Mercenary petitioners hawking Tim Eyman’s l‑1125 target Bellevue College students

Though it’s not appar­ent from look­ing at Vot­ers Want More Choic­es’ most recent reports to the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion (PDC), NPI can today con­firm what we have sus­pect­ed since the begin­ning of the month: Tim Eyman has found a new wealthy bene­fac­tor to put up the mon­ey for his lat­est scheme, Ini­tia­tive 1125, which he announced he was run­ning only eigh­teen days ago.

We won’t know who is bankrolling I‑1125 until June 10th at the ear­li­est (which is when Eyman is required to file his May reports).

But we do know the mon­ey spig­ot has been turned on and that it’s being used to deploy mer­ce­nary peti­tion­ers across Wash­ing­ton State.

Yes­ter­day, we received mul­ti­ple reports from activists who had sight­ed sig­na­ture gath­er­ers oper­at­ing at big box store, includ­ing Wal-Mart. One activist told us that peti­tions for mul­ti­ple mea­sures were being carried.

And this morn­ing, I found myself being asked to sign Tim Eyman’s I‑1125 on my way to class as I walked through cam­pus. Pret­ty iron­ic, huh?

It seems that two mer­ce­nar­ies decid­ed that a good place to col­lect sig­na­tures would be at the heart of the main cam­pus at Belle­vue Col­lege, which has been neg­a­tive­ly impact­ed by past Tim Eyman ini­tia­tives and stands to lose even more if Eyman’s unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic I‑1053 remains in effect.

With an annu­al stu­dent pop­u­la­tion of 38,000, Belle­vue Col­lege is the sec­ond largest pub­lic insti­tu­tion of high­er learn­ing in the state, behind the UW and ahead of WSU.

Most of its pro­grams are two-year, owing to the fact that it began as a com­mu­ni­ty col­lege, but it now offers some four-year pro­grams as well.

Tuition at BC is rea­son­ably low, espe­cial­ly com­pared to pri­vate col­leges, thanks to Wash­ing­ton’s com­mon wealth. And there are many options for tak­ing class­es — cours­es are offered online, in the evening, in hybrid mode (online + in the class­room), and at a satel­lite cam­pus. There are also “late start” class­es to accom­mo­date stu­dents who have con­flicts at the begin­ning of a quarter.

These are two key rea­sons why BC is so pop­u­lar. But BC may have to raise tuition and cut class offer­ings if Ini­tia­tive 1053 is not soon repealed or strick­en as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. It is no exag­ger­a­tion to say that suc­cess for Tim Eyman means hard­ship for Belle­vue Col­lege and its students.

That’s why it was so dis­com­fort­ing to see mer­ce­nary peti­tion­ers hawk­ing Tim Eyman’s lat­est scheme this morn­ing, less than a stone’s throw from my class­room. My fel­low stu­dents and I stand more to lose from Tim Eyman’s harm­ful mea­sures than pret­ty much any oth­er group of Washingtonians.

And yet, here were these two guys, stand­ing in front of our stu­dent union build­ing, try­ing to pull Belle­vue Col­lege stu­dents and fac­ul­ty aside and get them to sign anoth­er destruc­tive Tim Eyman initiative.

I declined to sign, but I stuck around to wit­ness the peti­tion­ers in action, and take pic­tures. I explained that I’d be fil­ing a post about the effort to get I‑1125 on the bal­lot. One of them invit­ed me to take close­up pho­tos of him col­lect­ing sig­na­tures… and so I did.

As I watched, the peti­tion­ers cor­ralled any­one who crossed their path who answered “yes” to the ques­tion, “Are you reg­is­tered to vote?” (some­times, “… in Wash­ing­ton”?). Then, they’d pitch I‑1125.

Here’s an exam­ple of what the peti­tion­er would say (this par­tic­u­lar encounter was with a mid­dle-aged voter):

Peti­tion­er: “They’re tak­ing our toll mon­ey and they’re spend­ing it… [putting it] in the gen­er­al fund. We would like that mon­ey to be spent on the roads. We’d like that toll­booth mon­ey to be spent on the roads the way that they told us it was for when they set up the tolls, right? Now, years down the line, they’re tak­ing mon­ey out of it, and now they’re using that to raise the gas tax.”

“Who’s behind it?” asked the vot­er, scan­ning the petition.

“I don’t know who’s all behind the issue,” the peti­tion­er lied. “I don’t know who…”

At that point, I inter­rupt­ed and qui­et­ly point­ed out that Tim Eyman is the spon­sor of I‑1125. (I did­n’t say any­thing else because I want­ed to see what he’d say next).

“Eyman’s usu­al­ly behind the tax issues,” the peti­tion­er imme­di­ate­ly agreed. “But I can’t say for sure. I haven’t been told, yes or no, by my supe­ri­ors. So I don’t know. I… I can’t lie to you, you know what I mean?” the peti­tion­er said.

“I can’t sign it unless I know more about it,” the vot­er insisted.

“Oh, that’s fine. This will just put it on the bal­lot, you know what I mean?” replied the peti­tion­er, coun­ter­ing smooth­ly. “You can vote how­ev­er you’d like on it.”

“I have to study stuff,” the vot­er insist­ed. And then, like an informed cit­i­zen and an intel­li­gent per­son, he turned and walked away.

If more Wash­ing­to­ni­ans sim­ply exer­cised the good judg­ment that this vot­er did, mer­ce­nary peti­tion­ers would­n’t be able to rapid­ly fill up peti­tion sheets with sig­na­tures. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, for every vot­er who refus­es to put down their name and address, there are a dozen who will suc­cumb to the pres­sure and take a few moments to sign a mea­sure that they haven’t scru­ti­nized — let alone read.

These peti­tion­ers could­n’t care less whether they are accu­rate­ly rep­re­sent­ing what the mea­sures would do. Reread the ini­tial sales pitch from the con­ver­sa­tion I quot­ed above. The peti­tion­er is spout­ing nonsense.

What toll mon­ey is he talk­ing about? At present, the Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion col­lects tolls only on the Taco­ma Nar­rows Bridge and for solo dri­vers who use the high occu­pan­cy vehi­cle lanes on State Route 167. That’s it. We don’t have a region­wide con­ges­tion pric­ing sys­tem. We don’t have any turn­pikes, either.

Yes, tolls have been pro­posed for SR-520, I‑90, and SR 99. But they’re not being col­lect­ed yet. How is it pos­si­ble for the gov­ern­ment to mis­use nonex­is­tent “toll­booth mon­ey”, as the peti­tion­er alleged?

He was also wrong to sug­gest that “they” (pre­sum­ably “they” means the Leg­is­la­ture) are rais­ing the gas tax. The tolls the Leg­is­la­ture has autho­rized are a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent fund­ing mech­a­nism which isn’t con­nect­ed to the gas tax.

Gas tax­es are paid when­ev­er a motorist fills up his or her car with fuel at the gas sta­tion. Tolls, on the oth­er hand, are a sur­charge paid for use of a road­way or facil­i­ty. They are more com­mon on the east coast, but they’ve been used here in the past too, usu­al­ly to pay for bridges.

All motorists who dri­ve con­ven­tion­al auto­mo­biles pay the gas tax, but only motorists who make use of a tolled facil­i­ty pay a toll. In the case of SR 520, the rea­son the Ever­green Point Float­ing Bridge is being tolled again is so that the state can afford the replace­ment bridge it is start­ing to build. The toll mon­ey is going to be used for the new bridge. It won’t be used for oth­er purposes.

Notice how this peti­tion­er did­n’t both­er to present any specifics to back up his claims. He just ram­bled on with one casu­al­ly-stat­ed base­less accu­sa­tion after anoth­er, try­ing to con the skep­ti­cal vot­er in front of him into sign­ing I‑1125.

And then, when he was asked who the spon­sor was, he would­n’t answer. He pre­tend­ed to be igno­rant. I had to inter­rupt and tell the vot­er what he want­ed to know. And even then, after the truth had been revealed, this peti­tion­er con­tin­ued to lie, in the hopes of get­ting a signature.

I say lie because I had asked the peti­tion­er, min­utes ear­li­er, how to get in touch with the peo­ple behind the mea­sure — when nobody else was in the imme­di­ate vicin­i­ty and he was­n’t dis­tract­ed. He flipped the peti­tion over and showed me the con­tact infor­ma­tion at the bot­tom, iden­ti­fy­ing Vot­ers Want More Choic­es as the peo­ple respon­si­ble. So I knew he was fib­bing when he was talk­ing to this voter.

(Also, when a sales­man utters a phrase like, “I can’t lie to you, you know?”, it’s a dead give­away that the sales­man is, in fact, lying… and he or she knows it).

I sus­pect what I saw is very typ­i­cal of an extend­ed exchange. Peo­ple who are skep­ti­cal scan what’s on the clip­board, ask ques­tions… and get lied to.

This is pre­cise­ly why we track right wing sig­na­ture drives.

Tim Eyman sym­pa­thiz­ers have angri­ly accused us in the past of try­ing to intim­i­date sig­na­ture gath­er­ers, which is iron­ic, because what we’re try­ing to do is hold peo­ple account­able who are try­ing to do just that to vot­ers. We are not seek­ing to emu­late their shifty behav­ior. We’re try­ing to put a spot­light on it.

Tim Eyman and his fol­low­ers for­get that the First Amend­ment is for every­body, not just them. They cer­tain­ly have the free­dom to peti­tion our gov­ern­ment for a redress of griev­ances (legit­i­mate or not).

As pro­gres­sives, we have the same free­dom, and we also have free­dom of speech, mean­ing we can ask peo­ple not to sign right wing initiatives.

Read­ers, if you’ve run into a peti­tion­er hawk­ing I‑1125 or anoth­er right wing ini­tia­tive, please tell us about your encounter using Per­ma­nent Defense’s report­ing tool. Your feed­back will help us doc­u­ment what peti­tion­ers are doing and telling vot­ers, so we have a bet­ter idea of how to orga­nize and mobi­lize against threats to our com­mon wealth and qual­i­ty of life.