Tim Eyman reveals that his old buddy Kemper Freeman Jr. is bankrolling I‑1125

When Tim Eyman announced a few weeks ago that he would be attempt­ing to qual­i­fy a mea­sure for this year’s bal­lot, we were imme­di­ate­ly sure that he had con­vinced some­body to put up a lot of cash to hire mer­ce­nary peti­tion­ers (because Tim does­n’t do vol­un­teer sig­na­ture dri­ves). On May 1st, I wrote the fol­low­ing:

As for Eyman’s ini­tia­tive, I‑1125, it’s dead on arrival unless Eyman has found a wealthy bene­fac­tor to fund it. Maybe his bud­dy Kem­per Free­man, Jr. agreed to give him half a mil­lion bucks. Or maybe Michael Dun­mire has agreed to resume fill­ing Eyman’s cof­fers with cash. We’ll know soon enough.

As it turns out, NPI was cor­rect on every sin­gle count. 

A few weeks ago, we learned that Eyman’s old sug­ar dad­dy Michael Dun­mire had made a $100,000 con­tri­bu­tion to Eyman’s per­son­al com­pen­sa­tion fund (Help Us Help Tax­pay­ers). Eyman sub­se­quent­ly trans­ferred this mon­ey to his cam­paign com­mit­tee (Vot­ers Want More Choices).

Now, Dun­mire’s con­tri­bu­tion may have been made to help Eyman reduce his debt (Dun­mire pre­vi­ous­ly wrote checks to can­cel out Eyman’s loans for I‑985 and I‑1033) but it’s pos­si­ble Eyman tem­porar­i­ly used the mon­ey to jump­start the I‑1125 sig­na­ture dri­ve. If that’s the case, then Dun­mire’s mon­ey has been indi­rect­ly prop­ping up I‑1125, even if it was intend­ed to erase some of the I‑1053 debt.

Today, we learned that the real bankroll for I‑1125 is Eyman’s oth­er bud­dy, the guy who owns the Belle­vue Col­lec­tion and has been doing every­thing he can to destroy Sound Tran­sit’s East Link project: Kem­per Free­man Jr.

Hours ago, Eyman pur­pose­ly pre­empt­ed his own trea­sur­er’s report for May to the PDC and announced that Kem­per recent­ly made a dona­tion of — and no, I’m not jok­ing — half a mil­lion bucks to the I‑1125 effort.

So that analy­sis from May 1st was real­ly spot on.

And just to be clear, we did­n’t know who was behind I‑1125 (or what the amounts of the checks that had been writ­ten were) before I wrote that post. (It’s not like Tim Eyman ever calls us to fill us in on what he’s up to).

It was sim­ply an edu­cat­ed guess, based on years and years of expe­ri­ence. NPI’s Per­ma­nent Defense has been watch­dog­ging Eyman for years.

When he makes an announce­ment, we’re pret­ty good at inter­pret­ing and pars­ing the mean­ing. We took the unveil­ing of I‑1125 to mean that Eyman had found some­body to fund a sig­na­ture dri­ve. We were correct.

Today’s news destroys any last bit of doubt peo­ple might have had about I‑1125 mak­ing the bal­lot. We’ve known for some time that the sig­na­ture dri­ve is hap­pen­ing and that Eyman had the cash lined up to make it successful.

So, once again, we’ll have a Tim Eyman ini­tia­tive to work against this autumn. Hav­ing to deal with these schemes is get­ting pret­ty old.

And unfor­tu­nate­ly, there’s no end in sight. As long as Tim Eyman can pay to play, and as long as he has friends with deep pock­ets, he’ll have some­thing on the bal­lot. Year after year after year. Not since the 1990s has there been a spring when Tim Eyman was­n’t try­ing to qual­i­fy an ini­tia­tive for the Novem­ber ballot.

That’s how long he has been in business.

It’s time the pro­gres­sive move­ment in this state dis­card­ed the pre­tense that he will some­day go away, and start­ed putting into place mean­ing­ful infra­struc­ture to com­bat his destruc­tive ini­tia­tives. What we do through Per­ma­nent Defense is impor­tant, but it’s not enough. PD is only meant to be a first line of defense.

Our com­mon wealth and our plan of gov­ern­ment will always be threat­ened as long as Tim Eyman’s ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry is run­ning. We need to make stop­ping Tim’s ini­tia­tives a top pri­or­i­ty that we think about and work towards year-round.