Faye Garneau, Suzie Burke, NECA keeping Tim Eyman’s initiative factory lubricated with cash

Thanks to a mix of new and old wealthy bene­fac­tors who have been fill­ing his cam­paign cof­fers with megabucks, Tim Eyman appears to have all the mon­ey he needs to buy his way onto this Novem­ber’s bal­lot with the destruc­tive, hostage-tak­ing ini­tia­tive that he tried and failed to qual­i­fy last year.

Reports just filed with the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion (PDC) by Eyman’s trea­sur­er show that Eyman and his asso­ciates received a num­ber of five and six-fig­ure checks for the month of April, the third month of activ­i­ty for Ini­tia­tive 1336.

I‑1336, as men­tioned, is a clone of I‑1325 from 2014. It would slash the state sales tax by about 13%, wip­ing out around $1 bil­lion a year in rev­enue… unless the Leg­is­la­ture capit­u­lates to Eyman by next April and votes for a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment to per­ma­nent­ly require a two-thirds vote to raise rev­enue, in vio­la­tion of the plan of gov­ern­ment that our founders gave us.

Eyman already has Repub­li­cans in the Leg­is­la­ture ready to vote for such an amend­ment, but iron­i­cal­ly, because amend­ments require a two-thirds of each house to pass, he needs the sup­port of Democ­rats. I‑1366 is designed to black­mail Democ­rats into vot­ing for I‑1366 by tak­ing Wash­ing­ton’s kids hostage.

While the state’s major busi­ness­es and trade asso­ci­a­tions have stayed away from I‑1366, Eyman has man­aged to per­suade a num­ber of very wealthy right wing indi­vid­u­als to give him boat­loads of mon­ey to pay peti­tion­ers to col­lect sig­na­tures for I‑1366. The biggest bene­fac­tor to the cam­paign thus far is right wing devel­op­er Clyde Hol­land of Van­cou­ver, who has giv­en $300,000.

Long­time Eyman bene­fac­tor Kem­per Free­man, Jr., the own­er of the Belle­vue Col­lec­tion (Belle­vue Square, Lin­coln Square, Belle­vue Place) ponied up $100,000, while Ken­neth Fish­er and Robert Rotel­la con­tributed $25,000 each.

Data: Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion | Chart: North­west Pro­gres­sive Institute

As the updat­ed chart above shows, the most recent wealthy bene­fac­tors to pump mon­ey into Eyman’s I‑1366 are Faye Gar­neau, Suzie Burke, and the Nation­al Elec­tri­cal Con­trac­tors Asso­ci­a­tion’s Puget Sound chapter.

Seat­tle denizens Gar­neau and Burke became Eyman donors (or, in the words of the Seat­tle P‑I’s Joel Con­nel­ly, sug­ar mom­mies) last year when Eyman man­u­fac­tured a statewide ini­tia­tive to the Leg­is­la­ture to over­turn Seat­tle and SeaT­ac’s $15/hour min­i­mum wage laws. Eyman was unable to get the larg­er busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty inter­est­ed, how­ev­er, and the mea­sure did not get off the ground.

NECA PS has giv­en Eyman mon­ey for years, but usu­al­ly in small­er amounts.

NECA, Gar­neau, and Burke account­ed for % of Eyman’s haul for April. Here’s a run­down of the big­ger con­tri­bu­tions that came in:

• $100,000 from NECA, received April 11th
• $50,000 from Gar­neau, received April
• $45,000 from Burke, received April
• $10,000 from Clark Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­er David Madore
• $10,000 from Jon Thrift of Vancouver
• $5,000 from Wal­ter T. Pereya of Sam­mamish, own­er of Profish
• $5,000 from William Con­nor of Bellevue
• $5,000 from Per­ry J. Langston of Snohomish

A fur­ther $19,344.33 came in from oth­er con­trib­u­tors. The cam­paign’s C4 states that a total of $249,344.33 came in for the month of April. That’s a quar­ter of a mil­lion dol­lars… about on par with March and February.

Eyman has now raised over $1.1 mil­lion for I‑1366, includ­ing his loans to him­self, which he will prob­a­bly repay with mon­ey not need­ed for sig­na­ture gathering.

To date, Eyman has trans­ferred $750,000 to Cit­i­zen Solu­tions for sig­na­ture gath­er­ing, and spent anoth­er $69,143.15 on addi­tion­al expens­es, most­ly relat­ed to mail­ing. That means that as of the end of April, $328,330.88 was unspent — enough to pay back the loans, with some mon­ey left over.

It’s safe to assume at this point that Eyman will be on the bal­lot with I‑1366, since he has the megabucks to buy his way on.

NPI is orga­niz­ing a coali­tion to fight I‑1366, and we wel­come the involve­ment of orga­ni­za­tions that read­ers are involved in. At the NO on I‑1366 web­site, you’ll find a mod­el res­o­lu­tion to use to take a posi­tion against I‑1366, along with more infor­ma­tion about the ini­tia­tive’s cost and consequences.

Hav­ing fought Tim Eyman for over thir­teen years, we know he has a knack for con­vinc­ing wealthy right wing donors to give him lots of mon­ey to under­write destruc­tive ini­tia­tives. He has cre­at­ed a very prof­itable busi­ness out of sell­ing bad ideas. But, as we showed two years ago when we mount­ed an incred­i­bly suc­cess­ful cam­paign against I‑517 with our coali­tion part­ners, Eyman is not unbeatable.

We’re com­mit­ted to build­ing a diverse and broad-based coali­tion to take on I‑1366 and defeat it. Join us, and help ensure that Tim Eyman’s lat­est and most destruc­tive ini­tia­tive gets the oppo­si­tion that it needs and deserves.