan fiscally for that?
John: I’m not looking to cut mental health plans, or those kind of budgets. When I say I want to be efficient, let me talk about, for example, safety and policemen and fire. It’s been shown if you spend the money proactively ahead of a problem, then you save money in the long run. When I say fiscally responsible it means I want to spend money in smart ways and appropriate ways so that you’re getting the most out of it to help the most people. If you want to fix the budget for example: Do I want to pay an assistant fire chief $250,000? The answer is, no, I don’t. Do I want to set up money allocated for mental health services proactively so people can call in on the phone and save the whole system thousands of dollars on that interaction on that person? Yes, I do.
Kelly: You’re more about preventative care.
John: Yeah. I think it’s been proven that a lot of fire and police and criminal issues can be prevented if we get ahead of them. Like, the war on drugs has never worked, it’s foolish and there’s better ways to do it. But there’s a lot of sectors of government that have poured millions upon millions of dollars into a war on drugs because it helps them financially be in power, and it helps their buddies make a lot of money. Those buddies donate money to their campaign.
Kelly: For the next question – as a leader, you say in order for Spokane to be sustainable economically, you say you want more innovation in Spokane and you want to bring in new money, outside money. What do you mean “outside money?”
John: As an example, Seattle is booming. Seattle is one of the most amazing economies in the whole world, not just in America, not just in Washington state. But Seattle has some really big companies. What those companies do is bring in outside money, like Amazon, Microsoft and Boeing. There’s more, too. Spokane has never done a really good job with that. We’ve never really had the tools and opportunity. We do have the tools now and we’re starting to do that now. I know a ton of crafty, smart, tech and digital kind of people that want to have businesses and they want to have them here in Spokane. So you need the kind of people at City Hall who understand that kind of future, what the future’s going to be like in the 21st century. Do you want a city that’s just doing services and retail and making minimum wage, or do you want a city where we’re bringing in money, where someone in Mongolia is buying our digital tech project? Where somebody in China is buying our medical service projects and ideas? Somebody in England is having a web company develop our app? So that’s bringing the money from the outside. So the other part of sustainability and being local is trying reiterate to people when you spend locally and you spend your money in your local community the numbers dictate that the money stays here to be spent in your local community. If you spend money on Amazon, that goes away and your money leaves your community. It does not create jobs in your community.
Kelly: Can you explain your previous opposition to the bridge that they’re putting in to renovate East Sprague?
John: I’m not opposed to the bridge, I’m opposed to the cost of the bridge. I love the bridge – connecting those communities is no problem. But it should not be a 16 or 18 million dollar bridge. It is a very fancy bridge. It’s not an efficient bridge in terms of cost in my opinion. There’s a cost for anything. You could go out and buy a fairly nice car for 15,000 dollars that works well and does work required for what you need, or you can go out and get a Hummer 2. It’d be a really fun, cool car, really neat, to spend that money on the Hummer 2, but then you have to pay for the maintenance of the Hummer 2 as well.
Kelly: So you have seen the plans for the bridge?
John: Oh yeah. The costs for the bridge are design costs. They built a very fancy art bridge. I’ve been following this bridge story for ten years now. I’m not opposed to the bridge, I’m a proponent of the bridge. Another thing people are confused about is my stance on the the city line for the STA. I just want the city line to be comfortable and price appropriate.
Kelly: In the past, you are known for the way you dress, (starts to laugh)
John: Efficiently, fiscally, frugally? (smiles)
Kelly: People today, when they’re choosing their leaders – Professor Patricia Chantrill over at Eastern Washington University has written about how Abraham Lincoln wouldn’t get elected today…
John: Right.
Kelly: …because he was a very plain, common dressing person.
John: Gotta love that guy. Gotta love that.
Kelly: And the way they take people apart based on what they wear in the media, even though he was really serious minded, he would never get elected.
John: Right.
Kelly: And now we think of him as one of the most interesting presidents, who accomplished quite a lot.
John: Right.
Kelly: How much do you think the way you’ve conducted yourself with regards to political fashion will affect your campaign as a leader?
John: I’m sure there is a segment of people that will effect and they will be like, what’s wrong with that guy? I’m not gonna vote for him. It’s important for them to look at what you are wearing and how you look. When I go to campaigns, I wear, you know, nice pants, dress appropriately. I don’t wear a tie. Ties are this ridiculous symbol of oppression to me. I don’t even own a tie.
Kelly: I know you don’t.
John: It’s foolish to say you’re getting the best candidate based on their looks and their marketing. If that’s what people really want, I’m not going to do that, I’m going to be honest. We just did that League of Women Voters Forum. I think it went very well for me. I did the NAACP forum. I think I appeal to real people. The question is, can I get real people to vote for me? Because real people don’t always vote.
Kelly: What Frank Herbert said was that Nixon was better for our country than Kennedy, because Kennedy won on charisma. He was a young leader, he was idealistic, he wanted to change the nation. People may have ignored dangerous things he chose because they were caught up in his vision, whereas Nixon showed us you can’t trust political leaders, woke the country up. Nixon showed there’s a certain level of skepticism we should have when we choose our leaders.
John: Absolutely. But the skepticism can’t be like, you know, it’s not fair to beat up on a politician for being charismatic, because that’s what they are, they can’t help themselves. But it’s also not fair and more rightly for wearing the wrong color of suit. Obama wore a tan suit. I thought it was great. I didn’t realize in the universe of serious voters that was important. But you know what, if that’s a requirement, if I’m not allowed to run for political office because I don’t wear a tie, maybe I won’t win then because I don’t wear a tie.
Kelly: Some people might say, well, what about showing respect for that tradition?
John: I think a lot of our traditions are fraught in old imperialism. Do I want to fulfill a tradition or reach people that need real change in their lives? I want to help people. I don’t want to impress people.
Kelly: How do we treat our leaders as human beings? Like, recently there was the Martin Luther King film, “Selma,” that showed that aspect of all the great things he did and also his challenges as a person,
John: He’s not perfect.
Kelly Right, he’s not being perfect, but he did all those same things. How do we see them as human beings and still see leaders as having integrity?
John: We don’t. We don’t see our leaders as human beings. I’m not a human being right now to you. I’m like a political thing to you now, right?
Kelly: No.
John: It’s a hard world. The modern world is very confusing. We don’t treat them as real people. We treat them as political units of exchange. But I think that’s a very valid question about how our world is. As things fall apart, governments aren’t doing a good job, business is not doing a good job, corporations are not doing a good job. We’re running out of water. We’re burning our fossil fuels and destroying our atmosphere. It’s gonna be 120 degrees in August. Maybe I’m wrong.
Kelly: So how do you hold yourself accountable as a leader? What if you make a mistake?
John: I’m good at saying if I’ve made a mistake. One of the secrets of being a good business person is being brutally honest with yourself. So when you make a mistake or you do something wrong, you say is this the right thing to do? So you have to do the right thing. This week we had a huge issue with the local bars. I felt like it was important to talk about the issue. You can look on my Facebook page and see all the dirty grimy details if you want. I consider myself very honest and ethical and I don’t lie at all. If possible I try to tell people what I think is really going to happen as opposed to what they want to hear. That is not a good political strategy. Maybe I’m not a good politician. Maybe I’ll never get elected. But at least I can walk around with my head held high. I could probably have told people what they wanted to hear and have gotten endorsements and donations and help with this campaign that would have pushed me over the edge to win. But I won’t do that, because when I wake up in the morning I wouldn’t be able to look at myself in the mirror and I’m not willing to do that.
Kelly: Do you have future plans for running for office if you win?
John: No. I can’t say I would or I wouldn’t run again. I just can say I don’t have any plans. Maybe I want to be president. I want to add, that I think that leadership is an organic thing.
Kelly: Organic, that’s one of your favorite campaign buzz words. That and vibrancy. I noticed other candidates using vibrancy as a catch phrase after you did.
John: I like Lori, but I did use the word first. I like LaVerne, too. I just thought it was funny. In a friendly snarky way I was saying, hey, who is stealing all my stuff? When I ran before, and was a small business person, the same thing happened. I ran against Mike Fagan before. Suddenly everyone else was a small business candidate. I really am.
Kelly: You’ve become a democrat after being an independent for awhile. I’m sure a lot of people would like to know how you made that choice.
John: I don’t like the political system in the United States (the bi-partisan system). I’ve been all over the world. Other countries have multiple parties and they have coalition governments and they’re required to work together. Whereas we really have just two parties in America. I mean, there’s Greens, and there’s Libertarians and there’s Socialists, but they’re very rarely on the ballot to win any elections. So I fought that battle and I fought the system. I ran independent and got beat up for it and was told by both Republicans and Democrats that if I ran as one of their parties I’d probably get elected. And this last time I was like, this might be my last shot to run. This is basically my whole life for six months. As you well know I’ve done nothing else but this and probably won’t. It’s a ton of work. It’s a ton of sacrifice. And I thought, you know, I am akin with the Democrats and their values. And the fact I don’t like the two party system shouldn’t keep me from office. So it was a practical decision.
Kelly: Do you think good leaders are being overlooked or going unseen and unheard because of the marketing and advertising industry?
John: Absolutely. The best people you could think of would probably be like teachers, and professors, and the best of policemen and firemen and doctors. They would never run. They wouldn’t put themselves through the system.
Kelly: So you’re going to be on the City Council, and we’ve had all this going with the OPO. What would you do in our community to help promote healing after these events in the past months?
John: We need to rebuild the ombudsman commission and have people on it who have the best interests of the community, that are motivated. And I don’t want to say what the motivations were of the people who were recently on it who are gone now, but we need a way to discern people are here for the right reasons, or if they’re here for political gain or personal gain. You have to have an ombudsman. I think the city has really dropped the ball in the passed few years to fulfill a rare mandate – I don’t like to use the word mandate – but when the people of Spokane, almost 70 % of the people in Spokane in their thinking voted for an ombudsman with independent authority, and the ability to do its own investigative effort, that is a mandate. You need a mayor and a city council who are doing everything to fulfill those needs and that is not happening. It’s my goal to make that happen. That’s a goal I have that I think you won’t find in any other candidate.
Kelly: So what are issues you would address in your district that are important?
John: Some of the needs of my district are the same needs of the whole city. I want concrete effort to fix the roads and fix the potholes. And that’s not a funny joke. Some of the potholes in Spokane are so destructive it’s devastating to drive down these streets. I’m going to assemble a group, a task force of volunteers so it shouldn’t cost money, scour the internet and find out how cities who have traffic similar to ours make better roads. How do places in Europe make roads that are better, safer and cheaper?
Kelly: Do you think you’d work with Futurewise and Complete Streets and Kitty Klitzke to make that task force?
John: Sure.
Kelly: Do you have anything further to say about leadership?
John: Transparency is really important to good leadership. I think Smart Justice is one of the best tools for our community. As leaders we need to be proactive when it comes to serving our community. We also want innovation for economic vibrancy.
I thanked John for the interview and went from the cool comfort of the Saranac to the morning downtown city streets that were already hot. He has several signs up decorating his store and the buildings he owns. But I did not see many other signs for him on Main, which he said he helped build up with Jim Sheehan.
