Only three statewide initiatives likely to show up on Washington’s November 2014 ballot

As of next Sat­ur­day, we will be one month ahead of the August Top Two elec­tion and four months ahead of the Novem­ber gen­er­al elec­tion, which this year fall on the fifth days of each month. Because July 5th is a Sat­ur­day, and because July 4th is a hol­i­day, that means the dead­line for sub­mit­ting sig­na­tures for an ini­tia­tive to the peo­ple is July 3rd — one week from today, at 5 PM sharp.

So far, accord­ing to the Sec­re­tary of State’s office, only two cam­paigns have made appoint­ments to turn in sig­na­tures. The I‑1351 cam­paign, spear­head­ed by the Wash­ing­ton Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion, plans to turn in sig­na­tures for their Class Size Counts ini­tia­tive on Wednes­day, July 2nd at 10:30 AM. The I‑1329 cam­paign, backed by WAmend, is plan­ning to come in on Thurs­day, July 3rd at 2 PM.

The Sec­re­tary of State’s office lists five oth­er ini­tia­tives as in the sig­na­ture gath­er­ing stage, includ­ing Tim Eyman’s I‑1325, which NPI strong­ly opposes.

Eyman launched I‑1325 back in Jan­u­ary and has been attempt­ing to gath­er sig­na­tures for over five months. In years past, he has made an appoint­ment to turn in sig­na­tures by now, but he has­n’t done so this time, pre­sum­ably because he is well short of the num­ber he needs to qual­i­fy I‑1325.

Eyman’s fail­ure to make an appoint­ment is anoth­er indi­ca­tion that I‑1325 is on the verge of fail­ing. On Tues­day, NPI’s Per­ma­nent Defense released its assess­ment of the I‑1325 sig­na­ture dri­ve, after hav­ing made a sig­nif­i­cant effort to track it for many months. The assess­ment con­clud­ed that Eyman’s fail­ure to find a wealthy bene­fac­tor to pour mon­ey into his cof­fers had doomed I‑1325.

Eyman has been reliant on paid sig­na­ture gath­er­ing crews to get onto the bal­lot for near­ly his entire career in pol­i­tics. His ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry sim­ply can’t oper­ate with­out big bucks. Eyman goes to great lengths to pre­tend that that he is the leader of some big con­ser­v­a­tive grass­roots net­work, but the real­i­ty is, he’d have been out of busi­ness long ago were it not for rich back­ers like Michael Dun­mire, Kem­per Free­man, Jr., British Petro­le­um (BP), Cono­coPhillips, and Tesoro.

I‑1325’s demise would be a big deal; it would guar­an­tee an Eyman-free Novem­ber for the first time in eight years, which would be a very good thing for Wash­ing­ton. Amus­ing­ly, in 2006, Eyman had the mon­ey to buy his way onto the bal­lot, but his cam­paign came up short due to his own incompetence.

There’s only been one oth­er year in which Eyman did­n’t make the bal­lot because he did­n’t have a wealthy bene­fac­tor. That was 2003, when he tried to qual­i­fy I‑807, the first of his I‑601 clones. 2003 was also the year that NPI was founded.

With no Eyman ini­tia­tive and no statewide race for elect­ed office, the 2014 bal­lot will look very dif­fer­ent than that of past elec­tion cycles.

There are already two ini­tia­tives head­ed for the Novem­ber bal­lot, and both per­tain to guns: I‑591 and I‑594. NPI oppos­es the for­mer and sup­ports the latter.

The two ini­tia­tives are basi­cal­ly the inverse of each oth­er. I‑594, backed by the Wash­ing­ton Alliance for Gun Respon­si­bil­i­ty, would require back­ground checks for pri­vate gun sales, includ­ing guns sold at gun shows and over the Inter­net. I‑591 would pre­vent back­ground checks from being expand­ed beyond what fed­er­al law requires, thus keep­ing the gun show and Inter­net loop­holes in place.

The Class Size Counts cam­paign is like­ly to make the bal­lot as well; it’s well orga­nized and we hear it is with­in reach of its sig­na­ture gath­er­ing goals. Though the back­ers of I‑1329 have made an appoint­ment to turn in sig­na­tures, as of last week, they had not yet gath­ered half of what they need to make the ballot.

It had seemed ear­li­er this month that a fourth ini­tia­tive, I‑1356, would also be head­ed to the bal­lot. Backed by the Fred Hutchi­son Can­cer Research Cen­ter, the Seat­tle Can­cer Care Alliance, and Seat­tle Chil­dren’s, I‑1356 would have raised tobac­co tax­es and sold bonds to finance can­cer research.

State Trea­sur­er Jim McIn­tire expressed seri­ous con­cerns with the ini­tia­tive, and the spon­sor­ing orga­ni­za­tions ulti­mate­ly decid­ed to pull the plug, despite hav­ing spent hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars on sig­na­ture gathering.

The demise of I‑1356, I‑1351, and I‑1325 means that we’ll like­ly be see­ing just three ini­tia­tives on our bal­lot: one relat­ed to class size and two to guns. No ref­er­en­da or con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments will appear on the bal­lot. Aside from the debate over back­ground checks on gun sales, the focus is like­ly to be on the state Sen­ate races. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty is mount­ing a major effort to retake the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate, which Rod­ney Tom and Tim Shel­don hand­ed to the Repub­li­cans fol­low­ing the 2012 pres­i­den­tial election.

The Democ­rats need to win two of the com­pet­i­tive Sen­ate races to claim an out­right major­i­ty. Tim Shel­don is seek­ing reelec­tion, but Rod­ney Tom has bowed out in NPI’s home dis­trict. As we have pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed, his seat is almost cer­tain to be won by Demo­c­ra­t­ic ris­ing star Cyrus Habib. Habib faces only token opposition.

Democ­rats are going after sev­er­al Repub­li­can incum­bents with strong can­di­dates: Matt Isen­how­er is chal­leng­ing Andy Hill in the 45th, Tami Green is going after Steve O’Ban in the 28th, and Rich Cow­an is run­ning against Michael Baum­gart­ner in the 5th. Else­where, Judy Arbo­gast is chal­leng­ing Jan Angel in the 26th, Irene Bowl­ing is step­ping up against Shel­don in the 35th, and Seth Fleet­wood is try­ing to knock out Doug Erick­sen in the 42nd. Repub­li­cans, mean­while, are hop­ing to cap­ture the 30th with Mark Milos­cia, while Democ­rats are try­ing to retain it with Shari Song.