Keep Wash­ing­ton Rolling, the coali­tion that is fight­ing Tim Eyman’s I‑1125, has just received a huge finan­cial boost from one of Wash­ing­ton’s largest employ­ers: Microsoft (which, like NPI, is head­quar­tered in Red­mond). The com­pa­ny had pre­vi­ous­ly donat­ed $100,000 to the cause, but last Fri­day, it wrote anoth­er check for six times that amount, bring­ing its aggre­gate total to $700,000.

Oth­er major con­trib­u­tors to Keep Wash­ing­ton Rolling to date include:

  • $40,000: Pem­co
  • $30,000: Wright Run­stad & Associates
  • $25,000: HDR Inc., Puget Sound Ener­gy, Par­sons Brinck­er­hoff, the Seat­tle Mariners, the Wash­ing­ton State Build­ing & Con­struc­tions Trade Coun­cil, Saltchuk Resources, and Weyerhaueser
  • $20,000: Pre­mera Blue Cross, Wash­ing­ton Asphalt Pavers Association
  • $16,500: Amal­ga­mat­ed Tran­sit Union (includ­ing Locals #587 and #1765)
  • $16,000: Pacif­ic North­west Region­al Coun­cil of Carpenters
  • $15,000: Vul­can, Wash­ing­ton State Labor Coun­cil, Aero­space Machin­ists Dis­trict #751, Kiewit Infra­struc­ture West

In total, Keep Wash­ing­ton Rolling has raised $1.2 mil­lion, and it will like­ly end Octo­ber hav­ing raised clos­er to $2 mil­lion, if not more.

Microsoft obvi­ous­ly accounts for more than half of the amount raised, though the per­cent­age of its con­tri­bu­tions to Keep Wash­ing­ton Rolling are out­weighed by the per­cent­age of Kem­per Free­man, Jr.‘s con­tri­bu­tions to Tim Eyman’s coffers.

About the author

Andrew Villeneuve is the founder and executive director of the Northwest Progressive Institute, as well as the founder of NPI's sibling, the Northwest Progressive Foundation. He has worked to advance progressive causes for over two decades as a strategist, speaker, author, and organizer. Andrew is also a cybersecurity expert, a veteran facilitator, a delegate to the Washington State Democratic Central Committee, and a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps.

Adjacent posts

Enjoyed what you just read? Make a donation

Thank you for read­ing The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Institute’s jour­nal of world, nation­al, and local politics.

Found­ed in March of 2004, The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate has been help­ing peo­ple through­out the Pacif­ic North­west and beyond make sense of cur­rent events with rig­or­ous analy­sis and thought-pro­vok­ing com­men­tary for more than two decades.

The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate is fund­ed by read­ers like you and trust­ed spon­sors. We don’t accept unso­licit­ed ad buys or pub­lish con­tent in exchange for money.

Help us keep The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate edi­to­ri­al­ly inde­pen­dent and freely avail­able to all by becom­ing a mem­ber of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute today. Or make a dona­tion to sus­tain our essen­tial research and advo­ca­cy jour­nal­ism. Your con­tri­bu­tion will allow us to con­tin­ue bring­ing you fea­tures like Last Week In Con­gress, live cov­er­age of events like Net­roots Nation or the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion, and reviews of books and doc­u­men­tary films.

Become an NPI mem­ber Make a one-time donation

One reply on “Microsoft invests $600,000 into NO on 1125”

  1. Thanks for the info. It is iron­ic that Microsoft would oppose I‑1125, giv­en that many of their East­side employ­ees live out­side the area served by Sound Tran­sit, see link to their ser­vice area at link below.

    For exam­ple, many at Microsoft work in Maple Val­ley and Cov­ing­ton, and adja­cent areas out­side the urban growth bound­ary in east King Coun­ty. Oth­ers work at Fall City and numer­ous oth­er delight­ful towns in the Sno­qualmie Val­ley includ­ing the Town of Snoqualmie.

    Not only do these areas not have light rail, they do not also have bus rapid transit. 

    Per­haps John Niles can offer some sug­ges­tions on bus rapid tran­sit from these out­lin­ing com­mu­ni­ties, and how to widen dan­ger­ous two lane rur­al roads into Red­mond and Bellevue. 

    http://www.soundtransit.org/documents/pdf/riding/map_lg.pdf

    Thank you
    Tom Lane

Comments are closed.