Avalanche of corporate money begins flowing into Washington State initiative campaigns

Seri­ous mon­ey is begin­ning to flow into cam­paign com­mit­tees orga­nized in sup­port of — and in oppo­si­tion to — ini­tia­tives that could be des­tined for the Novem­ber 2018 gen­er­al elec­tion bal­lot, reports recent­ly filed with the PDC show.

Last year, for the first time in decades, no statewide ini­tia­tives appeared on Wash­ing­ton’s Novem­ber gen­er­al elec­tion bal­lot, and 2017 end­ed up being dom­i­nat­ed by local and spe­cial elec­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly the con­tentious state Sen­ate race in Wash­ing­ton’s 45th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict, won by Man­ka Dhingra.

But this year, there could be as many as six ini­tia­tives on the bal­lot, depend­ing on what hap­pens in the next few weeks. And that means there could be as many as twelve cam­paigns (six for, six against) active across the state by sum­mer’s end.

Big mon­ey is already flow­ing into two of them: Ini­tia­tive 1634 and Ini­tia­tive 1631.

Ini­tia­tive 1634, spear­head­ed by the soft drink indus­try (Coca-Cola, Pep­si, Dr Pep­per Snap­ple Group, and Red Bull) would bar local juris­dic­tions in Wash­ing­ton State from levy­ing tax­es on soda. Curi­ous­ly, Seat­tle’s exist­ing tax on sug­ary bev­er­ages would be allowed to stand, though the city would not be able to raise it further.

The four afore­men­tioned com­pa­nies have already dumped $1.8 mil­lion into the cam­paign’s cof­fers to get it start­ed, with Coke respon­si­ble for approx­i­mate­ly half of that sum and Pep­si respon­si­ble for a major­i­ty of the oth­er half.

Here’s a sum­ma­ry of Big Soda’s finan­cial activ­i­ty in sup­port of the campaign:

As you can see, it’s all cor­po­rate mon­ey. And this is only the begin­ning. Eight years ago, Big Soda bankrolled Ini­tia­tive 1107, plow­ing mil­lions into a cam­paign to over­turn tax increas­es on soda, bot­tled water, and chew­ing gum. They won.

Now they’re back for a sec­ond round.

Like in 2010, Big Soda will like­ly be spend­ing mil­lions upon mil­lions more to ped­dle this ini­tia­tive once they’ve pur­chased a spot on the Novem­ber bal­lot for it.

The cam­paign’s expen­di­tures show that a large num­ber of firms and ven­dors have already been retained to work on the sig­na­ture dri­ve, mar­ket the ini­tia­tive to vot­ers dur­ing and after the sig­na­ture dri­ve, or pro­vide legal assistance:

• Dewey Square Group;
• AAP Hold­ing Company;
• MCMI, LLC;
• The Hicks Group;
• David Binder Research;
• Ter­ra Strate­gies, LLC;
• North­west Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Inc.;
• Blue­front Strate­gies (a divi­sion of DDC Advocacy);
• Desler Com­mu­ni­ca­tions;
• Tar­get­Point Consulting;
• Nielsen Merk­samer Par­rinel­lo Gross & Leoni LLP.

The cam­paign is disin­gen­u­ous­ly called “Yes! to Afford­able Gro­ceries (See Email For Rest of Name)”. And no — I’m not jok­ing — that’s actu­al­ly what the com­mit­tee shows up as on the PDC web­site, as you can see here.

An oppo­si­tion cam­paign to Ini­tia­tive 1634 has yet to form, but one will be need­ed, because this mea­sure is almost cer­tain­ly going to qualify.

Mean­while, Big Oil is get­ting ready to spend megabucks against Ini­tia­tive 1631, the Alliance for Jobs and Clean Ener­gy-backed mea­sure that aims to put a price on pol­lu­tion, some­thing that is very nec­es­sary and long overdue.

The “NO on 1631 (Spon­sored by West­ern States Petro­le­um Asso­ci­a­tion)” com­mit­tee on Thurs­day col­lec­tive­ly report­ed a quar­ter of a mil­lion dol­lars in pledges from the com­pa­nies with major refin­ery oper­a­tions in Wash­ing­ton State: Andeav­or, BP, Shell, U.S. Oil, and Philips 66. Some of these com­pa­nies also helped under­write Tim Eyman’s uncon­sti­tu­tion­al I‑1053 and I‑1185 sev­er­al years ago.

Aside from those pledges, the com­mit­tee also has $3,794.82 in in-kind con­tri­bu­tions from the West­ern States Petro­le­um Association.

These pledges are mere­ly a har­bin­ger of what is to come. In the end, upwards of $20 mil­lion could be spent by the oil com­pa­nies in an attempt to defeat I‑1631.

The cam­paign in favor of I‑1631, which NPI is a part of, has raised $661,951.47 to date, and spent $389,555.77, with about half of its dona­tions com­ing from The Nature Con­ser­van­cy. The Wash­ing­ton State Labor Coun­cil, Wash­ing­ton Envi­ron­men­tal Coun­cil, Wash­ing­ton Con­ser­va­tion Vot­ers, and Peter Gold­man and Martha Kongs­gaard are also major con­trib­u­tors to the campaign. 

To be cer­ti­fied for the Novem­ber 2018 bal­lot, ini­tia­tive peti­tions must con­tain valid sig­na­tures from at least 259,622 reg­is­tered vot­ers and be sub­mit­ted no lat­er than 5:00 PM on July 6th, 2018. That’s less than sev­en weeks from now.

But a sig­na­ture dri­ve can eas­i­ly take place with­in the span of sev­en weeks when there is plen­ty of mon­ey avail­able to pay work­ers to cir­cu­late petitions.