Wannabe governor Tim Eyman: Unfit for office and a threat to civil discourse

This sum­mer, for the first time ever, Tim Eyman him­self will appear on Wash­ing­to­ni­ans’ bal­lots as a can­di­date… a can­di­date for governor.

The fifty-four year old has spent the last few decades heap­ing abuse on Wash­ing­ton State’s elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives while leav­ing them to deal with the con­se­quences of his destruc­tive ini­tia­tives and dis­miss­ing the notion of run­ning for office him­self… as recent­ly, in fact, as Novem­ber 2019.

But now Eyman is a can­di­date, and not just for any office, but for the most impor­tant office in the land, which heads the state’s exec­u­tive department.

To say that Eyman despis­es incum­bent Jay Inslee would be an under­state­ment. While Eyman also dis­liked Inslee’s pre­de­ces­sors Chris­tine Gre­goire and Gary Locke, he par­tic­u­lar­ly can’t stand Inslee, no doubt because Inslee has repeat­ed­ly refused to capit­u­late to Eyman’s demands to shred pub­lic ser­vices, gut our cher­ished tra­di­tion of major­i­ty rule, and yank invest­ments in mul­ti­modal trans­porta­tion projects.

In Jay Inslee, Eyman has an oppo­nent who stands on prin­ci­ple and makes deci­sions based on sound sci­ence and what is best for the peo­ple of the state.

And that real­ly, real­ly both­ers him.

Tim Eyman’s fore­most skill is manip­u­lat­ing peo­ple, and when he runs into some­one he can­not manip­u­late, that per­son typ­i­cal­ly becomes a foil for him to use in the course of manip­u­lat­ing oth­er peo­ple, whether that’s reporters, vot­ers, or even Eyman’s own admir­ing fan club, who he con­stant­ly requests mon­ey from.

It is impor­tant to under­stand that Tim delib­er­ate­ly makes provoca­tive com­ments like the ones he made this week because he is always in pur­suit of atten­tion and media cov­er­age… good or bad. (For ref­er­ence, Eyman’s com­ments were: “Jay Inslee has his knee on the neck of mil­lions of peo­ple he deems non-essen­tial. And he calls them heart­less and self­ish for beg­ging him to get off.”)

I have on sev­er­al occa­sions heard reporters ask Eyman why be behaves the way he does… why he is so the­atri­cal, why he dress­es up in cos­tume, why he embraces hyber­bole and con­fronta­tion, why he is con­sis­tent­ly rude and disrespectful.

And I’ve heard Eyman respond to this effect: Because that’s what I know works. That’s how I know I can get you guys to pay atten­tion to me. 

While much of what Tim Eyman says is false, I believe he was telling the truth when he said that he acts out in order to get atten­tion. It works.

Eyman views media events as per­for­mances, and he always shows up ready to per­form. Provo­ca­tion is a strat­e­gy for drum­ming up inter­est, a tried and test­ed strat­e­gy that has been proven to work over the course of decades.

For any­one read­ing who works in the mass media, please under­stand this: As long as you cov­er Eyman, he will con­tin­ue to behave this way.

This is hard­ly the first time that Eyman has made offen­sive com­ments. He has pre­vi­ous­ly called Jay Inslee “a lying whore”, and refused to apol­o­gize for those com­ments even when oth­er top Repub­li­cans urged him to. He has used an image of a woman hold­ing a gun to a child’s head to denounce King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine, which prompt­ed the Wash­ing­ton chap­ter of the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Pedi­atrics to issue an unusu­al pub­lic state­ment of condemnation.

More recent­ly, Eyman urged his fol­low­ers to put their lives at risk for his ben­e­fit, exhort­ing them to come to a meet and greet for his guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­da­cy by say­ing: “Let’s stick our fin­ger in the eye of Jay Inslee… 251 is the # of patri­ots I hope will join me @ Oak Har­bor today. I’m bring­ing a six-pack of Corona!”

Don­ald Trump is also a mas­ter of media manip­u­la­tion and of hurl­ing mem­o­rable put-downs. It is clear that Eyman deeply admires and appre­ci­ates Trump’s abil­i­ty to run scams, con peo­ple, and demo­nize peo­ple who object.

Eyman in 2016 got his pic­ture tak­en with Trump and effu­sive­ly told his fan club that when he met Trump, he said: “I admire your courage.”

Yeah… the courage to dupe and scam and trick people.

It is pos­si­ble that Eyman changed his mind about run­ning for office in part because of Don­ald Trump’s 2016 vic­to­ry in the Elec­toral College.

Trump got elect­ed to the high­est office in the coun­try with­out ever hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly served in a posi­tion of pub­lic respon­si­bil­i­ty, unlike pret­ty much every oth­er pres­i­dent before him, who had either local and state gov­ern­ment expe­ri­ence, con­gres­sion­al expe­ri­ence, mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence, or expe­ri­ence as Vice Pres­i­dent pri­or to becom­ing the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca’s Commander-in-Chief.

Tim Eyman is like­wise unfit for office… and not just gov­er­nor, but any office, any­where, ever. The peo­ple of this state and coun­try deserve elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives who are hon­est, who are kind, who under­stand the mean­ing and val­ue of ser­vice, and who adhere to the Plat­inum Rule.

Pub­lic ser­vice is a noble and impor­tant call­ing, but it isn’t for every­one. Some peo­ple sim­ply don’t have what it takes to serve ably, or in Eyman’s case, at all.

It is telling that Eyman has not got­ten any trac­tion in his cam­paign for gov­er­nor beyond the appre­ci­a­tion of his fan club. In fact, if KING5’s polling is accu­rate, he is expe­ri­enc­ing neg­a­tive momen­tum. In Jan­u­ary, Eyman reg­is­tered at 11% in a Sur­veyUSA poll on the guber­na­to­r­i­al race; last month, he reg­is­tered at 8%… which is in the sin­gle dig­its. By way of com­par­i­son, four years ago, Inslee’s even­tu­al Repub­li­can oppo­nent Bill Bryant was polling in the thirties.

While Eyman has found some suc­cess run­ning cons against Wash­ing­ton vot­ers in the form of bal­lot mea­sures, there’s a big dif­fer­ence between run­ning a bal­lot mea­sure and run­ning for office as a can­di­date. It will be Eyman’s name and his par­ty affil­i­a­tion on the bal­lot this time, not a decep­tive, bad­ly writ­ten bal­lot title that Eyman mas­saged out of the Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s office.

It is my hope that Eyman’s can­di­da­cy not only fails, but fails spec­tac­u­lar­ly, so that we can affirm as a soci­ety that Eyman’s tox­ic pol­i­tics are not in keep­ing with Wash­ing­ton val­ues. Tim Eyman brings noth­ing to the table. Nothing.

Not once in his career has he done any­thing that I would con­sid­er con­struc­tive. All of his ini­tia­tives have sought to under­mine or destroy pub­lic services.

Eyman is utter­ly uncon­cerned with wor­thy caus­es like end­ing sys­temic racism, improv­ing access to hous­ing, reduc­ing cli­mate dam­age, and improv­ing mobil­i­ty for Wash­ing­tons. He has instead used his tal­ent for manip­u­la­tion for destruc­tive ends.

Eyman’s own fol­low­ers have been injured the most by Eyman’s greed and dis­hon­esty. Eyman has repeat­ed­ly lied to them, cheat­ed them, and brought out the worst in them. For exam­ple, Eyman has:

• Steered mon­ey they gave him for cam­paigns into his own per­son­al pock­ets with­out ask­ing them or even telling them;
• Con­duct­ed cam­paigns of harass­ment against elect­ed Repub­li­cans who took an action Eyman did not like, there­by frac­tur­ing Repub­li­can par­ty unity;
• Used funds raised for one ini­tia­tive to qual­i­fy a sec­ond, unre­lat­ed ini­tia­tive with­out the knowl­edge or per­mis­sion of his donors;
• Asked peo­ple to give mon­ey to a tax-exempt char­i­ty run by a friend with the under­stand­ing that the mon­ey would end up in Eyman’s pock­ets, with the char­i­ty func­tion­ing as a pass-through enti­ty, in vio­la­tion of fed­er­al law.

As a con­se­quence of Eyman’s will­ful and repeat­ed vio­la­tions of pub­lic dis­clo­sure laws, he has been left in a posi­tion where he owes the peo­ple of the State of Wash­ing­ton hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars. As Eyman has no occu­pa­tion oth­er than run­ning polit­i­cal cons, the mon­ey to pay those penal­ties will be com­ing from his admir­ing fol­low­ers, includ­ing his wealthy benefactors.

Iron­ic, isn’t it, that the man who built a rep­u­ta­tion as anti-gov­ern­ment polit­i­cal activist must now devote a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of what he is able to raise so he can make pay­ments to the Wash­ing­ton State treasury.

Despite his blus­ter and pro­jec­tion, this sit­u­a­tion is entire­ly of Eyman’s own mak­ing. He has begun to reap what he has sown.

An empath­ic rejec­tion of his can­di­da­cy would send a strong and nec­es­sary mes­sage that Wash­ing­ton wants lead­er­ship that is hon­est, car­ing, and inclu­sive… lead­er­ship that seeks to unite every­one behind our finest val­ues and prin­ci­ples, not divide peo­ple and pit them against each oth­er for self­ish polit­i­cal gain.

We need and deserve effec­tive gov­ern­ment and respect­ful civ­il dis­course here in Wash­ing­ton State, just like every­where else.

We won’t get either if Tim Eyman’s guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­da­cy is successful.

I have faith that it won’t be.