Tim Eyman: “All the initiatives are awful this year — vote no over and over and over again”

Big media may think of Don­ald Trump as the star of the 2016 elec­tion cycle, but here in Wash­ing­ton State, the real stars of this elec­tion are not peo­ple, but ideas. Wash­ing­ton’s bal­lot this year fea­tures a pletho­ra of wor­thy pro­gres­sive pol­i­cy pro­pos­als, from rais­ing the min­i­mum wage to pass­ing extreme risk pro­tec­tion orders to putting Wash­ing­ton on record as call­ing for a fed­er­al con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment stip­u­lat­ing that cor­po­ra­tions are not peo­ple and mon­ey is not speech.

The right wing, mean­while, failed to qual­i­fy any­thing at all, for the first time in decades. That’s left noto­ri­ous polit­i­cal scam artist Tim Eyman pret­ty disgruntled.

In an email this morn­ing to his fol­low­ers, Eyman bemoaned the pro­gres­sive move­men­t’s dom­i­nance of the bal­lot, instruct­ing his fol­low­ers to sim­ply vote no on every statewide ini­tia­tive plus Sound Tran­sit 3 (which only appears on the bal­lot in urban King, Sno­homish, and Pierce Coun­ty precincts).

The Don­ald Trump admir­er opened his email with this plea: “Don’t let the cra­zies take over the insane asy­lum. All the ini­tia­tives are awful this year — vote NO over and over and over again when you get your ballot.”

By cra­zies, Eyman means us — all the pro­gres­sive orga­ni­za­tions and peo­ple who are work­ing hard to raise our state and region’s qual­i­fy of life. And pre­sum­ably, insane asy­lum is Eyman’s inap­pro­pri­ate, ridicu­lous metaphor for Wash­ing­ton State.

(You know, Tim, if you don’t like liv­ing in a state with a pro­gres­sive major­i­ty, you don’t have to stay here. Amer­i­ca’s a free coun­try. There are states and com­mu­ni­ties else­where in the coun­try you can move to where right wing pol­i­tics predominate.)

The ini­tia­tive hap­pens to be a pro­gres­sive inven­tion. Well-mean­ing activists brought it to Wash­ing­ton State over a hun­dred years ago with the inten­tion of giv­ing the peo­ple the pow­er to enact laws need­ed to pro­tect and improve every­one’s well-being. They pro­mot­ed it as a tool for the com­mon good. They like­ly nev­er imag­ined it being hijacked to serve a mil­i­tant, extrem­ist agenda.

But, sad­ly, that’s what hap­pened in the late 1990s when Tim Eyman came along. Eyman real­ized the ini­tia­tive could be wield­ed as a weapon, and he made qual­i­fy­ing schemes to defund pub­lic ser­vices and wreck gov­ern­ment his business.

In his ear­ly years, Eyman pre­tend­ed to be an unpaid vol­un­teer, but was even­tu­al­ly forced to admit he was divert­ing mon­ey from his ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry to line his own pock­ets. Eyman sub­se­quent­ly dropped his ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry’s Per­ma­nent Offense moniker, but did not aban­don the con­cept that had prompt­ed its name, and was able to keep going even after hav­ing been caught with his hand in the cook­ie jar.

The stem of pro­gres­sive is progress. Progress in a demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety is only pos­si­ble when peo­ple are giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty for vote for a bet­ter future… in oth­er words, when the qual­i­fied elec­tors of the soci­ety have the abil­i­ty to elect rep­re­sen­ta­tives who will make their com­mu­ni­ties freer, safer, and more pros­per­ous, or approve laws them­selves that would do the same.

When elec­tions are a choice between the sta­tus quo or going back­wards, there is no oppor­tu­ni­ty for progress. It’s vital that pro­gres­sives oppose destruc­tive schemes like Eyman’s ini­tia­tives, but is even more vital that pro­gres­sives offer Wash­ing­to­ni­ans the oppor­tu­ni­ty to vote on ideas that will make our state better.

And that’s exact­ly what is hap­pen­ing in 2016. To Eyman’s cha­grin, pro­gres­sives this year are once again using the ini­tia­tive in accor­dance with its orig­i­nal intend­ed pur­pose — allow­ing cit­i­zens to vote on wor­thy ideas that died or could not get trac­tion in the Leg­is­la­ture. Mean­while, he’s got noth­ing. More sig­nif­i­cant­ly, nei­ther do any of his con­fed­er­ates. Pro­gres­sives own Wash­ing­ton’s 2016 ballot.

That’s a big deal. It is very, very sat­is­fy­ing to see Eyman in the posi­tion of hav­ing to call for a NO vote on every ini­tia­tive that’s in front of Wash­ing­ton vot­ers this year.

We at NPI enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly sup­port most of the ideas on the bal­lot in 2016. We urge a YES vote on I‑1433, I‑1491, I‑1501, I‑735, SJR 8210, and Sound Tran­sit 3/Regional Propo­si­tion 1. Though we are unable to sup­port I‑732 or I‑1464 due to defects in each, we would def­i­nite­ly like to see suc­ces­sor ini­tia­tives or bills that would tack­le the same prob­lems those mea­sures seek to address.

Polling indi­cates that all of the ini­tia­tives we sup­port are like­ly to pass, because vot­ers like them. That’s very good news. But we need to be ready as a move­ment to build on these poten­tial suc­cess­es by qual­i­fy­ing even more pro­gres­sive ideas to the bal­lot in 2017 and 2018. Our research shows that vot­ers are hun­gry for pro­gres­sive rev­enue reform and cor­po­rate tax account­abil­i­ty. If the Leg­is­la­ture will not act on these pri­or­i­ties, then the peo­ple must be giv­en a chance to.

That is, after all, one of the uses for which the ini­tia­tive was actu­al­ly intend­ed. In the words of the Direct Leg­is­la­tion League, the lead­ing pro­po­nents of bring­ing the ini­tia­tive, ref­er­en­dum, and recall to our cor­ner of the country:

We shall need the Ini­tia­tive in the future to secure the pas­sage of just tax laws. Past expe­ri­ence indi­cates that tax dodg­ing inter­ests will pow­er­ful­ly oppose such laws.

– 1900s era DLL pam­phlet, archived by the Wash­ing­ton State Library

As we fin­ish out this elec­tion cycle, we must com­mit our­selves to stay­ing on offense and bring­ing an end to the Eyman error. A bet­ter future is with­in reach if we can con­tin­ue to give the peo­ple the pow­er to vote on the pro­gres­sive ideas we need.