Newly-filed reports show Tim Eyman received another massive cash infusion in March

Last night, as we were hold­ing our sev­enth Spring Fundrais­ing Gala on Mer­cer Island, Tim Eyman’s trea­sur­er was fil­ing his cam­paign com­mit­tee’s month­ly reports with the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion, as required by law.

The new reports show that Eyman has raised near­ly a mil­lion dol­lars for his lat­est and most destruc­tive ini­tia­tive, I‑1366, which would wipe out $1 bil­lion a year from schools and oth­er vital pub­lic ser­vices by slash­ing the sales tax… unless, by April of 2016, the Leg­is­la­ture approves a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment over­turn­ing the League of Edu­ca­tion Vot­ers deci­sion, in which the Supreme Court struck down the two-thirds vote require­ment for rais­ing or recov­er­ing rev­enue.

Black­mail, coer­cive, and dia­bol­i­cal are all words that seem fit­ting to describe I‑1366, a mean-spir­it­ed mea­sure that is pol­i­tics at its worst. I‑1366 is a retread of last year’s I‑1325, which Eyman could­n’t get on the bal­lot due to lack of resources.

For this attempt, Eyman has found a wealthy bene­fac­tor to bankroll this year’s effort. His name is Clyde Hol­land, and he’s a devel­op­er oper­at­ing out of Van­cou­ver. We pro­filed him last month, after PDC reports showed he was the biggest donor to I‑1366, with a $150,000 con­tri­bu­tion, and after Eyman announced that a “suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man” was pre­pared to dou­ble any dona­tion made to his I‑1366 cam­paign com­mit­tee dur­ing the month of March:

Assum­ing Eyman is not lying to his sup­port­ers (some­thing he’s done plen­ty of times) and assum­ing Hol­land is the “suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man” Eyman’s talk­ing about, then it seems he’s pre­pared to open his check­book again to keep the gears of Eyman’s ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry lubri­cat­ed with money.

Eyman will need more of Holland’s mon­ey. His­to­ry has shown that when he doesn’t have a wealthy bene­fac­tor, he doesn’t get on the bal­lot. He needs rich peo­ple like Free­man and Hol­land to write him mul­ti­ple six fig­ure checks every year so that he can stay rel­e­vant. Oth­er­wise his fac­to­ry sput­ters to a halt.

Sure enough, Hol­land has giv­en again to Eyman. The March C3s show that anoth­er $150,000 check from Hol­land was received on March 6th.

That was­n’t the only big mon­ey that rolled in dur­ing the month of March.

Data: Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion | Chart: North­west Pro­gres­sive Institute

Eyman also received $25,000 checks from Ken­neth Fish­er of Camas and Robert Rotel­la of Belle­vue. They describe them­selves as self-employed investors.

Sheryl Cree­don, Oliv­er Hid­den, and Mark Engle­man Enter­pris­es (all based in Van­cou­ver) con­tributed $10,000 apiece, as did Jon Mon­son of Gig Harbor.

Is it just a coin­ci­dence that the vast major­i­ty of Eyman’s mon­ey is com­ing out of Clark Coun­ty (with Belle­vue’s Kem­per Free­man and Robert Rotel­la play­ing a sup­port­ing role)? We don’t think so.

State Sen­a­tor Don Ben­ton, who is Eyman’s best friend in the state­house aside from Pam Roach, is well con­nect­ed in Clark Coun­ty — so well-con­nect­ed, in fact, that he got him­self a sec­ond gov­ern­ment job thanks to the Repub­li­can-dom­i­nat­ed Clark Coun­ty Com­mis­sion. And Clyde Hol­land undoubt­ed­ly knows the coun­ty’s oth­er rich and rabid­ly con­ser­v­a­tive denizens. They could both be help­ing Eyman score money.

In the span of two months, Eyman has raised $623,174.66 in cash con­tri­bu­tions (with half of that com­ing from Clyde Hol­land) and tak­en out two loans total­ing $250,000. He’s trans­ferred near­ly three quar­ters of a mil­lion dol­lars to his asso­ciates at Cit­i­zen Solu­tions to pay peti­tion­ers to col­lect for I‑1366.

Eyman has only tak­en out loans in the past when he’s had some plan for get­ting the mon­ey repaid. Like­ly he has a com­mit­ment from Hol­land to pay back this year’s loans, too. With over half a mil­lion dol­lars raised in Feb­ru­ary and March, Eyman is on track to have a mil­lion dol­lars in cash by the time sig­na­tures are due in July.

It’s a safe bet that I‑1366 will be on the bal­lot in Novem­ber, which is why we’ve start­ed work­ing to put togeth­er a broad and diverse coali­tion to fight I‑1366.

Many local Demo­c­ra­t­ic orga­ni­za­tions have already joined us in tak­ing posi­tions against this mad­ness, as have Fuse Wash­ing­ton and TaxSanity.

The Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, mean­while, will con­sid­er a res­o­lu­tion a week from today oppos­ing I‑1366 that is cer­tain to be adopted.

If you’re part of an orga­ni­za­tion that believes in the val­ues Wash­ing­ton was found­ed on and wants to pro­tect our cher­ished tra­di­tion of major­i­ty rule as well as our schools and uni­ver­si­ties, we invite you to join us in tak­ing a posi­tion oppos­ing I‑1366. We’ve got a mod­el res­o­lu­tion you can use or tweak to your lik­ing. Once your board or gov­ern­ing body has act­ed, please let us know.