Scandal-plagued Tim Eyman churns out new email jeering at his growing list of opponents

A new work­week has just begun, and with it has come yet anoth­er elec­tron­ic Tim Eyman mis­sive den­i­grat­ing the oppo­si­tion, brash­ly pre­dict­ing vic­to­ry in Novem­ber for Ini­tia­tive 1366, and of course, ask­ing for mon­ey (“there are no lim­its on how much can be giv­en,” as Tim likes to remind his fol­low­ers in his boil­er­plate pitch).

Like real estate tycoon Don­ald Trump (who he shares a mid­dle name with), Tim Eyman loves to use his com­put­er key­board to sling put­downs. But since he does­n’t have any wish to join social media net­works, his pre­ferred deliv­ery mech­a­nism remains email, as opposed to Twit­ter, which Don­ald Trump frequents.

“I’m very proud to work with a hero­ic team of lead­ers and sup­port­ers who work real­ly hard each year to give the vot­ers a greater voice in their gov­ern­ment,” Eyman’s email begins, with­out cred­it­ing or nam­ing any­one in particular.

He goes on to say:

In Sun­day’s Taco­ma News Tri­bune, there was a NO 1366 col­umn. It’s [sic] open­ing line is hysterical:

“Tim Eyman has been a one-man wreck­ing ball in our state, and his lat­est ini­tia­tive takes his exploits to a whole new level”.

Our oppo­nents are not very bright. They con­stant­ly ignore what the vot­ers have clear­ly said over the past 22 years and instead spend their time obsess­ing over lil ol’ me. I don’t have any spe­cial powers.

It’s cer­tain­ly true that Tim does­n’t have any spe­cial pow­ers. But he does have the back­ing of a hand­ful of extreme­ly wealthy bene­fac­tors like Clyde Hol­land, Kem­per Free­man Jr., Faye Gar­neau, Suzie Burke, Ken­neth Fish­er, and Robert Rotel­la. And that’s worth a whole lot, because the Unit­ed States Supreme Court has held that mon­ey is equiv­a­lent to speech — mean­ing some peo­ple pos­sess the abil­i­ty to speak very loud­ly and influ­ence elec­tions, sim­ply because they hap­pen to be rich.

Telling­ly, last year, when Eyman did­n’t have com­mit­ments from his wealthy bene­fac­tors to fund a sig­na­ture dri­ve, he did­n’t get on the bal­lot at all. This year, he was the recip­i­ent of over a mil­lion dol­lars in con­tri­bu­tions, and he used some of that mon­ey to acquire the sig­na­tures he need­ed to force a vote on I‑1366.

It always makes me laugh when I hear Eyman say that we (his oppo­nents) don’t trust the vot­ers and don’t lis­ten to the vot­ers. It is Tim Eyman who does­n’t lis­ten and who does­n’t want reporters to look at the big picture.

The truth is, Tim Eyman ignores every vote of the peo­ple he does­n’t like.

It was the peo­ple of urban King, Pierce, and Sno­homish coun­ties who vot­ed to cre­ate Sound Tran­sit in 1996 and then empow­er Sound Tran­sit in 2008 to fur­ther expand Link light rail, Sounder com­muter rail, and ST Express bus service.

If Eyman respect­ed those votes, he would­n’t have tried to repeat­ed­ly destroy Sound Tran­sit and stop it from build­ing the light rail sys­tem the peo­ple told him to build with Ini­tia­tives 776 (2002) and 1125 (2011).

It was the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton who cre­at­ed the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion and Wash­ing­ton’s pub­lic dis­clo­sure law all those years ago with Ini­tia­tive 276 — the very same law that Tim has repeat­ed­ly vio­lat­ed with impuni­ty for years.

It was the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton who have con­sis­tent­ly cho­sen Democ­rats like Gary Locke, Chris Gre­goire, and Jay Inslee to gov­ern our state for the entire­ty of Eyman’s career — not Eyman’s friends John Carl­son, Dino Rossi, and Rob McKenna.

If Tim Eyman tru­ly cared about the vot­ers’ will, he’d show a lit­tle more respect for the demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly-elect­ed lead­ers of our state. But instead, he resorts to pet­ty, child­ish name call­ing. For years, Eyman den­i­grat­ed Gov­er­nor Gre­goire as “Queen Chris­tine”. More recent­ly, Eyman called Jay Inslee “a lying whore”.

It was the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton who have repeat­ed­ly vot­ed to require the state to low­er class size, as well as improve pay for our state’s hard­work­ing teach­ers, with Ini­tia­tives 728, 732, and more recent­ly, 1351. To our knowl­edge, Eyman has nev­er called on the Leg­is­la­ture to imple­ment those ini­tia­tives and car­ry out the vot­ers’ will.

And it was the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton who defeat­ed Ini­tia­tive 601’s sib­ling Ini­tia­tive 602 in 1993 and approved HJR 4204 in 2007. I‑602 was an attempt to require a three-fourths vote of the Leg­is­la­ture to raise rev­enue; HJR 4204 low­ered the thresh­old for pas­sage of school levies from a three-fifths vote to a major­i­ty vote.

Tim Eyman does­n’t ever talk about the fail­ure of I‑602 in 1993 or the pas­sage of HJR 4204 in 2007, because those votes con­tra­dict his nar­ra­tive. Hav­ing to acknowl­edge them would mess up his I‑1366 sales pitch.

The truth is often incon­ve­nient for Tim… that’s why he fibs and fab­ri­cates so often. In every cam­paign, Eyman tries to cre­ate a self-ful­fill­ing prophe­cy. It’s why he pumps out email after email pro­ject­ing an air of con­fi­dence and attempt­ing to por­tray his oppo­si­tion as con­fused, crazy, deject­ed, or unnerved.

In this cam­paign, Tim is fac­ing an oppo­si­tion coali­tion that is get­ting stronger and more diverse by the week. Eyman’s list of oppo­nents gone bonkers now includes the Seat­tle Met­ro­pol­i­tan Cham­ber of Com­merce, the Wash­ing­ton Round­table ( a non­prof­it, pub­lic pol­i­cy orga­ni­za­tion com­prised of senior exec­u­tives from major pri­vate sec­tor employ­ers through­out Wash­ing­ton State), the Alzheimers Asso­ci­a­tion, the Asso­ci­a­tion of Man­u­fac­tured Home­own­ers, The Seat­tle Times, The Spokesman-Review of Spokane, and The News Tri­bune of Tacoma.

That’s in addi­tion to AARP Wash­ing­ton State, the League of Women Vot­ers, the Chil­dren’s Alliance, Catholic Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vices of Wash­ing­ton, OneAm­er­i­ca Votes, the Main­stream Repub­li­cans of Wash­ing­ton State, the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, the Wash­ing­ton State Labour Coun­cil, AFL-CIO, NAMI Wash­ing­ton, Wash­ing­ton Con­ser­va­tion Vot­ers, Faith Action Net­work, and dozens more elect­ed lead­ers, orga­ni­za­tions, and indi­vid­u­als.

Who is Eyman cam­paign­ing with? So far, just a hand­ful of extreme Repub­li­can state leg­is­la­tors, like Pam Roach, Doug Erick­sen, Cary Con­dot­ta, and Ed Orcutt (who are lend­ing their names to the op-eds Eyman is ghost­writ­ing) and a fringe gun enthu­si­ast group here and there. That’s pret­ty much it.

Only extrem­ists are cam­paign­ing for I‑1366, because I‑1366 is a coer­cive, mean-spir­it­ed ini­tia­tive that would evis­cer­ate our state’s vital pub­lic ser­vices unless the Leg­is­la­ture bows to the will of Eyman and his wealthy bene­fac­tors and sab­o­tages our Con­sti­tu­tion’s major­i­ty vote requirement.

The NO on I‑1366 coali­tion, on the oth­er hand, is broad and diverse. It con­sists of a wide array of peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions who reject the pol­i­tics of hostage-tak­ing. And it is high­ly moti­vat­ed to defend the val­ues and prin­ci­ples that Wash­ing­ton was found­ed on one hun­dred and twen­ty-six years ago.

Join us in defend­ing our Con­sti­tu­tion and cher­ished tra­di­tion of major­i­ty rule. This autumn, vote NO on Tim Eyman’s I‑1366.