Bipartisan campaign to defeat Tim Eyman’s Initiative 1366 will soon enter its final day

With Elec­tion Night 2015 only hours away, the broad, bipar­ti­san coali­tion work­ing to defeat Tim Eyman’s Ini­tia­tive 1366 is remind­ing vot­ers to get their bal­lots in and cast an emphat­ic NO vote on Tim Eyman’s lat­est bad idea.

I‑1366 would repeal $8 bil­lion in fund­ing for K‑12 schools, high­er edu­ca­tion, and oth­er vital pub­lic ser­vices over the next six years if leg­is­la­tors refuse to bow to Eyman’s will and sab­o­tage our Con­sti­tu­tion’s major­i­ty vote requirement.

I‑1366 is opposed by…

Repub­li­cans and Democrats

• Main­stream Repub­li­cans of Wash­ing­ton State
• Wash­ing­ton State Democrats
• For­mer Gov­er­nor Dan Evans (R)
• Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee (D)
• For­mer Sec­re­tary of State Sam Reed (R)
• King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine (D)
• For­mer Sec­re­tary of State Ralph Munro (R)
• Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic Leader Sharon Nel­son (D)
• For­mer King Coun­ty Coun­cilmem­ber Louise Miller (R)
• State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mar­cus Ric­cel­li (D)

Faith lead­ers

• Wash­ing­ton State Catholic Conference
• Faith Action Network
• Rev. Steve Baber – Co-chair of the WA Chris­t­ian Lead­ers Coalition
• Rev. Sharon Moe – Methodist pas­tor at First Methodist
• Rab­bi Daniel Wein­er – Tem­ple De Hirsch Sinai
• Rev. Joanne Enquist – Geth­se­mane Luther­an Church

Cities

• Seat­tle
• Spokane
• Kirk­land
• Red­mond

Advo­cates for kids, peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, and seniors

• Wash­ing­ton State PTA
• League of Women Vot­ers of Washington
• AARP Wash­ing­ton State
• League of Edu­ca­tion Voters
• Chil­dren’s Alliance
• NAMI Wash­ing­ton
• Wash­ing­ton State School Direc­tors’ Association
• Asso­ci­a­tion of Wash­ing­ton School Principals

Busi­ness and labor

• Wash­ing­ton Roundtable
• Seat­tle Met­ro­pol­i­tan Cham­ber of Commerce
• Wash­ing­ton State Labor Coun­cil, AFL-CIO
• SEIU 775
• Wash­ing­ton Edu­ca­tion Association
• Wash­ing­ton Fed­er­a­tion of State Employees
• Wash­ing­ton State Coun­cil of Fire Fighters

Not to men­tion newspapers:

• The Seat­tle Times: “A tox­ic com­plex pro­pos­al that would make the Leg­is­la­ture even more dysfunctional…”
• The Spokesman Review: “Reduc­ing the sales tax would be dev­as­tat­ing to social ser­vices, pub­lic health…and efforts to pre­vent and fight wildfires.”
• The Columbian: “[I‑1366] would place the Leg­is­la­ture in a posi­tion where it can be held hostage by a minor­i­ty of lawmakers.”
• The Taco­ma News Tri­bune: “I‑1366, anoth­er prod­uct of the Tim Eyman ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry, is a threat to pub­lic education.”
• The Tri-City Her­ald: “It would dev­as­tate the state bud­get unless the Leg­is­la­ture bows to the will of Eyman and his backers.”
• Wal­la Wal­la Union Bul­letin: “I‑1366 is extor­tion, black­mail — or per­haps it could be called polit­i­cal terrorism.”

The ever-grow­ing strength and diver­si­ty of the NO on I‑1366 coali­tion has cer­tain­ly not escaped Tim Eyman’s notice these past few weeks.

In a half­heart­ed attempt to counter our momen­tum, Eyman has been send­ing out peri­od­ic emails to the media and his fol­low­ers with the sub­ject pre­fix BIG ENDORSEMENT. The lat­est such mes­sage arrived just this morn­ing, bear­ing a tes­ti­mo­ni­al from KVI’s John Carl­son, who has been a pal of Eyman’s for years.

None of the endorse­ments Eyman has tout­ed are sig­nif­i­cant or note­wor­thy to us. They’ve all been mil­i­tant Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors, a tiny smat­ter­ing of news­pa­per edi­tors friend­ly to Eyman, zeal­ous ide­o­log­i­cal talk radio hosts like Carl­son and Dori Mon­son, or extrem­ist right wing groups that almost always take Eyman’s side… like the Nation­al Fed­er­a­tion for Inde­pen­dent Busi­ness, known for its junk faxes.

We’re not impressed.

Nor are we impressed with Eyman’s attempt to project his own des­per­a­tion onto us, his oppo­nents, as he has repeat­ed­ly tried to do all month. Today, he wrote:

No one knows how the vot­ers will vote until elec­tion night. It’s incred­i­bly excit­ing. It’s why the oppo­nents of 1366 were so fran­tic, hys­ter­i­cal, and des­per­ate to get the courts to block the vote — because they knew they could­n’t con­trol how the vot­ers vot­ed on it. Because they could­n’t buy the out­come they wanted.

Wow. It takes a whole lot­ta chutz­pah for some­one who bought his way onto the bal­lot with six fig­ure checks from real estate devel­op­ers and hedge fund man­agers to sneer that his oppo­nents are try­ing to “buy the outcome”.

Last year, Tim Eyman tried to qual­i­fy a near­ly iden­ti­cal mea­sure to I‑1366 to the bal­lot — I‑1325. He failed, because he did­n’t have enough mon­ey to buy the out­come he want­ed. This year, he was suc­cess­ful in con­vinc­ing sev­er­al wealthy indi­vid­u­als (Clyde Hol­land, Kem­per Free­man, Jr., Ken­neth Fish­er, Robert Rotel­la) to write him big checks to fund a sig­na­ture drive.

That is the only rea­son why I‑1366 is on the bal­lot. We’re not vot­ing on I‑1366 because Wash­ing­to­ni­ans like Tim Eyman’s ideas. Any­one with enough mon­ey can get any­thing they want on the bal­lot using paid sig­na­ture gath­er­ers. It does not have to be con­sti­tu­tion­al… or even with­in the scope of the peo­ple’s ini­tia­tive power!

Had long­time friend of NPI David Gold­stein had a few wealthy bene­fac­tors behind him in 2003, we feel pret­ty con­fi­dent he would have qual­i­fied I‑831, the ini­tia­tive to declare Tim Eyman a horse’s ass, to the bal­lot in 2003.

Vol­un­teer sig­na­ture gath­er­ing on I‑831 was going pret­ty well until a Thurston Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court judge blocked the ini­tia­tive at the Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s behest. (David did not have the resources to retain coun­sel for an appeal to the state Supreme Court, or hire paid sig­na­ture gath­er­ers to sup­ple­ment his vol­un­teer effort.)

We went to court to stop I‑1366 because it is clear­ly beyond the scope of the ini­tia­tive pow­er. An ini­tia­tive as dan­ger­ous and destruc­tive as I‑1366 needs to be fought on all fronts. King Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court Judge Dean Lum agreed with us that Eyman’s I‑1366 was beyond the scope, but declined to grant an injunc­tion remov­ing it from the bal­lot. The state Supreme Court like­wise declined to grant an injunc­tion. And so we have con­tin­ued to fight I‑1366 in the court of pub­lic opinion.

The response to our cam­paign has been sim­ply won­der­ful. Peo­ple all over Wash­ing­ton have told us they’re vot­ing NO on I‑1366 because they agree that the last thing we need is for our state’s pol­i­tics to become more like U.S. con­gres­sion­al pol­i­tics. Tim Eyman may find Ted Cruz and the dys­func­tion­al Tea Par­ty wing of the House Repub­li­can con­fer­ence inspir­ing, but most Wash­ing­to­ni­ans do not.

Hob­bled by the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion’s find­ing that he vio­lat­ed cam­paign dis­clo­sure law, Eyman has been cam­paign­ing for I‑1366 from the shad­ows. Ret­i­cent to appear in pub­lic, he has been fir­ing off email mis­sives from home and try­ing to engage reporters on the phone with­out answer­ing ques­tions about his legal woes.

He has done his best to sound con­fi­dent, with brash state­ments like, “Unlike our oppo­nents, we trust the vot­ers to make the deci­sion on 1366. Tomor­row night we find out what the vot­ers think about 1366. It’s real­ly exciting.”

But his actions belie his words. If Eyman trusts the vot­ers, why isn’t he out cam­paign­ing for I‑1366? Why isn’t he try­ing to sell this garbage ini­tia­tive with the same gus­to he has shown in the past? What’s he afraid of?

We have been work­ing hard to earn every vote that we can, because we do trust the peo­ple of this state to make the cor­rect deci­sion when they have the infor­ma­tion they need to cast an informed vote. We’re out there every day ask­ing and urg­ing Wash­ing­to­ni­ans to vote NO on I‑1366.

We will keep at it until 8 PM tomor­row night.

Eyman, mean­while, is holed up at home, where he’s been doing a lot of ghost­writ­ing for the mil­i­tant Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors who are car­ry­ing his water.

He has ven­tured out only occa­sion­al­ly — to argue for I‑1366 before the Seat­tle Times edi­to­r­i­al board and to debate Sam Reed in Thurston Coun­ty, for instance.

Not want­i­ng to show his face on cam­era, he’s deployed sur­ro­gates to oth­er edi­to­r­i­al board meet­ings and to debate I‑1366 on-air on TVW, KBTC, and KING5, but has blown off many pub­lic forums and oth­er earned media opportunities.

We haven’t turned down any­body who has want­ed to engage with us. Our broad, bipar­ti­san coali­tion has enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly sent rep­re­sen­ta­tives to forums and field­ed ques­tions from vot­ers. We’ve made lots of infor­ma­tion about the cost and con­se­quences I‑1366 avail­able on our web­site. The text, the offi­cial impact state­ment, and analy­sis of its destruc­tive harm are all read­i­ly acces­si­ble there. Eyman’s web­site just has a recent fundrais­ing let­ter and not much else 1366-related.

This orga­ni­za­tion has been a part of many suc­cess­ful cam­paigns against destruc­tive Tim Eyman ini­tia­tives dur­ing Per­ma­nent Defense’s thir­teen plus years of oper­a­tion. We destroyed I‑892 in 2004. We defeat­ed I‑985 in 2008. We knocked down I‑1033 in 2009. We stopped I‑1125 in 2011. And we crushed I‑517 in 2013.

We can beat back this lat­est bad idea from Eyman, too. Join us in defend­ing Wash­ing­ton’s Con­sti­tu­tion and com­mon wealth by vot­ing NO on I‑1366.

Be sure to return your bal­lot to a drop box by 8 PM tomor­row, or to a post office by the last out­go­ing mail col­lec­tion time. Be a voter!