Tim Eyman quietly abandons I‑869 and resumes explicitly fundraising for himself

Tim Eyman has thrown in the tow­el on his most recent attempt to defund Sound Tran­sit and Amtrak Cas­cades, even if he isn’t ready to overt­ly say so yet.

The infa­mous ini­tia­tive prof­i­teer, who fan­cies him­self a road war­rior, announced back in June that he would seek to qual­i­fy an ini­tia­tive to the 2017 Leg­is­la­ture to wipe out bil­lions of dol­lars in fund­ing for tran­sit at the state and local level.

Eyman cre­at­ed a cam­paign com­mit­tee for the ini­tia­tive (I‑869) and print­ed up peti­tions, but nev­er did much of any­thing else… evi­dent­ly because he was unable to con­vince his wealthy bene­fac­tors to bankroll a sig­na­ture drive.

Sig­na­tures for ini­tia­tives to the 2017 Leg­is­la­ture are due this Fri­day, Decem­ber 30th, by the close of busi­ness, but Eyman won’t be show­ing up to sub­mit any I‑869 sig­na­tures to the Sec­re­tary of State’s Elec­tions Divi­sion because he was unable to buy the labor he need­ed to get I‑869 off the ground.

Eyman has all but admit­ted I‑869 is doomed. For the past six months, his fundrais­ing appeals have con­tained his oblig­a­tory ref­er­ence to I‑869:

Peti­tions for “We Love Our Cars” I‑869 have been sent out (if you need more, just email or call).  Our polling shows it’s anoth­er big win­ner.  Please help us make it a reality.

But that para­graph was omit­ted from today’s fundrais­ing email, which made no men­tion of I‑869. Instead of ask­ing for con­tri­bu­tions to qual­i­fy I‑869, Eyman asked for mon­ey for him­self (some­thing he’s become real­ly good at):

If you like and appre­ci­ate our past, cur­rent, and future efforts on behalf of tax­pay­ers, please send us a dona­tion for $10, $25, $50, $100, $250, $500, $1000, $2500, $5000 or more (there are no lim­its on how much can be giv­en). You can go to our web­site right now and make a secure on-line con­tri­bu­tion by Pay­Pal or VISA or M/C. OR, you can print this form, fill it out, and return it with a check or cred­it card information.

If Eyman’s past behav­ior is any indi­ca­tion, he’s not going to say any­thing open­ly about the demise of I‑869 until he is ready to begin sell­ing some­thing else.

(As a sales­man of bad ideas, Eyman must always have some­thing to sell.)

When Eyman unveiled I‑869 at the begin­ning of June 2016, it marked the third time in the span of six months that he had unveiled plans for a new ini­tia­tive, with the pre­vi­ous two announce­ments hav­ing amount­ed to false starts.

In Novem­ber of 2015, Eyman called a press con­fer­ence in the state­house to announce his intent to qual­i­fy a “Son of 1366” to the 2016 bal­lot. Eyman and his asso­ciates cre­at­ed a cam­paign com­mit­tee to pro­mote the new ini­tia­tive that looked pow­er­ful on paper (the com­mit­tee was loaded with over $1 mil­lion in loans), pre­sum­ably to intim­i­date Democ­rats in the Leg­is­la­ture into com­ply­ing with Eyman’s demand to sab­o­tage Arti­cle II, Sec­tion 22 of the State Constitution.

How­ev­er, Democ­rats were unit­ed in their refusal to capit­u­late, and the Son of 1366 com­mit­tee ulti­mate­ly became a lia­bil­i­ty for Eyman when NPI’s friends with Keep Wash­ing­ton Rolling launched a cit­i­zen’s action against him and the com­mit­tee for fail­ure to prop­er­ly com­ply with Wash­ing­ton’s pub­lic dis­clo­sure laws.

In Feb­ru­ary, Eyman returned to the state cap­i­tal (this time with­out his side­kicks in tow) to announce a new scheme to defund Sound Tran­sit and Amtrak Cas­cades — I‑1421. Again, Eyman made a big show of intro­duc­ing the ini­tia­tive, even sym­bol­i­cal­ly becom­ing the first to sign it in front of the tele­vi­sion cameras.

But though he did print peti­tions for I‑1421, it turned out to be no more real than the “Son of 1366” he had announced in Novem­ber. By June, Eyman had admit­ted to The Her­ald’s Jer­ry Corn­field that I‑1421 was doomed and would not qualify.

Six ini­tia­tives ulti­mate­ly appeared on the 2016 bal­lot… none of them Eyman’s, for only the fourth time in six­teen years. Bereft of an ini­tia­tive to sell, Eyman tried to make him­self a play­er in the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in oth­er ways.

Eyman suc­cess­ful­ly lob­bied the Sound Tran­sit board of direc­tors to get him­self appoint­ed to the com­mit­tees tasked with writ­ing the con state­ments for the voter’s pam­phlet (a deci­sion we strong­ly crit­i­cized here), and backed Rod­ney Tom’s attack cam­paigns against Jus­tices Bar­bara Mad­sen and Char­lie Wig­gins, which were fail­ures. Mean­while, his ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry sat idle, with I‑869 stalled inside.

Last month, with all evi­dence sug­gest­ing I‑869 would meet the same fate as I‑1421, we declared I‑869 dead. Eyman did not dis­pute our assessment.

This Fri­day, we will offi­cial­ly add I‑869 to Tim Eyman’s Fail­ure Chart as its newest entry. We have no doubt I‑869 will soon be scrubbed from Eyman’s web­site and replaced with some­thing else, as if it nev­er existed.

But we will cel­e­brat­ing I‑869’s fail­ure for many weeks. It is vital that we invest in mass tran­sit to secure our state’s eco­nom­ic future, reduce pol­lu­tion, and improve mobil­i­ty. I‑869’s demise means anoth­er threat to Sound Tran­sit and Amtrak Cas­cades has fiz­zled out. Sound Tran­sit, the pub­lic agency Eyman loathes above all oth­ers, is fly­ing high, hav­ing had a stel­lar 2016, while Eyman is crash­ing and burn­ing. That is a very good out­come for the state and region we love.