Tim Eyman is contemplating running for governor as a Republican, not an independent

Con artist Tim Eyman dis­trib­uted an email mis­sive this morn­ing in which he revealed that he’s com­ing under pres­sure to run for Gov­er­nor of Wash­ing­ton State as a Repub­li­can instead of as an inde­pen­dent candidate.

“I want your advice,” Eyman told his fans. “Ever since I announced, I’ve been hear­ing from more and more grass­roots sup­port­ers ask­ing me to run as a Repub­li­can. I’ve thought a lot about it, talked with my team, and after much dis­cus­sion, I’m seri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing it. I want to know what you think.”

“Send me an email and let me know what you think.. Please for­ward this to your fam­i­ly, friends, and co-work­ers,” Eyman added.

When Eyman stood before cam­eras to talk about his guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­da­cy last year, he actu­al­ly pulled out an email he had received from a local Repub­li­can Par­ty orga­ni­za­tion and pro­ceed­ed to mock­ing­ly read part of it before affirm­ing that he would be run­ning for gov­er­nor as an independent.

Sev­er­al Repub­li­cans react­ed to Eyman’s move with annoy­ance and anger, includ­ing State Sen­a­tor Phil For­tu­na­to, who was already run­ning for gov­er­nor.

Repub­li­can State Par­ty Chair Caleb Heim­lich, how­ev­er, was not among them.

Heim­lich chose to respond to Eyman’s can­di­da­cy rather tact­ful­ly, declin­ing to mean­ing­ful­ly crit­i­cize Eyman, whom Heim­lich knows is pop­u­lar with his precinct com­mit­tee offi­cers, just as neo­fas­cist Don­ald Trump is.

Before Eyman pro­claimed that he was run­ning as an inde­pen­dent, I sug­gest­ed  that his sud­den guber­na­to­r­i­al ambi­tions might result in a cringe­wor­thy Eyman/Trump tick­et in 2020 for the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty, which would be a real nadir for the par­ty, once a bas­tion of pro­gres­sive politics.

Giv­en Eyman’s com­ments today, it looks like that sce­nario is still a possibility.

Eyman is a patho­log­i­cal liar, so we can’t know if he’s sin­cere about piv­ot­ing to run for gov­er­nor as a Repub­li­can. But I would­n’t be sur­prised if he is being court­ed behind the scenes to asso­ciate his cam­paign with the Repub­li­can brand.

Eyman is a Repub­li­can, through and through. He has been for years. He’s gone to the Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion from Wash­ing­ton as a del­e­gate and as a guest of the state par­ty chair. He reg­u­lar­ly attends or speaks at Repub­li­can Par­ty meet­ings. He par­tic­i­pates in cau­cus ses­sions with Repub­li­can legislators.

Eyman even agreed not to crit­i­cize Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors when they moved to raise prop­er­ty tax­es in urban and sub­ur­ban leg­isla­tive dis­tricts.

Despite all this his­to­ry as a Repub­li­can oper­a­tive, Eyman still fan­cies him­self as above par­ti­san pol­i­tics. He real­ly wants to have it both ways.

“For two decades, with all the bal­lot mea­sures I’ve pro­mot­ed, I’ve always reached out to vot­ers across the polit­i­cal spec­trum. Whether it was a vot­er sign­ing a peti­tion or vot­ing for our ini­tia­tive, I did­n’t ask for their par­ty affil­i­a­tion, I asked for their sup­port. I’m run­ning for Gov­er­nor with that same mind­set,” Eyman said in his email today, before ask­ing his fans about declar­ing a par­ty affiliation.

No inde­pen­dent has ever been elect­ed Gov­er­nor of Wash­ing­ton State, and doubt­less Eyman has been told that. Run­ning as a Repub­li­can might boost his odds, but it has been four decades since a Repub­li­can won a guber­na­to­r­i­al race in Wash­ing­ton State. The last Repub­li­can to win was the late John Spell­man, who had expe­ri­ence as the King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive and came from the Rockefeller/Evans wing of the Repub­li­can Par­ty, which is all but extinct now.

Elec­tions can be unpre­dictable, there’s no ques­tion about that. But the deck will not be stacked in Eyman’s favor like it was last year with I‑976. His­to­ry, pub­lic opin­ion, the elec­toral land­scape… they are not on Eyman’s side.

Like Ore­gon’s Bill Size­more in 1998, Eyman seems set to dis­cov­er that run­ning for gov­er­nor is quite a dif­fer­ent ball­game than run­ning decep­tive initiatives.