Political firm · composite — 4 spellings of the payee name, merged by us

River Marketing

Disclosed payments to 4 filed spellings of this payee name total $46,079 from 43 candidate committees and 9 political committees, 2021–2026. In 1 case a candidate and an independent-expenditure committee in the same race both paid it; section 03 lists each. A shared vendor is lawful; this page documents disclosed payments and nothing else.

$46,079

disclosed payments

to 4 spellings of the payee name, merged by us · as filed, 2021–2026

52

paying committees

43 candidate, 9 political

1

same-race overlaps

lawful; each listed in section 03 with its gap in days

4

spellings merged

the size of the identity join behind every figure here; section 04

Sources Public Disclosure Commission expenditure filings (tijg-9zyp) · independent-expenditure filings (67cp-h962), data.wa.gov · as of 2026-09-05 · retrieved 2026-09-05 · key payee name as filed, upper-cased, punctuation and corporate suffixes (LLC, Inc, Co…) stripped — a normalised string, not an identifier the PDC issues · tier composite — joined by us on a stated key

01

Who paid this firm

Every paying committee, largest disclosed total first. The total is what that committee reported paying to 4 spellings of the payee name, merged by us; where a committee has a page here, its name links to it.

Committees that reported paying River Marketing, by disclosed total
Paid by Kind Cycles Disclosed payments
Brad Benton — STATE SENATOR, LEG DISTRICT 18 – SENATE candidate committee 2024 $3,525
MICHAEL CATHCART (Michael Cathcart) — COUNTY COMMISSIONER, SPOKANE CO candidate committee 2022 $3,350
James Michael Volz (Mike Volz) — STATE REPRESENTATIVE, LEG DISTRICT 06 – HOUSE candidate committee 2024 $3,071
MICHAEL CATHCART (Michael Cathcart) — CITY COUNCIL MEMBER, CITY OF SPOKANE candidate committee 2023 $2,300
Pamela J Haley (Pam Haley) — STATE SENATOR, LEG DISTRICT 04 – SENATE candidate committee 2024 $2,000
Deanna K Crull — DISTRICT COURT JUDGE, SPOKANE CO DIST CT-SPOKANE candidate committee 2022 $1,950
Laura Padden — CITY COUNCIL MEMBER, CITY OF SPOKANE VALLEY candidate committee 2021 $1,883
SPOKANE HOME BUILDERS ASSOCIATION PAC political committee 2022 $1,817
Laura Padden — CITY COUNCIL MEMBER, CITY OF SPOKANE VALLEY candidate committee 2025 $1,558
Preston McCollam — COUNTY PROSECUTOR, SPOKANE CO candidate committee 2026 $1,476
Robert Rosencrantz — COUNTY COMMISSIONER, PEND OREILLE CO candidate committee 2022 $1,133
Tim Woodworth — SCHOOL DIRECTOR, MEAD SD 354 candidate committee 2025 $1,051
MICHAEL CATHCART (Michael Cathcart) — COUNTY AUDITOR, SPOKANE CO candidate committee 2026 $1,050
James Michael Volz (Mike Volz) — COUNTY TREASURER, SPOKANE CO candidate committee 2026 $1,000
Citizens for Responsible Transit political committee 2026 $941
Scotty Nicol — STATE REPRESENTATIVE, LEG DISTRICT 03 – HOUSE candidate committee 2022 $866
Committee to Hold Elected Officials Accountable/Common Sense PAC (Committee to HEOA-Common Sense) political committee 2025 $858
Jennifer Killman — SCHOOL DIRECTOR, MEAD SD 354 candidate committee 2023 $850
Joshua D Kerns (Josh Kerns) — COUNTY COMMISSIONER, SPOKANE CO candidate committee 2022 $800
James Michael Volz (Mike Volz) — STATE REPRESENTATIVE, LEG DISTRICT 06 – HOUSE candidate committee 2022 $791
Bob McCaslin — COUNTY AUDITOR, SPOKANE CO candidate committee 2022 $775
David Andrew Engell Jr (Andrew Engell) — STATE REPRESENTATIVE, LEG DISTRICT 07 – HOUSE candidate committee 2024 $750
Alan Nolan — SCHOOL DIRECTOR, MEAD SD 354 candidate committee 2023 $733
JEFFREY M HOLY (Jeff Holy) — STATE SENATOR, LEG DISTRICT 06 – SENATE candidate committee 2026 $709
WA Freedom PAC political committee 2022 $700
Vincent Joseph Barthels (Vincent Barthels) — CITY COUNCIL MEMBER, CITY OF CHENEY candidate committee 2023 $675
Robert S Chase (Rob Chase) — STATE REPRESENTATIVE, LEG DISTRICT 04 – HOUSE candidate committee 2024 $633
BENTON DONALD M (Don Benton) — COUNTY COUNCIL MEMBER, CLARK CO candidate committee 2022 $550
Jobs for Justice political committee 2023 $550
Kim T. Plese (Kim Plese) — CITY COUNCIL PRESIDENT, CITY OF SPOKANE candidate committee 2023 $500
Daryl Geffken — SCHOOL DIRECTOR, SPOKANE SD 081 candidate committee 2021 $500
Al French — COUNTY COMMISSIONER, SPOKANE CO candidate committee 2024 $500
Committee to Hold Elected Officials Accountable/Common Sense PAC (Committee to HEOA-Common Sense) political committee 2026 $490
Pamela J Haley — CITY COUNCIL MEMBER, CITY OF SPOKANE VALLEY candidate committee 2021 $483
SPOKANE HOME BUILDERS ASSOCIATION PAC political committee 2023 $483
John Frederick Nowels (John F. Nowels) — COUNTY SHERIFF, SPOKANE CO candidate committee 2022 $431
Larry Haskell (LARRY HASKELL) — COUNTY PROSECUTOR, SPOKANE CO candidate committee 2022 $425
Robert S Chase (Rob Chase) — STATE REPRESENTATIVE, LEG DISTRICT 04 – HOUSE candidate committee 2022 $400
Suzanne Annette Schmidt (Suzanne Schmidt) — STATE REPRESENTATIVE, LEG DISTRICT 04 – HOUSE candidate committee 2024 $400
Suzanne Annette Schmidt (Suzanne Schmidt) — STATE REPRESENTATIVE, LEG DISTRICT 04 – HOUSE candidate committee 2022 $350
Pamela J Haley (Pam Haley) — CITY COUNCIL MEMBER, CITY OF SPOKANE VALLEY candidate committee 2025 $327
Michael Andrew Lish (Mike Lish) — CITY COUNCIL MEMBER, CITY OF SPOKANE candidate committee 2021 $300
Timothy Steiner — CITY COUNCIL MEMBER, CITY OF CHENEY candidate committee 2025 $286
BrieAnne Gray — SCHOOL DIRECTOR, MEAD SD 354 candidate committee 2021 $275
JONATHAN BINGLE (BINGLE JONATHAN D) — CITY COUNCIL MEMBER, CITY OF SPOKANE candidate committee 2021 $248
Cody Arguelles — CITY COUNCIL MEMBER, CITY OF SPOKANE candidate committee 2025 $225
JONATHAN BINGLE (Jonathan D Bingle) — CITY COUNCIL MEMBER, CITY OF SPOKANE candidate committee 2025 $225
David Andrew Engell Jr (Andrew Engell) — STATE REPRESENTATIVE, LEG DISTRICT 07 – HOUSE candidate committee 2026 $203
WA ST REPUB PARTY NON EXEMPT political committee 2021 $200
Rod Higgins — CITY COUNCIL MEMBER, CITY OF SPOKANE VALLEY candidate committee 2021 $200
JEFFREY M HOLY (JEFF HOLY) — STATE SENATOR, LEG DISTRICT 06 – SENATE candidate committee 2022 $183
Senate Republican Campaign Committee (SRCC) political committee 2022 $100

Source Public Disclosure Commission expenditure filings (tijg-9zyp), 2021–2026 · as of 2026-09-05 · rows 52 · retrieved 2026-09-05 · key payee name as filed, upper-cased, punctuation and corporate suffixes (LLC, Inc, Co…) stripped — a normalised string, not an identifier the PDC issues · caveat a payment routed through this firm to a subvendor appears here under this firm, as filed

02

Payments by cycle

Disclosed payments to 4 spellings of the payee name, merged by us, by the election year the paying committee filed under. One bar scale; the figure beside each bar is the figure. Odd years are local elections and even years state and federal, so consecutive years are not comparable.

  1. 2021

    local cycle

    $4,089
  2. 2022

    state and federal cycle

    $14,621
  3. 2023

    local cycle

    $6,091
  4. 2024

    state and federal cycle

    $10,879
  5. 2025

    local cycle

    $4,529
  6. 2026

    state and federal cycle

    $5,869

Source Public Disclosure Commission expenditure filings (tijg-9zyp), election_year as filed · as of 2026-09-05 · scale $14,621 = full width · key payee name as filed, upper-cased, punctuation and corporate suffixes (LLC, Inc, Co…) stripped — a normalised string, not an identifier the PDC issues

03

Same race, both sides of the wall

A candidate’s committee and a committee making independent expenditures in that candidate’s race may not coordinate; both may hire the same printer. Each row is a race where both paid this firm, with the days between the last candidate payment and the first independent expenditure, and whether that gap falls inside the twelve-month window in which WAC 390-05-210 presumes coordination unless rebutted. Overlap is lawful. This table is a list of coincidences in public filings, not a finding.

Races in which a candidate committee and an independent-expenditure committee both paid this firm
Year Race Candidate client IE committee client Gap in days In the window Shared officer
2022 COUNTY COMMISSIONER / SPOKANE CO MICHAEL CATHCART (Michael Cathcart) $3,350 SPOKANE HOME BUILDERS ASSOCIATION PAC $1,817 22 yes not checked — only the candidate registration was read

Source Same-race overlap layer over PDC expenditure (tijg-9zyp) and independent-expenditure (67cp-h962) filings; committee registrations for the officer column · as of 2026-09-01 · rows 1 · n 1 inside the twelve-month window · key race = the candidate’s office and jurisdiction as filed; the IE committee’s target is that candidate · caveat overlap is lawful and is not a finding of coordination

04

How these records were merged

The PDC issues no vendor identifier. Every figure on this page is the sum of rows whose payee name normalises to one string: RIVER MARKETING. That is our join, not the state’s, and its size is 4 spellings of the payee name, merged by us.

The key
payee name as filed, upper-cased, punctuation and corporate suffixes (LLC, Inc, Co…) stripped — a normalised string, not an identifier the PDC issues
Spellings merged
  • River Marketing 22 payer-year rows
  • River Marketing LLC 16 payer-year rows
  • RIVER MARKETING 8 payer-year rows
  • RIVER MARKETING LLC 6 payer-year rows
What a wrong merge looks like
Two different firms whose names differ only in a suffix or punctuation would be one row here, and their totals would be added. Two spellings of one firm that differ in a word would be two rows, and this page would be short a spelling. Both errors are ours; neither is in the filings. Corrections are taken at the address in the cite block.
Why this is not a graph node
The entity graph’s vendor nodes are one per disclosed identity and are never merged by name. This profile is the opposite decision, made for reading, and it is kept out of the graph so a merge of ours never becomes an edge.

Source Payee names as filed in PDC expenditure reports, normalised by build-vendors.js · as of 2026-09-05 · n 4 spellings over 52 payer-year rows · tier composite — joined by us on the key above

05

What this page will not compute

A firm page is where a reader expects a verdict about the firm. Each of these would be one, and none follows from payee rows on a form.

No finding of coordination.
Overlap is lawful. A candidate and an independent-expenditure committee hiring the same firm is two contracts, and the twelve-month window in section 03 is a presumption the law lets either party rebut. The table lists the coincidence and stops.
No share of a race.
What fraction of a race’s spending went through this firm would need every committee’s every payment, resolved to the same merge. We do not have that, and a share computed from part of it would be wrong with confidence.
No “network”.
Clients who share a vendor are not connected to each other by that fact. A diagram of them would draw relationships the filings do not record.
No company facts.
This page describes payments to spellings of a name. It does not say what the firm is, who owns it, or what it did for the money; the expenditure description field is not reliable enough to summarise.
No connected-records section.
A merged profile is not a node in the entity graph and draws no edges. The graph’s vendor nodes are one per disclosed identity; this page is deliberately not one of them.

Cite this page

This is public-records reporting. Use it, and say where it came from.

“River Marketing — Washington political firm profile,” WashingtonIndependents.org, data as of 2026-09-05, accessed 2026-09-20. https://washingtonindependents.org/firms/river-marketing/

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Our tables, figures and notes on this page are released under CC BY 4.0 — reuse them, including commercially, with attribution. The underlying records are public records of the State of Washington and were never ours to license.

06

Where this page comes from

Every figure above is read from a primary source and rebuilt on a schedule. Nothing here is modelled or inferred; where a source is silent the page says so rather than filling the gap.

Why this firm has a page
Appears in the same-race overlap layer. Profiles exist for the firms in the independent-expenditures and coordination analysis, not for every payee; a listing is a description of disclosed payments.
Identity
payee name as filed, upper-cased, punctuation and corporate suffixes (LLC, Inc, Co…) stripped — a normalised string, not an identifier the PDC issues This profile merges 4 spellings of the payee name, merged by us; section 04 lists them.
Payments
PDC expenditure filings (tijg-9zyp), election years 2021–2026, summed per paying committee. Amounts as filed; subvendor pass-throughs appear under the reported payee.
Overlaps
the same-race overlap layer over the expenditure and independent-expenditure filings (67cp-h962), as of 2026-09-01. Gap in days is from the last candidate payment to the first independent expenditure; the window is WAC 390-05-210’s twelve months. A shared officer is named only where both committees’ registrations were read.
Retrieved
expenditures 2026-09-05 · independent expenditures 2026-09-05, from data.wa.gov, per the import log.