With I‑1125 defeated, we can now add another entry to Tim Eyman’s Failure Chart

Thanks to vot­ers, Tim Eyman’s Fail­ure Chart has just become more impressive.

As long­time read­ers know, we main­tain a page over at Per­ma­nent Defense which serves as a com­pendi­um of Tim Eyman’s record of spon­sor­ing ini­tia­tives. We call it Tim Eyman’s Fail­ure Chart because most of Tim’s ini­tia­tives — like I‑1125 — have been fail­ures. As of today, the chart com­pris­es six­teen ini­tia­tives, four­teen of which are clas­si­fied as fail­ures. The four­teen failed ini­tia­tives fall into four categories:

• Two were par­tial­ly void­ed by the Leg­is­la­ture or the Supreme Court (I‑776, neu­tral­ized by jus­tices, and I‑960, sus­pend­ed by lawmakers);
• Three have been thrown out in their entire­ty as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al by the state Supreme Court (I‑695, I‑722, I‑747);
• Five have failed to qual­i­fy for the bal­lot (I‑267, I‑807, I‑864, I‑917, R‑65);
• … and now a total of five have been reject­ed by vot­ers (I‑745, I‑892, I‑985, I‑1033, I‑1125).

The two ini­tia­tives we cur­rent­ly clas­si­fy as suc­cess­es are I‑900 (from 2005) and I‑1053 (from last year). Now that we have suc­cess­ful­ly beat­en I‑1125, restor­ing major­i­ty rule to Wash­ing­ton’s state­house will become Per­ma­nent Defense’s most impor­tant short-term objec­tive, in addi­tion to our most impor­tant long-term objec­tive. In three months, Per­ma­nent Defense will be cel­e­brat­ing its tenth anniver­sary. It’s hard to believe PD will soon be a decade old!

There is cur­rent­ly a law­suit against I‑1053 pend­ing in King Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court, but that case could take some time to resolve. In the inter­im, it’s like­ly that Tim Eyman will attempt to get an I‑1053 clone on the 2012 ballot.

Eyman still has debt out­stand­ing from the I‑1053 cam­paign, as he him­self remind­ed his sup­port­ers this week, but all he needs is one wealthy bene­fac­tor to fill his cof­fers with cash, and he can be in busi­ness, as he proved this year with I‑1125, which was under­writ­ten by Belle­vue Square own­er Kem­per Free­man, Jr.

Eyman could not have got­ten I‑1053 on the bal­lot in 2010 with­out help from the likes of BP, Tesoro, Shell, Cono­coPhillips, JPMor­gan Chase, Bank of Amer­i­ca, Wells Far­go, and U.S. Bank. I‑1053 was on the verge of falling apart before the Asso­ci­a­tion of Wash­ing­ton Busi­ness began fundrais­ing from cor­po­rate lob­by­ists on Eyman’s behalf. Three of the afore­men­tioned oil com­pa­nies gave so much to I‑1053 that they made it into the list of Tim Eyman’s top ten all time wealthy bene­fac­tors.

Although I‑1125 is now clear­ly head­ed for defeat, I’ve yet to see a sto­ry ask­ing, “Is Tim Eyman fin­ished?”, as in past years. And that’s prob­a­bly because the nov­el­ty of Eyman los­ing at the bal­lot has worn off.

Every­one seems to com­pre­hend that Eyman will be back ped­dling anoth­er scheme before long, despite los­ing this year. He’s relentless.

For­tu­nate­ly, so are we.

We’ve been doing our best to put a stop to Tim Eyman’s harm­ful ini­tia­tives for near­ly ten years, and we will con­tin­ue fight­ing the good fight in the years ahead. We haven’t always come out ahead in every bat­tle we’ve fought, but we have made a dif­fer­ence. Pri­or to Per­ma­nent Defense’s found­ing in 2002, Tim Eyman had got­ten harm­ful ini­tia­tives past vot­ers for three years in a row (all of which, inci­den­tal­ly, were strick­en by the state Supreme Court).

But since Per­ma­nent Defense’s found­ing, Eyman has not had any con­sec­u­tive wins. Think about that.

Of course, Eyman only needs to suc­ceed every once in a while to remain rel­e­vant. But it has got­ten hard­er for Eyman to gain traction.

More and more Wash­ing­to­ni­ans have begun to real­ize that he is a snake oil sales­man who does­n’t care about our state’s well-being. And so more and more of his ini­tia­tives are fail­ing at an ear­li­er stage.

Sad­ly, in the years ahead, it may be that Tim Eyman will be the least of our prob­lems. Cost­co has just proved that elec­tions can be bought by spend­ing gigan­tic sums of mon­ey, set­ting the stage for fur­ther abuse and manip­u­la­tion of our state’s ini­tia­tive process by pow­er­ful corporations.

Pro­gres­sives need to make address­ing this very seri­ous prob­lem a top pri­or­i­ty, or Wash­ing­ton’s qual­i­ty of life will take an even more seri­ous hit.