Another Tim Eyman scam bites the dust: I‑1648 fails to qualify for the November ballot

There goes anoth­er one.

Dis­graced ini­tia­tive pro­mot­er Tim Eyman was forced to admit fail­ure yet again today as his scheme to over­turn the Leg­is­la­ture’s 2019 rev­enue reforms met its demise in Olympia at the Sec­re­tary of State’s Elec­tions Annex on Union Street.

Ini­tia­tive 1648 sought to blow up the state bud­get by repeal­ing the mod­est changes the House and Sen­ate made to bal­ance Wash­ing­ton’s tax code as part of the 2019–2021 oper­at­ing bud­get. It also sought to slap a one year expi­ra­tion date on any future rev­enue increase not sub­ject­ed to a pub­lic vote.

Although Eyman filed I‑1648 back in Jan­u­ary, he did not launch a sig­na­ture dri­ve for it until May, after the leg­isla­tive ses­sion had con­clud­ed and after he had thrown in the tow­el on Ref­er­en­dum 80, his short-lived effort to force a vote on the new salary sched­ule approved by the Wash­ing­ton Cit­i­zens’ Com­mis­sion on Salaries For Elect­ed Offi­cials for leg­is­la­tors and statewide elect­ed officials.

Eager to make I‑1648 more than just anoth­er for­get­table ploy for mon­ey, Eyman teamed up with the seces­sion­ist group “Lib­er­ty State” PAC (or LSPAC) to put some mus­cle behind the mea­sure instead of phon­ing it in.

(LSPAC is the mil­i­tant, Matt Shea-affil­i­at­ed group that seeks to break up Wash­ing­ton State and carve a large right wing utopia out of one of the two pieces, which would stretch from the Cas­cade Moun­tains to the Ida­ho border.)

LSPAC gid­di­ly latched on to I‑1648, dis­trib­ut­ing peti­tions to right wing activists far and wide. It orga­nized a Face­book group for I‑1648 and cre­at­ed a data­base of loca­tions where I‑1648 peti­tions could be found, delight­ing Eyman, who cranked up his hype machine as loud as it could go, enlist­ing his amen cho­rus on right wing talk radio to adver­tise I‑1648. John Carl­son, Kir­by Wilbur, Dori Mon­son, and Saul Spady all duti­ful­ly pitched in to give Eyman free airtime.

But it was­n’t enough.

Despite pre­dict­ing a “tsuna­mi” of sig­na­tures for I‑1648 on Dori Mon­son’s show ear­li­er this week, the peti­tions Eyman was count­ing on nev­er mate­ri­al­ized, demon­strat­ing once again how dif­fi­cult it is to get on the bal­lot with­out hired help.

Late in the after­noon, with the clock tick­ing on the dead­line to sub­mit sig­na­tures in sup­port of ini­tia­tives to the peo­ple for 2019, a deflat­ed Eyman final­ly con­ced­ed defeat. Because the Sec­re­tary of State will only accept peti­tions that con­tain at least the min­i­mum num­ber of sig­na­tures required to qual­i­fy, Eyman and his cohorts end­ed up hav­ing noth­ing to turn in.

Ini­tial­ly, Eyman was eva­sive with respect to offer­ing an esti­mate of how many sig­na­tures had been gath­ered. Under pres­sure to sup­ply a num­ber, Eyman even­tu­al­ly said that near­ly 200,000 had been gath­ered. He repeat­ed that fig­ure in a video record­ed in his car and post­ed to Face­book a short while later.

We have no way of know­ing if that num­ber holds any water, how­ev­er, because Tim Eyman is about the least trust­wor­thy per­son in the his­to­ry of the State of Wash­ing­ton. As not­ed above, there will not be an offi­cial count of I‑1648 sig­na­tures since no peti­tions were actu­al­ly turned in for processing.

Sec­re­tary of State Kim Wyman’s staff, how­ev­er, had assumed there would be peti­tions to process for I‑1648, because Eyman had made an appoint­ment with them to turn in sig­na­tures. Con­se­quent­ly, they had work­ers stand­ing by at tax­pay­er expense to begin the val­i­da­tion and ver­i­fi­ca­tion process.

This is not the first time an Eyman sig­na­ture dri­ve has end­ed this way.

In 2004, Eyman and his asso­ciates Jack and Mike Fagan hauled box­es of peti­tions for I‑864 into the Elec­tions Annex to use as props. They pro­ceed­ed to hold a press con­fer­ence con­grat­u­lat­ing them­selves on run­ning an amaz­ing­ly suc­cess­ful cam­paign despite not hav­ing col­lect­ed enough sig­na­tures to qual­i­fy. I‑864 — a scheme to slash prop­er­ty tax­es — dis­ap­peared into the dustbin.

Two years lat­er, Eyman linked up with the fun­da­men­tal­ist right to spear­head a ref­er­en­dum cam­paign intend­ed to over­turn Wash­ing­ton’s ground­break­ing law ban­ning dis­crim­i­na­tion on the basis of sex­u­al orientation.

With min­utes to go before the dead­line, Eyman poured him­self some sparkling cider and pro­ceed­ed to announce the cam­paign had come up short, to the great dis­may of mul­ti­ple right wing church pas­tors and their polit­i­cal oper­a­tives, who pro­ceed­ed to point fin­gers at each oth­er in quick fashion.

As with I‑864, no peti­tions were ulti­mate­ly submitted.

In our state­ment react­ing to the demise of I‑1648, I explained that the mea­sure rep­re­sent­ed a sig­nif­i­cant and grave threat to count­less pub­lic ser­vices that ben­e­fit Wash­ing­to­ni­ans, from edu­ca­tion and behav­ioral health to fire­fight­ing and fish pas­sage mod­ern­iza­tion. Pas­sage of the mea­sure would have blown up the bud­get, endan­ger­ing our com­mu­ni­ties and jeop­ar­diz­ing good pay­ing jobs.

The demise of I‑1648 is espe­cial­ly wel­come con­sid­er­ing that Eyman has already got­ten some­thing destruc­tive onto this year’s bal­lot. That would be I‑976, a scheme to wipe out bil­lions in bipar­ti­san trans­porta­tion invest­ments at the state, region­al, and local lev­els. We’re work­ing to defeat I‑976, and we invite you to join us. If we can send I‑976 to the grave­yard where it belongs, then Tim Eyman will be zero for sev­en since 2015 — a tru­ly unprece­dent­ed los­ing streak.

We know from expe­ri­ence that the only way to stop Eyman’s destruc­tive ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry is to take him on and beat him. Let’s make it happen!