Tim Eyman claims he’s running for Governor of Washington in Seattle-bashing manifesto

Two weeks after telling Chris Daniels of KING5 News that he had no inter­est in run­ning for office, dis­graced ini­tia­tive pro­mot­er and admit­ted liar Tim Eyman abrupt­ly reversed course today, declar­ing that he will be a can­di­date for Gov­er­nor of Wash­ing­ton State in 2020 at a meet­ing of Sound Tran­sit’s Board of Directors.

“For twen­ty-one years, I’ve put ini­tia­tives on the bal­lot and vot­ers vot­ed on ’em, but the peo­ple we elect refuse to lis­ten,” Eyman groused.

“There­fore, I am run­ning for Gov­er­nor in 2020,” Eyman declared.

“I am run­ning against Jay Inslee, Seat­tle’s cur­rent gov­er­nor, and I think the vot­ers of this state deserve some­body besides Seat­tle-sup­port­ed monstrosity…”

At that point, Eyman was inter­rupt­ed by Red­mond May­or John Mar­chione, who admon­ished Eyman that cam­paign­ing is not allowed from the mic dur­ing the pub­lic com­ment peri­od. Eyman tried to con­tin­ue read­ing the mono­logue he had pre­pared, but his mic was cut off. Secu­ri­ty then escort­ed Eyman away from the micro­phone as a few of Eyman’s fans yelled out in protest: “Let him talk!”

Eyman would, of course, go on to do plen­ty of talk­ing before the day was over… with tele­vi­sion reporters, radio reporters, and print reporters.

Sound Tran­sit’s rule against cam­paign­ing from the mic pre­dates today’s meet­ing and was insti­tut­ed to pre­vent the pub­lic com­ment peri­od from becom­ing a plat­form for cam­paign-relat­ed activ­i­ties, which are not ger­mane to Sound Tran­sit’s work of build­ing a region­al tran­sit sys­tem that knits the region together.

Eyman lat­er released a crude man­i­festo bash­ing Seat­tle, Inslee, the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture, and even the Wash­ing­ton State Supreme Court.

“We have a Seat­tle Leg­is­la­ture, Seat­tle Supreme Court, and Seat­tle Gov­er­nor,” sneered Eyman. “Should­n’t there be some rep­re­sen­ta­tion for all the peo­ple out­side Seat­tle? I’m sick of Seat­tle call­ing all the shots, get­ting every­thing they want, and no one stand­ing up to them and say­ing ‘It does­n’t always have to be your way.’ ”

“I make you this promise: sup­port me in this effort and I’ll give you a race for gov­er­nor like you’ve nev­er seen before.”

Fol­low­ing Eyman’s dec­la­ra­tion, I observed in a state­ment released by NPI’s Per­ma­nent Defense project that Eyman is an inces­sant liar and that his word is worth­less; there­fore, we will not con­sid­er his state­ments today as any­thing more than a joke or a sil­ly stunt until he files a C1 (dec­la­ra­tion of can­di­da­cy) and F1 (Per­son­al Finan­cial Affairs State­ment) with the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Commission.

Eyman has a long his­to­ry of flout­ing our pub­lic dis­clo­sure laws, so we will see if he files his C1 and his F1 on time, and cor­rect­ly. He has two weeks, as of today, to get his paper­work in, or he will once again be in vio­la­tion of Chap­ter 42.17A RCW.

Six years ago, my friend Joel Con­nel­ly of The Seat­tle Post-Intel­li­gencer wrote a col­umn titled Why Tim Eyman should, at last, run for pub­lic office.

In it, Joel mused:

Tim Eyman keeps no thought or invec­tive to him­self. Emailed press releas­es from him pour forth dai­ly, giv­ing his judg­ments on pub­lic ser­vants (Gov­er­nor Inslee is a “lying whore”), recount­ing the his­to­ry of past Eyman ini­tia­tives and demean­ing “bureau­crats,” “spe­cial inter­ests” and the ubiq­ui­tous “they” and “them.”

The prof­i­teer­ing ini­tia­tive mer­ce­nary regal­ly address­es his “thou­sands” of sup­port­ers, defines his unique role as putting a “spot­light on issues” oth­er­wise ignored and lec­tures the press on its duty to report the truth. Eyman is, of course, a self-con­fessed liar.

Why has­n’t this guy dis­played the cojones, at some time in a thir­teen-year pub­lic life, to put his own name before the vot­ers, assume pub­lic office and help govern?

Empha­sis is mine. Six and a half years after Joel wrote those words, it appears that “Cit­i­zen” Tim might final­ly be becom­ing “Can­di­date” Tim. Should Eyman file as a Repub­li­can, and edge out the less­er-known Repub­li­cans who have already declared against Jay Inslee (includ­ing Loren Culp and Phil For­tu­na­to), the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty could go into the gen­er­al elec­tion with a Trump/Eyman ticket.

Two nar­cis­sis­tic, mean spir­it­ed con men on the same tick­et. What a prospect.