Ready for 2017 and beyond: NPI’s Permanent Defense to debut sleek new website Monday

This Mon­day, as a sign of our com­mit­ment to con­tin­ue oppos­ing Tim Eyman and the big mon­ey behind his ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry into 2017 and beyond, we will be debut­ing a sleek new web­site for Per­ma­nent Defense, NPI’s old­est project, which for four­teen years has pro­vid­ed a first line of defense against threats to the Con­sti­tu­tion and com­mon­wealth of our beloved home state of Washington.

Code­named Fidal­go, this ninth ver­sion of permanentdefense.org is the most pol­ished, acces­si­ble, and respon­sive ver­sion of the site yet. It looks and func­tions much bet­ter on mobile devices than the cur­rent incar­na­tion does. And it’s been designed to show­case beau­ti­ful pho­tog­ra­phy from NPI’s grow­ing library of images.

It seems fit­ting that Fidal­go­’s launch book­ends a spring of good news: Uni­ver­si­ty Link light rail opened ahead of sched­ule and under bud­get, Tim Eyman’s I‑1366 was struck down as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al by a unan­i­mous Supreme Court, and Eyman failed to qual­i­fy any­thing for the 2016 bal­lot. Those are vic­to­ries worth savor­ing and cel­e­brat­ing. But we’re also going to be lay­ing the ground­work for the bat­tles ahead, because we know that Tim Eyman is not going away.

Seat­tle Times colum­nist Dan­ny West­neat has a col­umn on that very sub­ject in tomor­row’s paper (it’s already up online). West­neat writes:

The sto­ry going around, in lib­er­al cir­cles any­way, is that Tim Eyman is hav­ing a ter­ri­ble, hor­ri­ble, no-good, very bad year.

The gre­gar­i­ous ini­tia­tive hus­tler just had yet anoth­er of his anti-tax mea­sures tor­pe­doed by the courts. He appar­ent­ly is still under state inves­ti­ga­tion for alleged­ly run­ning an ini­tia­tive kick­back scheme. And his anti-car-tax ini­tia­tive for this fall nev­er got off the ground.

“It appears the good peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton will once again be able to enjoy an Eyman-free elec­tion this autumn …” wrote Andrew Vil­leneuve, who runs an anti-Eyman group called Per­ma­nent Defense. “That’s a vic­to­ry we will be cel­e­brat­ing all sum­mer long.”

All of that is true — for now. But there’s some­thing else going on with Eyman that has got­ten almost no atten­tion. He’s hold­ing an ace in the hole that’s like­ly to make him a major play­er in the huge tax and spend­ing fights on the hori­zon, per­haps for years to come.

Eyman’s got a billionaire.

West­neat goes on to explain that Eyman has hooked up with Ken­neth Fish­er, one of the rich­est men in the state (and the world, for that mat­ter). Fish­er is one of the wealthy bene­fac­tors who under­wrote Ini­tia­tive 1366, which appeared on last year’s bal­lot, along with Van­cou­ver-based real estate devel­op­er Clyde Holland.

This isn’t news to us. Dur­ing last year’s sig­na­ture dri­ve, we repeat­ed­ly dis­cussed the big mon­ey behind Eyman’s I‑1366, con­clud­ing that it was cer­tain to make the bal­lot. I point­ed out in a May 2015 post here that Eyman has been able to stay in busi­ness pre­cise­ly because he keeps reel­ing in whales like Fisher:

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.

The list of wealthy bene­fac­tors that have enabled Eyman to get on the bal­lot year after year is now pret­ty long. It includes deceased heli­copter titan Wes Lemat­ta, deceased invest­ment banker Michael Dun­mire, Belle­vue Square devel­op­er Kem­per Free­man, Jr., oil giants like BP, Tesoro, and Cono­coPhillips, the Asso­ci­a­tion of Wash­ing­ton Busi­ness, gam­bling con­glom­er­ates like Great Cana­di­an Gam­ing, Fre­mon­t’s Suzie Burke, and North Seat­tle’s Faye Garneau.

Con­sid­er­ing Eyman’s track record, and con­sid­er­ing that Eyman suc­cess­ful­ly con­vinced Hol­land and Fish­er to dump lots of mon­ey into an ini­tia­tive that was bla­tant­ly uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, we fig­ured Eyman would have the mon­ey to buy his way onto the 2016 bal­lot. Eyman even report­ed $1.2 mil­lion in loans from him­self and his bene­fac­tors to one of his com­mit­tees at the end of last year. Then, a few weeks into 2016, he announced he plan to qual­i­fy a sec­ond ini­tia­tive to the 2016 bal­lot.

In the months that fol­lowed, though, Eyman failed to launch a paid sig­na­ture dri­ve for either ini­tia­tive. Instead, with mon­ey from Hol­land and Fish­er, he launched an ille­gal inde­pen­dent expen­di­ture against the major­i­ty of the state’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic leg­is­la­tors. Eyman’s obses­sion with “unelect­ing” Democ­rats became the focus of his emails to his fol­low­ers for sev­er­al con­sec­u­tive weeks. It became appar­ent that the ini­tia­tives Eyman was claim­ing to be work­ing on weren’t going anywhere.

It seems that Hol­land and Fish­er weren’t on board with Eyman’s orig­i­nal plans for 2016. Had they been, Eyman would no doubt have launched a sig­na­ture dri­ve months ago, which would be in its final few weeks right now.

Eyman’s fail­ure to make the bal­lot in 2016 is an unex­pect­ed vic­to­ry. It is worth cel­e­brat­ing, because it unfor­tu­nate­ly does­n’t hap­pen very often.

But we agree with West­neat: it does­n’t mean Eyman is out of business.

We’re stu­dents of his­to­ry at NPI, and his­to­ry has shown that Eyman is a relent­less rebound­er. Per­sis­tence is his mantra. Past Eyman-free years (2003, 2006, 2014) have been tem­po­rary dry spells for his ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry. We are oper­at­ing under the assump­tion that Eyman’s bene­fac­tors have giv­en him the green light for I‑869 and that it will be appear­ing on the Novem­ber 2017 ballot.

We’re not going to waste valu­able time wait­ing to see what hap­pens — as soon as we have con­fir­ma­tion that Eyman is actu­al­ly doing a sig­na­ture dri­ve for I‑869, we will begin work­ing with our allies to orga­nize oppo­si­tion, so there is a cred­i­ble NO cam­paign in place to defeat it and pro­tect our invest­ments in bad­ly-need­ed infra­struc­ture like Link light rail, Amtrak Cas­cades, and bike paths.

(Speak­ing of bike paths… Eyman ought to have a new­found appre­ci­a­tion for the need for safe cor­ri­dors for bicy­clists, giv­en that he recent­ly got into a nasty bicy­cle acci­dent and broke his shoul­der. Sad­ly, with I‑869, he’s decid­ed to redou­ble his efforts to evis­cer­ate fund­ing for projects that would make it eas­i­er and safer for all of us to get around by bicy­cle. It once again shows that he does­n’t believe in the Amer­i­can tra­di­tion of com­mu­ni­ties pool­ing resources to get things done.)

While we’re doing all of that, we’re also team­ing up with fel­low pro­gres­sives to go on offense. NPI belongs to the coali­tions work­ing to qual­i­fy Ini­tia­tive 1433 and Ini­tia­tive 1491 to the Novem­ber bal­lot. I‑1433 would increase the min­i­mum wage and pro­vide paid sick leave to work­ers across Wash­ing­ton. To bor­row a fig­ure of speech from Eyman, we think it has the poten­tial to be wild­ly pop­u­lar.

I‑1491, mean­while, will make our neigh­bor­hoods safer by allow­ing judges to issue extreme risk pro­tec­tion orders tem­porar­i­ly bar­ring indi­vid­u­als who pose a threat to them­selves or oth­ers from buy­ing firearms. This ini­tia­tive is based on leg­is­la­tion that pre­vi­ous­ly failed to make it out of the state­house. It is an excel­lent fol­low-up to uni­ver­sal back­ground checks on gun sales, which vot­ers passed in 2014.

We also sup­port pas­sage of WAmend’s I‑735, which would put Wash­ing­ton on record as call­ing for an amend­ment to the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Unit­ed States to declare that cor­po­ra­tions are not peo­ple and mon­ey is not speech.

And we are com­mit­ted to work­ing with our elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives to reform our tax code and our ini­tia­tive process. A lack of progress in each of these areas has helped keep Eyman rel­e­vant over the years. As I’ve said before, pro­gres­sive tax reform is Eyman’s worst night­mare. Eyman wants the tax code to stay bro­ken and regres­sive so there will always be an appetite for his initiatives.

The key to mak­ing Eyman less rel­e­vant and min­i­miz­ing the harm that he and his wealthy bene­fac­tors can cause over the long term is to go on offense and to actu­al­ly address the con­di­tions that he is exploit­ing. That is what this orga­ni­za­tion, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, was found­ed to work on.

Going on offense is a lot eas­i­er when defense isn’t neglect­ed. Tim Eyman’s ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry is a grave threat to Wash­ing­ton’s future. It needs and deserves year-round oppo­si­tion. NPI’s Per­ma­nent Defense pro­vides that opposition.

If you’d like to con­tribute to PD’s work and help us main­tain the vital first line of defense our Con­sti­tu­tion and com­mon­wealth need, you can eas­i­ly do so online.

And remem­ber to join us vir­tu­al­ly on Mon­day morn­ing as we unveil Per­ma­nent Defense’s sleek new web­site to the world!