Tim Eyman, Republican lobbyist

A few months ago, I made the obser­va­tion here on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate that with his ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry idle, Tim Eyman was turn­ing into a full time lob­by­ist and unabashed cheer­leader for the Sen­ate Repub­li­can cau­cus.

It would seem this trans­for­ma­tion is about com­plete, judg­ing by the con­tents of Eyman’s recent elec­tron­ic mis­sives, which he sends about twice a week.

Eyman has always had a rela­tion­ship with the Repub­li­can Par­ty, but I don’t think it’s ever been this tight before. In the past, Eyman has felt free to crit­i­cize Repub­li­cans when war­rant­ed, espe­cial­ly when Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors or elect­ed offi­cials strayed from Eyman’s agen­da. Only two years ago, Eyman was vocif­er­ous­ly crit­i­ciz­ing Sen­ate Repub­li­cans for try­ing to raise Wash­ing­to­ni­ans’ prop­er­ty tax­es.

This year, Repub­li­cans are try­ing to do the same thing, but Eyman has­n’t said so much as a word against them. Instead, he’s giv­en Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­ers — from Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee to House Speak­er Frank Chopp to Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­to­r­i­al can­di­date Man­ka Dhin­gra — a dou­ble help­ing of his scorn.

At this point, it appears Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors in Wash­ing­ton State have achieved saint­hood with Tim Eyman. They can do no wrong.

Sen­ate Repub­li­cans are seek­ing to raise the prop­er­ty tax­es of most Wash­ing­to­ni­ans at this very moment, but that is no longer blas­phe­my in Eyman’s book. They’re get­ting a pass. Mean­while, Democ­rats are being attacked for want­i­ng to raise tax­es — includ­ing (and, no,  I’m not mak­ing this up) — prop­er­ty tax­es.

“There are lots of things to dis­like about Democ­rats,” Eyman wrote in a June 15th email. “They love to micro­man­age what we eat and drink. They police every spo­ken word to find offense. They lec­ture, they con­de­scend. But what is tru­ly infu­ri­at­ing about Democ­rats is their arro­gant refusal to accept the vot­ers’ ver­dict on taxes.”

I could­n’t stop laugh­ing after I read that.

Vot­ers in Puget Sound last year vot­ed over­whelm­ing­ly to pass Sound Tran­sit 3, and Tim Eyman has whined and griped con­stant­ly about that result ever since.

Why won’t Tim accept the will of the vot­ers? Why won’t he abide by the vot­ers’ ver­dict on these tax­es? Answer: Because the vote did­n’t go his way.

Eyman believes his oppo­si­tion — name­ly, Democ­rats — should have to oper­ate by a dif­fer­ent set of rules than his own par­ty. We have a term for that in the net­roots com­mu­ni­ty. It’s called the IOKIYAR prin­ci­ple (It’s Okay If You’re A Republican).

Eyman demon­strat­ed he is now an adher­ent of the IOKIYAR prin­ci­ple in a sub­se­quent para­graph in that very same June 15th email:

At a time when car tab tax­es are sky­rock­et­ing, Democ­rats demand more. When prop­er­ty tax­es are tax­ing strug­gling work­ing fam­i­lies out of their homes, Democ­rats push for more. 

It takes some nerve to blast your oppo­si­tion over some­thing your own par­ty is try­ing to do. We know Eyman isn’t igno­rant of what’s in the Sen­ate Repub­li­can bud­get. He’s com­ment­ed on it. Praised it. So we know he’s okay with it.

But heav­en for­bid Demo­c­ra­t­ic leg­is­la­tors lis­ten to what the major­i­ty of Wash­ing­ton vot­ers are say­ing and advo­cate for a bud­get that amply funds our schools as our cher­ished state Con­sti­tu­tion requires, whether through a cap­i­tal gains tax, pol­lu­tion tax, or oth­er rev­enue source that does­n’t exac­er­bate our upside down tax code.

This week, Eyman took things even fur­ther, blam­ing Democ­rats (and only Democ­rats) for the lack of progress final­iz­ing a bud­get that can pass both hous­es of the Leg­is­la­ture, declar­ing, “The Democ­rats are going nuclear this ses­sion. Why? Because any suc­cess will show that divid­ed gov­ern­ment works.”

Not one to restrain him­self, Eyman did­n’t stop there.

“[T]he [Sen­ate Repub­li­cans’] leg­isla­tive suc­cess has infu­ri­at­ed the cra­zies on the left to the point that Speak­er Frank Chopp can’t restrain them any more. The pris­on­ers have tak­en over the insane asy­lum. In the Democ­rats’ House and Sen­ate cau­cus­es, it’s bed­lam, it’s chaos. None of the cra­zies are will­ing to agree to anything.”

I’m not sure why, but for some rea­son, read­ing Eyman’s false and non­sen­si­cal char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the dynam­ic in Olympia remind­ed me of that time that ex-Fox Noise host Bill O’Reil­ly threw a tantrum and called the net­roots com­mu­ni­ty Satanists on his pro­gram. A com­menter on Think Progress prompt­ly retorted:

So, Bill thinks we wor­ship the dev­il… and Coul­ter says we are godless.

I’m so confused.

Well, at least the right wing is there to tell me how to think.

The real rea­son we don’t have a bud­get yet is because Sen­ate Repub­li­cans have refused to nego­ti­ate a go-home agree­ment with House Democ­rats and Gov­er­nor Inslee, not because Demo­c­ra­t­ic leg­is­la­tors are quar­rel­ing with each other.

Repub­li­cans have delib­er­ate­ly cho­sen to waste time and run out the clock, fig­ur­ing that a game of chick­en will serve their inter­ests. Divid­ed gov­ern­ment has once again brought us to the precipice of a gov­ern­ment shut­down for the sec­ond bien­ni­um in a row. That’s pret­ty damn­ing evi­dence that divid­ed gov­ern­ment isn’t working.

If Sen­ate Repub­li­cans were the minor­i­ty par­ty, it’s rea­son­able to believe the Leg­is­la­ture would have already gone home for the year. We’d have a budget.

In the event Sen­ate Repub­li­cans (or just some of them) were to agree to a pol­lu­tion tax as part of a final bud­get deal — some­thing Eyman seems afraid of, con­sid­er­ing what he said today — I won­der how he would react.

Would he main­tain his new Repub­li­cans-can-do-no-wrong stance and find a way to jus­ti­fy their actions, or would he break with the Repub­li­cans and give them flak for vot­ing to raise rev­enue? (A major­i­ty of Wash­ing­to­ni­ans want the Leg­is­la­ture to raise rev­enue to ensure our kids are get­ting the amply fund­ed edu­ca­tion they deserve.)

Although Eyman won’t be on the bal­lot this year (it’s the first time in twen­ty years that Wash­ing­ton vot­ers will enjoy con­sec­u­tive Eyman-free gen­er­al elec­tions), he is still urg­ing peo­ple to give him mon­ey to qual­i­fy an ini­tia­tive with every email he sends — which I find down­right dishonest.

Con­sid­er­ing that he’s using the mon­ey he’s present­ly rais­ing from his remain­ing donors to pay expens­es that are asso­ci­at­ed with lob­by­ing (includ­ing trav­el) he real­ly should be reg­is­tered as a lob­by­ist with the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Commission.

But of course he’s not.

Mon­ey, by the way, isn’t the only thing Eyman reg­u­lar­ly asks of the small cir­cle of peo­ple that’s inex­plic­a­bly stuck by him. Though Eyman’s mis­sives usu­al­ly begin with an attack on Democ­rats, they then pro­ceed to pleas to send a canned mes­sage to all one hun­dred and forty-sev­en legislators.

These pleas typ­i­cal­ly con­sist of exhor­ta­tions like this:

It’s crit­i­cal that each and every one of us com­mu­ni­cates with Olympia’s leg­is­la­tors RIGHT NOW. I ask you — RIGHT NOW — to email this, or some­thing like this to ALL legislators.

Do under­stand that by Olympia’s leg­is­la­tors, Eyman means Wash­ing­ton’s leg­is­la­tors. Olympia’s leg­is­la­tors are the peo­ple who rep­re­sent Olympia in the Leg­is­la­ture, name­ly Democ­rats Sam Hunt, Lau­rie Dolan, and Beth Doglio. But when Eyman asks his fol­low­ers to email leg­is­la­tors, he real­ly does mean “all leg­is­la­tors”, as in all nine­ty-eight mem­bers of the House and all forty-nine mem­bers of the Sen­ate, not mere­ly their own rep­re­sen­ta­tives or leg­is­la­tors from a par­tic­u­lar locale such as Olympia.

Many email providers lim­it the num­ber of recip­i­ents that can be includ­ed on a sin­gle mes­sage or that can be sent to in a fixed peri­od of time, so it’s quite pos­si­ble that some of Eyman’s fol­low­ers are find­ing it hard to fol­low his instructions.

Tes­ti­fy­ing in front of com­mit­tees or whole leg­isla­tive bod­ies is the oth­er com­po­nent of Eyman’s lob­by­ing, and as men­tioned, the trav­el he reg­u­lar­ly under­takes in order to speak in per­son for or against state bills and local ordi­nances is being financed through dona­tions that are sup­posed to be for qual­i­fy­ing initiatives.

If you look at Eyman’s most recent PDC reports, you’ll see under the expen­di­tures tab that Eyman and his asso­ciates are most­ly pay­ing back them­selves for trav­el expens­es, tele­phone expens­es, data entry expens­es, even news­pa­per subscriptions.

These are the largest expens­es of the $17,986.78 in expen­di­tures report­ed by the lat­est incar­na­tion of Eyman’s Vot­ers Want More Choic­es com­mit­tee this year:

Notice that Ver­i­zon and Data­bar are the only ven­dors on this list. The rest of the pay­ments are either reim­burse­ments to Eyman and the Fagans (his asso­ciates) or to com­pen­sate Janet Fagan for data entry. The list of reim­burse­ments is actu­al­ly longer than this; the above is only what shows on page 1 of the expens­es tab.