Tim Eyman’s wealthy benefactors funding Rodney Tom’s attacks on Justice Wiggins

New­ly filed reports with the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion show that sev­er­al of Tim Eyman’s top wealthy bene­fac­tors are work­ing with Med­i­na’s Rod­ney Tom to fund $350,000 worth of attack ads against Supreme Court Jus­tice Char­lie Wig­gins, who is one of three incum­bents seek­ing reelec­tion to the state’s high­est court this year.

Tom’s polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee, disin­gen­u­ous­ly named “Judi­cial Integri­ty Wash­ing­ton”, pre­vi­ous­ly tar­get­ed Chief Jus­tice Bar­bara Mad­sen in the Top Two elec­tion. Although the PAC spent sev­er­al hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars in an attempt to defeat her, Mad­sen still man­aged to swamp both of her oppo­nents, win­ning 63.9% of the vote. And she enjoys the sup­port of all the state’s major news­pa­per pub­lish­ers, whose rec­om­men­da­tions in judi­cial con­tests can have some influence.

Hav­ing appar­ent­ly con­clud­ed that Wig­gins is actu­al­ly more vul­ner­a­ble than Mad­sen, Rod­ney Tom has decid­ed to change tar­gets for the gen­er­al elec­tion, hop­ing to knock out at least one of the jus­tices respon­si­ble for strik­ing down the League of Edu­ca­tion Vot­ers’ I‑1240 (char­ter schools) and Tim Eyman’s numer­ous uncon­sti­tu­tion­al schemes to starve pub­lic ser­vices by requir­ing a two-thirds vote to pass rev­enue bills in the Wash­ing­ton State Legislature.

“Judi­cial Integri­ty Wash­ing­ton” has so far raised $453,100.00. $350,000 of that is from bil­lion­aire Ken­neth Fish­er of Camas. Kem­per Free­man, Jr. of Belle­vue has giv­en $50,000, and for­mer wire­less mogul John Stan­ton has giv­en $50,000 as well. Artie Buerk has giv­en $3,000 and Rod­ney Tom him­self gave $100.

Those are the only con­tri­bu­tions on record to date.

Rod­ney Tom is the PAC’s sole offi­cer. The PAC’s C1-PC lists him as both the “cam­paign man­ag­er” and the Trea­sur­er.

The PAC is Tom’s oper­a­tion, but Tim Eyman is also periph­er­al­ly involved.

Not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, Eyman yes­ter­day sent out an email to his fol­low­ers evis­cer­at­ing Wig­gins and call­ing for his ouster from the Supreme Court.

“Charles Wig­gins is an embar­rass­ment and deserves to be removed from office,” snapped Eyman. “He and Bar­bara Mad­sen and Mary Yu are run­ning for reelec­tion and on the Novem­ber bal­lot. They all feel enti­tled to their posi­tions and annoyed that they need to defend their inde­fen­si­ble rulings.”

(Empha­sis is Eyman’s.)

As usu­al, Tim Eyman has no idea what he’s talk­ing about. I have seen each of the afore­men­tioned jus­tices this year out on the cam­paign trail, and I can attest that Eyman’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of them is false. Jus­tices Yu, Mad­sen, and Wig­gins are some of the most acces­si­ble jurists I’ve ever met. They are glad to engage cit­i­zens in con­ver­sa­tion and talk about issues like access to jus­tice. They are very seri­ous about com­ply­ing with judi­cial ethics rules, and fol­low those to the letter.

Eyman’s vicious and vin­dic­tive­ly word­ed email from yes­ter­day sug­gests he has been itch­ing to take a swing at Jus­tice Wig­gins for some time.

Wig­gins, read­ers may recall, mem­o­rably defeat­ed Richard Sanders six years ago, leav­ing Tim Eyman with just one friend on the Supreme Court: Jim John­son. John­son sub­se­quent­ly chose to retire and was suc­ceed­ed by Mary Yu, one of the few jurists to have struck down an Eyman ini­tia­tive at the tri­al court level.

All three jus­tices enjoy strong bar asso­ci­at­ing ratings.

Jus­tice Mary Yu is rat­ed “Excep­tion­al­ly Well Qual­i­fied” across the board. Jus­tice Bar­bara Mad­sen has three “Excep­tion­al­ly Well Qual­i­fied” rat­ings and one “Well Qual­i­fied” rat­ing. Jus­tice Char­lie Wig­gins, mean­while, has four “Excep­tion­al­ly Well Qual­i­fied” rat­ings and two “Well Qual­i­fied” ratings.

None of their oppo­nents appear to have any “Excep­tion­al­ly Well Qual­i­fied” ratings.

The last time the right wing in Wash­ing­ton made a major play for posi­tions on the Supreme Court was ten years ago, when the once pow­er­ful Build­ing Indus­try Asso­ci­a­tion of Wash­ing­ton (BIAW) spent large sums of mon­ey in an attempt to knock out incum­bent Jus­tices Ger­ry Alexan­der and Susan Owens. The BIAW spent over a mil­lion dol­lars in 2006 to elect their hand­picked can­di­dates, but vot­ers resound­ing­ly returned Alexan­der and Owens to the bench for new terms.

Tom’s attack ads against Mad­sen were inef­fec­tive back in the sum­mer, but he’s evi­dent­ly con­vinced Eyman’s bene­fac­tors to give him anoth­er mas­sive pile of cash so that he can try to pick off a dif­fer­ent Supreme Court justice.

Rod­ney Tom was once a state law­mak­er who worked on caus­es like ensur­ing home­own­ers vic­tim­ized by neg­li­gent con­struc­tion had access to justice.

Now, like Tim Eyman, he’s a mouth­piece for right wing billionaires.