Tim Eyman once again goes fishing for media coverage, using an obscene image as bait

Tim Eyman may not have an ini­tia­tive on the bal­lot this year, but he has no inten­tion of keep­ing a low pro­file this autumn, as he demon­strat­ed yes­ter­day when he went fish­ing for media cov­er­age using an obscene image for sto­ry bait.

In an email to reporters sent yes­ter­day after­noon, Eyman engaged in quite a show of psy­cho­log­i­cal pro­jec­tion, accus­ing King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine of try­ing to “black­mail vot­ers” by telling the truth about the impact of his ini­tia­tives on Wash­ing­ton and King Coun­ty’s vital pub­lic ser­vices. Eyman fur­ther attacked Con­stan­tine as crass, manip­u­la­tive, and wrong — all words that effec­tive­ly describe both his inap­pro­pri­ate behav­ior and his destruc­tive initiatives.

Con­stan­tine had deliv­ered a speech unveil­ing his pro­posed bud­get ear­li­er in the day in which he explained, as I have writ­ten many times here, that the days of back­fill­ing are pret­ty much at an end, and the time of reck­on­ing is fast approaching.

Con­stan­tine sen­si­bly wants to pre­vent King Coun­ty’s already under­fund­ed and endan­gered human ser­vices from being total­ly evis­cer­ate, which is why he called for the repeal of Tim Eyman’s Ini­tia­tive 747 dur­ing his speech.

I‑747, which slapped an arti­fi­cial lim­it on prop­er­ty tax rev­enue, has been slow­ly chok­ing the life out of every­thing from rur­al fire­hous­es to urban health clin­ics for over a decade… and by the way, that’s exact­ly what it was designed to do.

Eyman is very fond of the “death by a thou­sand cuts” approach, because it masks the awful con­se­quences of his ini­tia­tives, mak­ing it eas­i­er for him to claim that we can starve our com­mon wealth with­out any adverse effects on pub­lic ser­vices. As I wrote last month, he per­son­i­fies greed bet­ter than any­one else in Wash­ing­ton State; he is the def­i­n­i­tion of a snake oil salesman.

Con­stan­ti­ne’s coura­geous call for the Leg­is­la­ture to repeal I‑747 got Eyman’s atten­tion, as did his pro­pos­al to send King Coun­ty vot­ers a levy to fund ear­ly child­hood and youth ser­vices next year. Prompt­ed by Con­stan­ti­ne’s speech, Eyman decid­ed to go fish­ing for media cov­er­age by send­ing out an attack email with a false, deroga­to­ry sub­ject line (“King Coun­ty Exec Dow Con­stan­tine: “Pay high­er prop­er­ty tax­es or I’m throw­ing kids with dia­betes under the bus”).

Along with his screed, Eyman enclosed a dis­gust­ing image of a woman hold­ing a gun to a baby’s head, which he obtained from the Huff­in­g­ton Post. (If you click through to the Huff­Post sto­ry, you can see the image; I’m not going to post it here, as I have no inter­est in mak­ing that filth more ubiquitous.)

Ini­tial­ly, no one took the bait. Sad­ly, this after­noon, KIRO 7’s Essex Porter decid­ed to nib­ble, and sought an inter­view with Constantine.

Con­stan­tine declined to speak with Porter on cam­era, telling the sta­tion, “I won’t dig­ni­fy an email depict­ing vio­lence against chil­dren with a response. That has no place in civ­il debate. The sci­ence, how­ev­er, is clear: invest­ing in healthy chil­dren and com­mu­ni­ties can help every baby born and every child raised in King Coun­ty get a strong start in life and enter adult­hood ready to succeed.”

Porter also con­tact­ed Eyman to ask “if he had any moral com­punc­tions about using such a vio­lent image.” Eyman’s response? “I did­n’t.” No sur­prise there: this is unfor­tu­nate­ly par for the course for Tim. He will do any­thing for pub­lic­i­ty, includ­ing dress­ing up in cos­tume or hurl­ing put-downs at elect­ed lead­ers he does­n’t like. After all, what goes bet­ter with destruc­tive ini­tia­tives than tox­ic politics?

Tim Eyman’s entire polit­i­cal career could be apt­ly summed up in three words: ugly, stinky, and dis­gust­ing. By the way, those are pre­cise­ly the words Eyman used to describe his own behav­ior twelve and a half years ago, after he’d been caught tak­ing mon­ey from his sup­port­ers for his per­son­al use and then lying about it.

Here’s the good news: From what we can dis­cern, Eyman’s inde­fen­si­ble behav­ior is start­ing to catch up with him. I am increas­ing­ly encoun­ter­ing Repub­li­cans who are unwill­ing to defend or sup­port Eyman. They’ve start­ed to real­ize what we’ve known all along: Eyman is a no good, dou­ble-cross­ing, manip­u­la­tive char­la­tan who should not be trust­ed or tak­en seri­ous­ly by any­one, anywhere.