Jay Inslee zings Eyman after Tim interrupts Q&A: “Please leave the chair when you leave”

Long­time Wash­ing­ton State con artist Tim Eyman today inter­rupt­ed yet anoth­er pro­ceed­ing at which he had not been invit­ed to speak, appear­ing at the Asso­ci­at­ed Press’ annu­al leg­isla­tive pre­view to con­front Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee about the fate of Ini­tia­tive 976, Eyman’s most recent con, which appeared on last Novem­ber’s ballot.

Unlike his pre­de­ces­sors, Inslee has refused to capit­u­late to Eyman’s demands to roll over and make Eyman’s agen­da his own fol­low­ing the pas­sage of an Eyman mea­sure at the bal­lot. That has made Eyman rather bit­ter and angry.

So Eyman showed up in Olympia pre­pared to insti­gate a con­fronta­tion with Inslee.

But the gov­er­nor was­n’t hav­ing any of it.

Inslee remind­ed Eyman that the pur­pose of the leg­isla­tive pre­view event is to allow jour­nal­ists to ask ques­tions of Wash­ing­ton State’s elect­ed representatives.

Eyman is of course nei­ther a jour­nal­ist nor one of the peo­ple’s elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives, although Eyman now claims to be run­ning for gov­er­nor against Inslee, after years of say­ing he had no inter­est in seek­ing office.

When Eyman refused to sit down or stop talk­ing, Inslee’s chief of staff David Post­man stepped for­ward to admon­ish Eyman and tell him to stop being dis­rup­tive. Eyman tried to ignore Post­man at first, but he even­tu­al­ly shut up and turned away. While he was yap­ping, Inslee took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to launch a zinger at him.

“Let me make a sug­ges­tion to you, Tim: You need to sit down. Just don’t steal that chair, okay,” Inslee said. “Just sit down on that chair and don’t steal it.”

This was, of course, a ref­er­ence to Eyman’s infa­mous and inex­plic­a­ble theft of an office chair from the Lacey Office Depot near­ly one year ago.

Even­tu­al­ly, Eyman real­ized he was in dan­ger of being escort­ed out by secu­ri­ty, and he clammed up. As he sat down, Inslee took a part­ing shot at Eyman, direct­ing him: “Please leave the chair when you leave. Thanks very much.”

At present, as we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed, Eyman’s Ini­tia­tive 976 is on hold, blocked from being imple­ment­ed by an injunc­tion issued by King Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court Judge Mar­shall Fer­gu­son and upheld by the Wash­ing­ton State Supreme Court.

The Depart­ment of Licens­ing is still col­lect­ing the tax­es and fees that I‑976 attempt­ed to repeal, but per an instruc­tion from the gov­er­nor’s office, the mon­ey is being held in escrow for the time being. Osten­si­bly, that escrow sit­u­a­tion is what Eyman claimed to be ask­ing about today when he inter­rupt­ed Inslee’s press con­fer­ence. But I think Eyman sim­ply want­ed to make a scene.

Eyman has an insa­tiable need for atten­tion, just like his idol Don­ald Trump, and when he’s not the star of the show, he hijacks the pro­ceed­ings so that he can claim the spot­light for as long as he thinks peo­ple will tol­er­ate his dis­rup­tive antics.

A few days ago, Eyman claimed to be weigh­ing whether to run for gov­er­nor as a Repub­li­can instead of an inde­pen­dent. He says he has yet to make a deci­sion, but no doubt is being court­ed by Repub­li­cans to iden­ti­fy as an R in his campaign.

A Crosscut/Elway poll released today (PDF) found that 46% of Wash­ing­ton vot­ers sur­veyed favored Inslee in the 2020 guber­na­to­r­i­al race, while a measly 7% favored Eyman. (The poll has a mar­gin of error of +/- 5%).

Oth­er right wing chal­lengers to Inslee fared even worse. Repub­lic police chief Loren Culp was favored by only 4% of respon­dents, while anoth­er 4% favored white suprema­cist state sen­a­tor Phil For­tu­na­to. 5% expressed a pref­er­ence for for­mer Both­ell May­or Joshua Freed. 34% said they were undecided.

Gov­er­nor Inslee cer­tain­ly can­not take his reelec­tion for grant­ed, but at this point, it does not look like Tim Eyman or any of the oth­er declared can­di­dates would give him much of a chal­lenge. (Last fall, for­mer U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Dave Reichert declined the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty’s invi­ta­tion to chal­lenge Inslee.)

Despite pos­sess­ing much more name recog­ni­tion than either For­tu­na­to or Culp, Eyman bare­ly gar­nered more sup­port than they did in the Elway Poll.

If Eyman gets pum­meled, it would not be the first time a pur­vey­or of destruc­tive bal­lot mea­sures was foiled in a guber­na­to­r­i­al bid by Pacif­ic North­west voters.

In 1998, Eyman’s Ore­gon equiv­a­lent, Bill Size­more, ran for gov­er­nor as the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee and was sound­ly trounced by Demo­c­ra­t­ic incum­bent John Kitzhaber. Size­more received just thir­ty per­cent of the vote and lost in every sin­gle coun­ty in the state except for Mal­heur Coun­ty. In the twen­ty-two years since then, there has­n’t been a guber­na­to­r­i­al race in Ore­gon that lopsided.