Congressional candidate Ben Stuckart is snoring from the back seat of his campaign manager’s SUV. We wind through the rolling green and brown hills of Eastern Washington, passing livestock, farmhouses, two big Trump/Pence banners, and one homemade red-and-white sign that reads, “Hey crooked news media, stop lying to us.”
When he wakes up, Stuckart stares out the window. “That’s a mangy cow,” he mutters out of nowhere. Soon we arrive in Pomeroy, a dusty time capsule that’s home to 1,425 people.
Stuckart, the 45-year-old two-term progressive president of the Spokane City Council, is hoping to unseat six-term Republican congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a staunch defender of President Donald Trump who consistently wins 60 percent victories in her Eastern Washington district. No Democrat has held her seat since 1994. Stuckart wants to change that, so he’s in Pomeroy a full 19 months before the 2018 election.
