14-05-2025
Retired Air Force SERE instructor, cigar lounge owner Cody Arguelles running for Spokane City Council
May 13—Private downtown cigar lounge co-owner Cody Arguelles — who's also an architecture student at Washington State University and medically retired survival, evasion, resistance and escape instructor for the U.S. Air Force — is running for Spokane City Council for a seat held by Councilman Zack Zappone.
Zappone is one of two council members representing council District 3, which covers the northwestern third of the city stretching north from the Spokane River and west of Division Street, and after redistricting in 2022 also includes Browne's Addition. Councilwoman Kitty Klitzke is the district's other representative, and her term runs through 2027.
A third candidate, Meals on Wheels board member Christopher Savage, is also running for the seat.
A relative newcomer to the city with no prior political or government experience, Arguelles believes Spokane is in a "downhill spiral" and that the current council and city administration need to be held accountable to measurable metrics for improving homelessness, public safety and other issues.
"We need to be able to have people on council that are held accountable and they're transparent with where money is going, and that are driven by measurable goals, rather than just saying, 'Hey, here's a four-point plan to fix this,' and then there's no measurable metric," Arguelles said.
After a short bout of homelessness early in his life, Arguelles acknowledged that he needed "compassion and sympathy" to help him back on his feet, but believes that city leadership is addressing the issue by "just throwing out, 'Here's housing,' and then that's it."
Arguelles also believes that the city needs to streamline its system for business permitting, arguing that the red tape he navigated to start his business was onerous and unnecessary.
Arguelles grew up in San Diego and spent the better part of a year couch surfing when he was 18 in the aftermath of his parents' messy divorce. He met a reconnaissance Marine from Camp Pendleton who invited Arguelles to meet his friends and rent out a tool shed for $250 a month, the first stable place he lived out of high school.
"It was a wild experience," Arguelles said. "But thanks to them, they really taught me what it was like to take care of myself. That's what really helped me get off on my two feet and get jobs and become a productive member of society."
Arguelles started a number of small businesses over the years, starting with a coffee roaster in San Diego he launched with a business partner from church and a fully leveraged business credit card. He later sold the operation.
But when COVID-19 hit, it became extremely difficult to run a business in California, Arguelles said.
"I looked at my wife at the time, and we're like, 'What do we do?' " Arguelles said. "And I had always wanted to join the military, since way back in the tool shed area when I was living with a recon Marine."
At the time, Hulu was airing the 2008 reality TV show "Survival School," about the Air Force SERE (survival, evasion, resistance and escape) school out of Fairchild.
"And so that's what I ended up joining the military as," Arguelles said. "And lucky enough, I made it through selection and graduated with my beret, and did a career in the Air Force, and that's what brought me out here to Spokane."
As a SERE specialist, Arguelles trained others in the Air Force who were going out on deployment and ran the risk of being isolated or captured, he said. He served for four years before medically retiring with 100% disability due to injuries sustained during training and service.
Given the housing prices in California, Arguelles' family decided to stay in Spokane, buy a house and look to open a business, he said. He decided to launch the Late Arrival Club, a private cigar lounge that doesn't sell tobacco products but instead offers memberships allowing people to enter into the business, perhaps with friends or clients or a good book, smoke a cigar, maybe crack open a bottle of wine they brought to the club themselves, and take a meeting.
Construction on the business began earlier this month.
"That's kind of what is getting me to want to run, because you see the state of the city right now, and it's always kind of in this downhill track of not being safer, homelessness is getting worse, and with the business and with my family, I want to be able to actually have a part in fixing it, making it better," he said.
Arguelles has attracted the endorsements of some significant figures in Spokane's conservative politics, including former Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward, Sheriff John Nowels and city Councilmen Jonathan Bingle and Michael Cathcart.
