Polit­i­cal scam­mer turned guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date Tim Eyman is at it again.

Demon­strat­ing once more that he has lit­tle regard for his own health and well-being, or that of oth­ers around him, the Belle­vue based ini­tia­tive pur­vey­or and right wing polit­i­cal oper­a­tive staged a press con­fer­ence and peti­tion sign­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty in front of the Fac­to­ria Wal­mart today, hop­ing to drum up pub­lic­i­ty for his van­i­ty guber­na­to­r­i­al run and new ini­tia­tive to abol­ish ESSB 5395, the com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion bill just signed by Gov­er­nor Inslee.

It’s the sec­ond time in sev­er­al weeks that Eyman has invit­ed his fol­low­ers to dis­re­gard Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee’s phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing decrees, which are intend­ed to keep Wash­ing­to­ni­ans safe and healthy. Inslee does­n’t want peo­ple catch­ing the nov­el coro­n­avirus, SARS-CoV­‑2, and requir­ing hos­pi­tal­iza­tion, or worse — dying.

The first time was in March, when Eyman encour­aged Repub­li­can PCOs and oth­er right wing activists to join him for a meet and greet on Whid­bey Island, promis­ing to bring a six-pack of Coro­na beer. After being round­ly con­demned for that unsafe behav­ior, Eyman tried to strike a more seri­ous tone.

But today, he was back to goof­ing off and mak­ing fun of the pan­dem­ic in the vicin­i­ty of oth­er peo­ple, includ­ing his fol­low­ers, passers­by, and tele­vi­sion cam­era crews who were assigned to cov­er Eyman’s hijinks.

Let me show you what I mean.

Eyman had with him at the Wal­mart a long blue tube — I pre­sume six feet in length — osten­si­bly for mea­sur­ing the dis­tance between him­self and peo­ple approach­ing the table where the peti­tions for Eyman’s ini­tia­tive to repeal com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion were laid out.

But instead of using the tube as a tool to strict­ly adhere to phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing rec­om­men­da­tions, Eyman used it as a toy. He wield­ed it like a fake lightsaber and a fake longsword; he leaned on it while in con­ver­sa­tion with his followers.

It’s all just a game: Tim Eyman per­forms for KING5 with his blue tube (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

Eyman also posed for pho­tos with his fol­low­ers and offered hugs to sev­er­al before they left, com­plete­ly dis­re­gard­ing pub­lic health offi­cials’ guidance.

Pan­dem­ic, what pan­dem­ic? Tim Eyman hugs a sup­port­er (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

I observed all this from the safe­ty of my car and took pic­tures exclu­sive­ly with long lens­es, hav­ing no desire to be any­where near Eyman and company.

Eyman made it clear in an email this morn­ing that he isn’t inter­est­ed in set­ting a good exam­ple for oth­ers or pro­tect­ing lives. Instead, his focus is on tak­ing down Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee, who he absolute­ly loathes and despises.

“Jay Inslee isn’t a king, but he sure is act­ing like one,” Eyman wrote.

“Where are the checks-and-bal­ances? Inslee’s lock­down exten­sion is a deeply dis­turb­ing pow­er grab. Because it was unilateral.”

“The Leg­is­la­ture — sup­pos­ed­ly the peo­ple who are elect­ed to rep­re­sent us in gov­ern­ment deci­sions — were kin­da-sor­ta-part of the ini­tial shutdown.”

“This new exten­sion: it was all Inslee.”

Actu­al­ly, leg­isla­tive lead­ers were briefed on Inslee’s plans to extend the stay home, stay healthy order before he pub­licly announced them. All the leg­is­la­tors I’ve spo­ken with say they are whole­heart­ed­ly in sup­port of the exten­sion. It’s need­ed to save lives and keep Wash­ing­to­ni­ans from get­ting sick.

It’s nice that Inslee is con­sult­ing with leg­is­la­tors. How­ev­er, it’s Inslee who is the state’s chief exec­u­tive. Which, I will point out, is an elect­ed posi­tion.

We don’t just elect our leg­is­la­tors, we elect our gov­er­nor too.

Tim Eyman ough­ta know that, since he’s run­ning for gov­er­nor.

But some­times, his com­ments leave me won­der­ing if, despite his long career in pol­i­tics, he real­ly, tru­ly under­stands how our gov­ern­ment works.

In Wash­ing­ton, all three of our branch­es of gov­ern­ment are direct­ly elect­ed. We elect one hun­dred and forty-sev­en state leg­is­la­tors, nine exec­u­tive depart­ment offi­cials (includ­ing the gov­er­nor), nine Supreme Court jus­tices, and addi­tion­al judges at the appel­late and tri­al court lev­els. Each branch has a dif­fer­ent role.

The leg­isla­tive branch makes the laws, the judi­cial branch inter­prets the laws, and the exec­u­tive branch enforces the laws.

The Leg­is­la­ture does­n’t need to pass a law giv­ing Inslee emer­gency pow­ers because it already did that, years ago. Read it your­self; it’s RCW 43.06.220.

This law clear­ly states that the gov­er­nor has the pow­er to take sweep­ing actions dur­ing a time of emer­gency to pro­tect lives and property.

There is no pow­er grab. Gov­er­nor Inslee wants peo­ple to be safe and he’s rely­ing on the advice of sci­en­tists and pub­lic health experts in mak­ing his deci­sions. Deci­sions that are sup­port­ed by Repub­li­can state leg­is­la­tors and coun­ty offi­cials. Deci­sions that mir­ror orders issued by Repub­li­can gov­er­nors in oth­er states.

To under­stand why adher­ing to the phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing pro­to­cols man­dat­ed by Gov­er­nor Inslee is so impor­tant, all you have to do is read the sad sto­ry of the Skag­it Val­ley Chorale. They thought they could still con­gre­gate and be safe, but they were wrong. Very wrong. Here’s the Los Ange­les’ Times’ Richard Read:

MOUNT VERNON —  With the coro­n­avirus quick­ly spread­ing in Wash­ing­ton State in ear­ly March, lead­ers of the Skag­it Val­ley Chorale debat­ed whether to go ahead with week­ly rehearsal.

The virus was already killing peo­ple in the Seat­tle area, about an hour’s dri­ve to the south. But Skag­it Coun­ty hadn’t report­ed any cas­es, schools and busi­ness­es remained open, and pro­hi­bi­tions on large gath­er­ings had yet to be announced.

On March 6th, Adam Bur­dick, the choir’s con­duc­tor, informed the 121 mem­bers in an email that amid the “stress and strain of con­cerns about the virus,” prac­tice would pro­ceed as sched­uled at Mount Ver­non Pres­by­ter­ian Church.

“I’m plan­ning on being there this Tues­day March 10th, and hop­ing many of you will be, too,” he wrote.

Six­ty singers showed up. A greeter offered hand san­i­tiz­er at the door, and mem­bers refrained from the usu­al hugs and handshakes.

“It seemed like a nor­mal rehearsal, except that choirs are hug­gy places,” Bur­dick recalled. “We were mak­ing music and try­ing to keep a cer­tain dis­tance between each other.”

After 2½ hours, the singers part­ed ways at 9 p.m.

Near­ly three weeks lat­er, forty-five have been diag­nosed with COVID-19 or ill with the symp­toms, at least three have been hos­pi­tal­ized, and two are dead.

Empha­sis is mine.

It isn’t safe to gath­er in pub­lic right now. That’s why Tim Eyman’s behav­ior is so irre­spon­si­ble and inap­pro­pri­ate. This is a nov­el coro­n­avirus. That means it has­n’t been seen in humans before. It’s new. Peo­ple don’t have an immu­ni­ty to it. This isn’t some new strain of the flu — it’s a dif­fer­ent ill­ness. And it’s a killer.

Sav­ing lives is Inslee’s pri­or­i­ty right now, and jus­ti­fi­ably so. Tim Eyman has made it clear that his pri­or­i­ty would be very dif­fer­ent… he’d pre­fer busi­ness as usual.

Said Eyman on March 19th:

Loss of life is awful, and our prayers are for the fam­i­ly mem­bers of those who have been lost. And it must also be said – direct­ly and bold­ly – that Jay Inslee’s pri­vate sec­tor shut­down is clear­ly mak­ing a bad sit­u­a­tion expo­nen­tial­ly worse.

Work­ing class folks are being dec­i­mat­ed by Inslee’s irre­spon­si­ble shut down of our econ­o­my. Hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple have sud­den­ly and with­out warn­ing had their abil­i­ty to earn enough to pro­vide for them­selves and their fam­i­lies stripped away.

Actu­al­ly, Inslee’s “pri­vate sec­tor shut­down” is mak­ing a bad sit­u­a­tion bet­ter.

Even the Trump White House admits it. Inslee’s ear­ly, aggres­sive actions have been wide­ly hailed around the coun­try because they’ve slowed the spread of the dis­ease. Mean­while, on the oth­er side of the coun­try, New York’s hos­pi­tals are over­whelmed as the num­ber of COVID-19 cas­es has exploded.

The 911 calls tell the sto­ry.

Jay Inslee has been called the best gov­er­nor in the coun­try because of his fam­i­lies first, evi­dence-based, sci­ence-cen­tered approach to COVID-19 response. He’s appeared on both CNN and MSNBC this week and been praised for his lead­er­ship.

If peo­ple are dead, it does­n’t mat­ter how their stock port­fo­lio is doing. If peo­ple are sick and dying in a hos­pi­tal, it does­n’t mat­ter that they have a paycheck.

The econ­o­my is not a deity, but to lib­er­tar­i­an Repub­li­cans like Eyman, or Texas Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Dan Patrick, it might as well be, it seems.

Mere­ly telling peo­ple to pray is not some­thing a respon­si­ble pub­lic leader does in response to an out­break of dis­ease. A respon­si­ble pub­lic leader takes action to pro­tect the peo­ple they rep­re­sent. That’s what Inslee has done.

The gov­er­nor has­n’t just ordered peo­ple to stay home; he’s direct­ed state agen­cies to staff up to process unem­ploy­ment claims, lob­bied for fed­er­al small busi­ness assis­tance, and pro­hib­it­ed land­lords from evict­ing people.

What’s par­tic­u­lar­ly galling is that Eyman wants peo­ple to risk their lives sole­ly for the sake of help­ing him score media cov­er­age and stroking his ego.

That’s it. That’s the only rea­son. Those peti­tions that were sit­ting on that table in front of Wal­mart? They’re for an ini­tia­tive (I‑1101) with a sig­na­ture col­lec­tion dead­line of Decem­ber 31st, 2020. That’s over nine months from now.

Giv­en that the sig­na­ture dead­line for this ini­tia­tive is not in the near future, there is no need to stand out in front of a Wal­mart now and ask peo­ple to sign.

“You should go shop­ping here today for essen­tial items,” Tim Eyman instruct­ed his fol­low­ers in an email sent this morn­ing. “If you do, you’ll see a table out­side the main entrance. It will have peti­tions on it. I’ll be stand­ing six feet away. I invite you to sign and take some with you. There might be a line of peo­ple wait­ing — make sure to stand six feet apart. After doing so, go inside and buy your essen­tials.” Despite these instruc­tions, Eyman’s fol­low­ers did not both­er to keep six feet apart.

Eyman knows full well that a sig­na­ture dri­ve can be pulled off in the span of a few weeks. He does­n’t need to be cir­cu­lat­ing peti­tions now, at least not in per­son. He’s choos­ing to, because he’s an opportunist.

Any­time Eyman sees an oppor­tu­ni­ty to ride a wave, he eager­ly runs out with his surf­board. For instance, with­in the last few years, he has pitched the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty on an anti-min­i­mum wage ini­tia­tive (they did­n’t bite) and tried to launch a ref­er­en­dum to abol­ish leg­is­la­tion ban­ning the farm­ing of Atlantic salmon, think­ing that Cooke Aqua­cul­ture would want to work with him (they didn’t).

Pri­or to that, in 2006, Eyman embraced the reli­gious right’s efforts to over­turn Wash­ing­ton’s new­ly amend­ed Law Against Dis­crim­i­na­tion. He failed, spec­tac­u­lar­ly. And although that was a bad expe­ri­ence for both him and the right wing church­es that had decid­ed to trust him, Eyman revealed this week that he con­tin­ued to offer backchan­nel advice to them, even while pub­licly claim­ing that he would have noth­ing what­so­ev­er to do with the debate and vote over mar­riage equality.

When Gov­er­nor Gre­goire signed gay mar­riage into law in 2012, there was a ref­er­en­dum filed to chal­lenge it.

I con­tact­ed the spon­sors and pri­vate­ly told them it was doomed to fail and rec­om­mend­ed they pro­mote an ini­tia­tive that had already been processed (spon­sored by some­one else) that was much more like­ly to suc­ceed. They did­n’t lis­ten — the con­sul­tants told them to go with the ref­er­en­dum. They saw the ini­tia­tive as a threat.

Peo­ple all across Wash­ing­ton put in hun­dreds of thou­sands of hours get­ting sig­na­tures for the referendum.

Their cam­paign raised and spent a mas­sive amount of mon­ey. And they lost (but the con­sul­tants made out like ban­dits). Now, here, on SB 5395, I was watch­ing his­to­ry repeat itself.

It’s quite some­thing, isn’t it, that Tim Eyman has the temer­i­ty to grouse about con­sul­tants mak­ing out like ban­dits con­sid­er­ing that he has been scam­ming his fol­low­ers and bene­fac­tors for years and laugh­ing all the way to the bank.

At least those con­sul­tants were legal­ly paid for their work.

Tim Eyman has repeat­ed­ly com­pen­sat­ed him­self ille­gal­ly while lying to his donors. In the aughts, he was caught trans­fer­ring cam­paign mon­ey to a for-prof­it cor­po­ra­tion so he could fun­nel cash into his own pockets.

More recent­ly, he was caught tak­ing kick­backs from his biggest ven­dor, a sig­na­ture gath­er­ing com­pa­ny (“Cit­i­zen Solu­tions”) run by his buddies.

Despite his long his­to­ry of lying and dou­ble-deal­ing and despite his tru­ly awful poll num­bers, Eyman con­sid­ers him­self a cred­i­ble and wor­thy oppo­nent to Inslee.

“I’m out there fight­ing to put you in charge of your gov­ern­ment, but I can only do it because you are behind me,” Eyman wrote in a March 31st fundrais­ing plea to his fol­low­ers. “Today, I write you as the front-run­ner among all chal­lengers in the race to unseat Jay Inslee as gov­er­nor. My short and sweet request is this — I need you to make the most gen­er­ous con­tri­bu­tion you can today by click­ing here.”

Eyman might not like what Gov­er­nor Inslee has been doing in response to COVID-19, but Wash­ing­to­ni­ans cer­tain­ly do. Inslee’s approval rat­ings have sky­rock­et­ed in the past few weeks. That no doubt irri­tates Caleb Heim­lich and oth­er Repub­li­cans who have been try­ing to claim that Inslee is vul­ner­a­ble to a challenge.

A Sur­veyUSA poll last week found Inslee with a 67% approval rat­ing. Sur­veyUSA specif­i­cal­ly asked Wash­ing­to­ni­ans for their views on how Inslee has respond­ed to COVID-19. 25% said they strong­ly approved, while 42% said they approved.

Yes­ter­day, a Microsoft-fund­ed poll found Inslee with a 74% approval rat­ing. Like Sur­veyUSA, Microsoft News and Microsoft Research asked respon­dents specif­i­cal­ly to rate Gov­er­nor Inslee with respect to his COVID-19 response efforts.

And, also today, Cook Polit­i­cal Report rat­ed Wash­ing­ton’s guber­na­to­r­i­al race “Sol­id Demo­c­ra­t­ic”, which equates to “Safe Demo­c­ra­t­ic” — it’s the best cat­e­go­ry for a Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date to be in.

No one is invin­ci­ble, and Gov­er­nor Inslee can­not take his reelec­tion for grant­ed. But there is no rea­son any Wash­ing­ton­ian should take Tim Eyman, Inslee’s self-pro­fessed most like­ly oppo­nent, seri­ous­ly. He’s an admit­ted liar, a thief, and a scam artist who has a pen­chant for reck­less and irre­spon­si­ble behavior.

Eyman’s actions are putting lives at risk and should be loud­ly condemned.