“HERESY”: Hyberbolic Tim Eyman tears into Republican Joyce McDonald in ferocious email

Dis­graced ini­tia­tive pro­mot­er Tim Eyman has tak­en a break from exco­ri­at­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic elect­ed lead­ers in his lat­est mul­ti­week­ly email mis­sive, choos­ing instead to launch a fero­cious broad­side at Repub­li­can State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Joyce McDon­ald. What could McDon­ald have pos­si­bly done to mer­it such scorn? Answer: She has sinned by not being loy­al to Eyman and Eyman’s agenda.

McDon­ald, you see, is the Rank­ing Mem­ber of the House State Gov­ern­ment Com­mit­tee, which is con­sid­er­ing leg­is­la­tion that would bring much need­ed trans­paren­cy and account­abil­i­ty to the under­ground sig­na­ture gath­er­ing indus­try. McDon­ald has spon­sored a strik­ing amend­ment to the bill, which will refine the lan­guage before it is set to receive a “do pass” rec­om­men­da­tion tomorrow.

It is not unusu­al for an Eyman email to be mean-spir­it­ed — in fact, most Eyman emails could be described that way. But this email is more than mean-spir­it­ed, it’s a nasty­gram in the extreme. About the only thing miss­ing is pro­fane utter­ance or two, or a crude pho­to to accom­pa­ny the hyber­bol­ic text.

Here’s a pletho­ra of snip­pets from the email that illus­trate what I’m talk­ing about:

• “Joyce McDon­ald’s cal­lous­ness and cowardice”
• “marred and scarred by Joyce McDon­ald’s anti-ini­tia­tive heresy”
• “This is a bru­tal betrayal”
• “Dan­te’s Infer­no described the nine Cir­cles of Hell. There should be a tenth cir­cle for leg­is­la­tors [like McDonald]”
• “I am livid that ‘Repub­li­can’ Joyce McDon­ald is sell­ing us out.”

After urg­ing his fol­low­ers to send angry “get in line behind my agen­da” emails to the entire House and Sen­ate Repub­li­can cau­cus­es, Eyman then pro­vid­ed Joyce McDon­ald’s per­son­al mobile tele­phone num­ber and urged his fol­low­ers to send a furi­ous bar­rage of calls and texts to her non-offi­cial line as well.

It’s real­ly some­thing how, in the same breath, Eyman can allege that this pro­posed bill would sub­ject paid sig­na­ture gath­er­ers to harass­ment while he him­self is sub­ject­ing a mem­ber of the Leg­is­la­ture — from his own par­ty — to a cam­paign of harass­ment. Eyman’s stance on pri­va­cy is sim­ple: he believes in pri­va­cy for him­self and when it serves his inter­ests, and he does­n’t believe in it otherwise.

As the old adage goes, a wound­ed ani­mal can be a very dan­ger­ous ani­mal. It’s been years since Tim Eyman qual­i­fied an ini­tia­tive to the Wash­ing­ton State bal­lot — the last five con­sec­u­tive mea­sures he said he was doing have all end­ed in fail­ure, which is unprece­dent­ed — but with­in Repub­li­can cir­cles, he still has influ­ence, and in Trum­p­like fash­ion, Eyman is try­ing to work his shrink­ing base into a lat­er in an attempt to get Repub­li­cans to aban­don this nec­es­sary, bipar­ti­san legislation.

Curi­ous­ly, Eyman has not sin­gled out State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Lar­ry Haler, the orig­i­nal prime spon­sor of HB 1537, for his role in intro­duc­ing the leg­is­la­tion last year, or Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ter­ry Nealey, who signed on as a cospon­sor. Both are Repub­li­cans. Eyman and Haler sat next to each oth­er yes­ter­day dur­ing the hear­ing on HB 1537, in the row in front of me, and were engaged in con­ver­sa­tion part of the time.

Haler and Nealey aren’t men­tioned by name in today’s email, although their email address­es are list­ed in Eyman’s call to action.

Read­ers, if you are rep­re­sent­ed by a Repub­li­can in the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture, please let us know by using our con­tact form so that we can work with you to respond in a con­struc­tive way to Tim Eyman’s lat­est attempt to intim­i­date our elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives into doing his bidding.