Ten days ago, Tim Eyman’s lat­est scheme to wreck gov­ern­ment and sab­o­tage Wash­ing­ton State’s essen­tial pub­lic ser­vices end­ed in fail­ure when Eyman and his cohorts could­n’t come up with enough sig­na­tures to qual­i­fy I‑1648, Eyman’s mea­sure to blow up the 2019–2021 state bud­get and slap a one year expi­ra­tion date on all future rev­enue reform bills passed by the Legislature.

An unhap­py Tim Eyman was flanked by glum fol­low­ers at the Sec­re­tary of State’s Elec­tions Annex in Olympia. (Pho­to: Sher­ry Bock­winkel for NPI).

With­in forty-eight hours of admit­ting I‑1648 would not qual­i­fy in front of the Sec­re­tary of State’s Elec­tions Annex in Olympia, Eyman had already moved on and begun elec­tron­i­cal­ly dis­trib­ut­ing peti­tions for I‑1082, a clone of I‑1648, which Eyman wants to qual­i­fy as an ini­tia­tive to the 2020 Wash­ing­ton State Legislature.

Because ini­tia­tives are Eyman’s busi­ness, he must always have a scheme to sell… it keeps the hus­tle going. So it was not at all sur­pris­ing when Eyman sent out an email exhort­ing his fol­low­ers to give mon­ey and cir­cu­late peti­tions for I‑1082, even though I‑1648 had just crashed and burned only hours earlier.

Eyman may have thought that by piv­ot­ing quick­ly, he could avoid squan­der­ing momen­tum. But the peo­ple behind the “Lib­er­ty State” polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee, chiefly Mike McK­ee and Cary Con­dot­ta (a for­mer Repub­li­can state leg­is­la­tor), were not enam­ored with the prospect of con­tin­u­ing to part­ner with Eyman.

So they began putting togeth­er a plan to strike out on their own.

In a series of mes­sage post­ed to their group, they explained that LSPAC had decid­ed to back I‑1648 some­what reluc­tant­ly, and have now decid­ed to go in a new direc­tion. The last of these mes­sages was pub­lished yesterday:

Restore Wash­ing­ton is now official.

The mis­sion is to cre­ate a large orga­nized net­work of folks to keep Olympia in check through the ini­tia­tive and ref­er­en­dum process – “Leg­is­la­tion by the Peo­ple, for the Peo­ple” The key fea­ture is hav­ing a qual­i­ty prod­uct that will stand up to chal­lenge. Over the years a lot of hard work has gone into prod­ucts that were sub­se­quent­ly tossed out. That said, these poli­cies don’t have to come from us.

They just have to be ful­ly vet­ted by our amazing team of top lawyers and polit­i­cal pro­fes­sion­als that have offered to help. That way the efforts pay off and con­fi­dence is restored in the process. The right orga­ni­za­tion can do this in a time­ly man­ner for very low cost. We actu­al­ly want to win. We also appre­ci­ate the broad band of sup­port across the polit­i­cal spec­trum and wish to keep it that way.

Take a moment to appre­ci­ate the irony here. A group of peo­ple who wants to break Wash­ing­ton State apart have rebrand­ed their Face­book group as “Restore Wash­ing­ton”. A rad­i­cal seces­sion move­ment is not an effort to restore anything.

Also note the implic­it and explic­it crit­i­cism of Eyman’s ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry. Eyman is nev­er men­tioned by name, but this mes­sage makes it clear that McK­ee and Con­dot­ta real­ly don’t think much of Eyman’s ini­tia­tive craft­ing abilities.

Their cyn­i­cism is whol­ly jus­ti­fied: pret­ty much every mea­sure Eyman has got­ten past the vot­ers has been struck down in whole or in part as unconstitutional.

McK­ee and Con­dot­ta’s announce­ment was praised by many group members.

“What is it our dads taught us all: ‘If you’re going to do some­thing, do it right.’ Thank you, Cary and Mike for Doing it Right,” com­ment­ed John Carl­son, the KVI host, for­mer guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date, and Wash­ing­ton Pol­i­cy Cen­ter founder who had backed I‑1648 on his radio pro­gram and reg­u­lar­ly has Eyman on as a guest.

A fum­ing Eyman wast­ed no time in lash­ing out in an email broadside.

“My for­mer team­mates and their Face­book group (Wash­ing­ton for I‑1648 renamed Restore Wash­ing­ton) are promis­ing their own tax ini­tia­tive some time in the future,” wrote Eyman. “Unfor­tu­nate­ly, they’re tak­ing a dif­fer­ent approach. Their Face­book group will not allow com­ments or posts that sup­port I‑1082 or work­ing togeth­er on both. I was removed and I am not per­mit­ted to post or com­ment there and my pre­vi­ous posts have been erased.”

It’s cer­tain­ly amus­ing that Eyman con­tin­ues to act as though peo­ple are sim­ply unfa­mil­iar with his lengthy record of lying, cheat­ing, and trick­ing people.

Even after twen­ty years of duplic­i­ty, Eyman still presents him­self as an hon­est-to-good­ness cru­sad­er for ordi­nary peo­ple with every fundrais­ing appeal.

In real­i­ty, Eyman is a grifter.

He is con­stant­ly try­ing to con­vince peo­ple that it would be in their best inter­est for them to give him more of their time and mon­ey. (But espe­cial­ly their money.)

Eyman’s ini­tia­tives are mar­ket­ed like a mir­a­cle prod­uct to angry right wingers. Peo­ple are told that what­ev­er Eyman’s lat­est ini­tia­tive is will, for instance, “put a leash” on “those dirty dog politi­cians”. The effi­ca­cy of the prod­uct is total­ly irrel­e­vant, of course… it is their mon­ey Eyman is after. Eyman nev­er stops ask­ing for mon­ey; all of his emails end with a plea to make a con­tri­bu­tion immediately.

Some polit­i­cal observers have the­o­rized that Eyman’s ini­tia­tives are inten­tion­al­ly defec­tive so as to ensure that Eyman can keep his lucra­tive hus­tle going indef­i­nite­ly. Whether or not that the­o­ry is true, it is cer­tain­ly the case that Eyman does not both­er to draft his ini­tia­tives con­ser­v­a­tive­ly, which is not the behav­ior you’d expect from some­one want­i­ng their work to with­stand a legal challenge.

It is under­stand­able that the “Lib­er­ty State” folks are dis­sat­is­fied. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of NPI went down to Olympia on July 5th to observe the turn-in ral­ly that Eyman had spent days breath­less­ly adver­tis­ing, and they wit­nessed more of the same duplic­i­ty and lack of trans­paren­cy that Eyman has become infa­mous for.

Instead of bring­ing out the peti­tions that he had in his pos­ses­sion for every­one to see, Eyman kept them out of sight, appar­ent­ly locked in this trailer:

Peti­tions for I‑1648 were nev­er brought out of the trail­er attached to this pick­up truck. (Pho­to: Sher­ry Bock­winkel for NPI)

Instead of clu­ing in every­one as to how the sig­na­ture dri­ve had turned out, Eyman kept mum until some of the vol­un­teers demand­ed a num­ber, nat­u­ral­ly want­i­ng more infor­ma­tion. (Eyman then claimed just under 200,000 sig­na­tures had been col­lect­ed, a fig­ure that can­not be ver­i­fied and may well be total­ly baseless.)

And instead of pro­vid­ing a time­ly dec­la­ra­tion that I‑1648 had failed, Eyman kept his fans in sus­pense. He slipped around to the back of the Sec­re­tary of State’s Elec­tions Annex and went inside by him­self, pre­sum­ably to can­cel the appoint­ment he had made to turn in sig­na­tures for I‑1648. (The Elec­tions Divi­sion had need­less­ly brought in tem­po­rary work­ers in antic­i­pa­tion of hav­ing I‑1648 peti­tions to process, but had to send the work­ers home because Eyman turned noth­ing in.)

Before LSPAC embraced I‑1648, it was­n’t going any­where. From what we can tell, Eyman had con­clud­ed that he need­ed some­thing fresh­er than I‑976 (which is on the bal­lot this Novem­ber and would gut tran­sit fund­ing at every lev­el) to use as fod­der for his end­less fundrais­ing emails. So he com­mis­sioned the design of a peti­tion for I‑1648 and began dis­trib­ut­ing peti­tions elec­tron­i­cal­ly, just like he did for I‑1421 and I‑869 in 2016, I‑1550 and I‑947 in 2017, and I‑977 in 2018.

Once LSPAC decid­ed to back I‑1648, though, Eyman had some mus­cle to work with. He became wild­ly excit­ed with the thought of qual­i­fy­ing some­thing to the bal­lot with just vol­un­teers, and began pitch­ing I‑1648 with greater vig­or, seem­ing­ly try­ing to will suc­cess into existence.

But the cha­rade could not go on past July 5th.

Prayers could­n’t get I‑1648 past the fin­ish line (Pho­to: Sher­ry Bock­winkel for NPI)

When the time came to put up or shut up, Eyman did nei­ther. Instead, as men­tioned, he piv­ot­ed imme­di­ate­ly to hawk­ing a brand new ini­tia­tive… I‑1082, a clone of I‑1648, declar­ing that I‑1648’s fail­ure was mere­ly a hiccup.

LSPAC’s offi­cers feel dif­fer­ent­ly, and have opt­ed to do their own “Round 2”.

They clear­ly rec­og­nize Eyman as a rival (hence his removal from their Face­book group) and Eyman in turn also rec­og­nizes them as a rival despite his lament that they ought to be work­ing togeth­er for the greater evil. (I can’t say the greater good here because none of these peo­ple are up to any good.)

Like the old adage goes, ye reap what ye sow. Tim Eyman is unwor­thy of any­one’s trust. Can’t blame the folks at LSPAC for decid­ing they don’t want their hors­es pulling Eyman’s cart any­more. What­ev­er they come up them­selves won’t have Eyman’s name on it, but it won’t be good for Wash­ing­ton State, and Per­ma­nent Defense will be ready to ensure it is opposed, like we do with Eyman’s measures.