ZAPPONE in bed with billionaires - yet claims special interest opponents
May 13, 2025
Zack Zappone opened his 2025 re-election bid on social media by insisting, “Special Interests Want to Buy City Council Seats.”
Spokane Council member and candidate for re-election Zack Zappone has begun his campaign with unsubstantiated claims of dark, deep-state forces that he believes are after him. Zappone’s paranoia is not only unsubstantiated, it is dangerous to democracy.
Today, we explore Zappone’s actual connections to special interests that are documentable and deplorable.
In his two previous campaigns, Zappone took $175,000 from political action committees and parties.
This year Zack is on track to increase his total special interest income to $200,000.
Zappone has taken money from special interests that include the pro-abortion “National Abortion Rights Action League”, the anti-Second Amendment “Citizens for Gun Responsibility” and the anti-public teachers activation organization “Leaders in Education” just to name a few.
SPOKANE, Wash – Spokane city council member Zack Zappone has begun his 2025 reelection bid by paying $500 to controversial and New York City-based “Leadership for Educational Equity” (LEE) for “Management and consulting services” on January 30, 2025 according to reporting to the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission.
What is LEE? Glad you asked.
Leadership for Educational Equity (LEE), on its website, states their goal is:
“LEE is a diverse, nonpartisan network of equity-minded leaders at all stages of life and career. We operate as guides to our members in their civic leadership journey providing 1:1 coaching, meaningful member-to-member connections, and skill-building opportunities to support and inspire them to increase equity in communities everywhere – especially for our members who identify as people of color, women, & LGBTQIA+.”
LEE has promoted, “Texas youngest students aren’t getting suspended like they used to …” Zack Zappone is in bed with this “movement”, stating in 2022
“We don't want to exclude [students] from society when they have a behavior issue." - Zack Zappone
Zappone clearly favors young troublemakers over our diligent and hardworking students.
Is it any Surprise to find the NYC LEE Agenda in Zappone’s Spokane Agenda?
Just read The Spokesman-Review’s April 13 Sunday paper with headline, “Spokane council to consider mirroring LGBT+ protections; one member proposes protest amendments” Reporter Emry Dinman writes,
“The original ordinance, sponsored by council members Dillon, Lili Navarrete and Zack Zappone, covers a lot of ground, including adding anti-discrimination language in city code, preventing city resources from being used to investigate or detain an individual for seeking gender-affirming care, and protecting against the release of information about a person’s sex assigned at birth, which largely reflects current state law.”
Zappone wrote in a statement that the amendment would infringe on the rights of transgender and cisgender people.
“For example, how do you plan on enforcing these?” he wrote. “It primes all girls and women for assault because people are going to want to check their private parts before going to the bathroom.” - Zack Zappone
No Zack. Why do you continue to waste our time with legislation that excites your special interest New York City elitist donors? Is this the strategy that you are paying the Bloomberg syndicate for?
Who Funds LEE?
Leadership for Educational Equity (LEE) receives overwhelming funding by Board Member Emma Bloomberg who also serves on the LEE Foundation (a close affiliate organization), Bloomberg Philanthropies, KIPP Foundation, National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, and UndauntedK12.
Emma (also a billionaire) is the daughter of billionaire Michael Bloomberg.
Zack - how about reading this piece in The Progressive, “How Bloomberg Trashed Public Education in New York”, written by a rank-and-file public school teacher in New York city? Art Teacher Jake Jacobs shares,
“Forget about erasers, glue, scissors, painting supplies, charcoal, poster board or technology. I was lucky to have enough copy paper for my students to draw on.”
Speaking of Special Interests (and scandal).
While Zappone decries “special interests”, he has invested his campaign money and placed his campaign leadership trust with a controversial Manhattan-based charter school syndicate funded by billionaires whose escapades are straight from the New York City society pages …
Reported in the New York Post in 2020 with the headline “Mike Bloomberg’s daughter secretly marries disgraced charter school advocate”, Susan Edelman writes,
“Mike Bloomberg’s daughter Emma has married for the second time, quietly tying the knot with Jeremiah Kittredge, the scandal-scarred former CEO of a group that advocated for charter schools, The Post has learned.”
“Kittredge led the once prominent Families for Excellent Schools, which spent nearly $10 million on TV ads and lobbying for charter schools in 2014, after Mayor de Blasio succeeded Bloomberg as Mayor. Kittredge was an outspoken critic of the city’s public schools.”
Last year, the state's Office of Campaign and Political Finance ordered the advocacy arm of “Families for Excellent Schools” (FES) to pay a $425,000 fine — the largest such penalty on record — for practices that masked the source of personal donations to the group.”