On Wednes­day, dis­hon­est ini­tia­tive pro­mot­er Tim Eyman’s years of lying and dou­ble-deal­ing final­ly caught up with him when Thurston Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court Judge James Dixon found Eyman guilty of egre­gious vio­la­tions of Wash­ing­ton State’s pub­lic dis­clo­sure laws. Eyman was hit with a record $2.6 mil­lion fine (not count­ing attor­ney’s fees that the state may try to col­lect) and a slew of restric­tions lim­it­ing his abil­i­ty to engage in finan­cial chi­canery in the future.

Dixon’s deci­sion was espe­cial­ly sig­nif­i­cant because it marks the first time in Eyman’s polit­i­cal career that he has been prop­er­ly pun­ished for fla­grant­ly vio­lat­ing the law. Eyman has been found to have com­mit­ted vio­la­tions before, and even fined, but those penal­ties amount­ed to lit­tle more than a slap on the wrist.

But at last, Eyman’s skat­ing days are over. Judge Dixon has sub­ject­ed Eyman to long over­due and much need­ed account­abil­i­ty for his wrong­do­ing. That’s a huge­ly pos­i­tive devel­op­ment for Wash­ing­ton State pol­i­tics. Eyman’s pun­ish­ment sends a clear mes­sage that there will be con­se­quences for blow­ing off the Fair Prac­tices Cam­paign Act and con­ceal­ing infor­ma­tion the pub­lic has a right to know.

In his deci­sion, Judge Dixon not­ed that Eyman was first found to have bro­ken Wash­ing­ton State’s pub­lic dis­clo­sure laws almost twen­ty years ago. And indeed, that is how long this pat­tern of behav­ior has been ongo­ing. Eyman is the very def­i­n­i­tion of a ser­i­al offend­er. He has on a few occa­sions expressed remorse for lying and cheat­ing peo­ple, but such expres­sions have always been fleeting.

Eyman likes to say he’s an ideas guy, and he describes his polit­i­cal involve­ment in very lofty, prin­ci­pled terms. The real­i­ty is that for Eyman, pol­i­tics is more about the pur­suit of mon­ey than the advance­ment of a cause.

We know this because over the span of more than two decades, Eyman has con­sis­tent­ly made enrich­ing him­self his top pri­or­i­ty. He is nev­er sat­is­fied and nev­er con­tent with how much he has. He always wants more.

To help peo­ple who are inter­est­ed in Eyman’s his­to­ry under­stand it bet­ter, we’ve cre­at­ed a car­toon guide that explains the many dif­fer­ent schemes Eyman has cooked up to rake in the Ben­jamins, going back to the turn of the cen­tu­ry. It’s avail­able below as a PNG and also as a high res­o­lu­tion PDF.

Inside Tim Eyman’s Prof­it Machine: A graph­ic cre­at­ed by our team at NPI

Some­thing we did­n’t put into the car­toon guide — but which I will men­tion here — is that Eyman has repeat­ed­ly tried to con­vince com­pa­nies like Cooke Aqua­cul­ture or groups like the Wash­ing­ton Retail Asso­ci­a­tion to give him mon­ey to run cam­paigns for them on issues unre­lat­ed to taxes.

In the case of Cooke, Eyman want­ed to run a bal­lot mea­sure to repeal the Leg­is­la­ture’s phase­out of fish farms in Puget Sound, where­as with the Retail Asso­ci­a­tion, Eyman want­ed to be entrust­ed with run­ning a mea­sure to pre­empt local juris­dic­tions from set­ting their own min­i­mum wages.

And of course, there was the time that Eyman tried to repeal Wash­ing­ton’s law against dis­crim­i­na­tion on behalf of the reli­gious right. That failed, too, with the sig­na­ture dri­ve end­ing unsuc­cess­ful­ly and the effort collapsing.

The rea­son this does­n’t have an entry in the car­toon above is that Eyman was unsuc­cess­ful in mak­ing out like a ban­dit from branch­ing out and hijack­ing oth­er caus­es as he had hoped. Much to his frus­tra­tion, his over­tures were rejected.

He did, in 2004, suc­ceed in per­suad­ing a for­eign gam­bling con­glom­er­ate, Great Cana­di­an Gam­ing, to bankroll a mea­sure to open up gam­bling across the state. How­ev­er, that implod­ed spec­tac­u­lar­ly in 2004 when vot­ers reject­ed it.

All of what I’ve just said rein­forces the point I was mak­ing ear­li­er in this post. Eyman is not being truth­ful about his prin­ci­pal rea­son for being in pol­i­tics. To him, pol­i­tics is pri­mar­i­ly a dash for cash. His actions prove it. Eyman is a schemer. He is always try­ing to fig­ure out new ways to part fools from their mon­ey. Prob­a­bly nine­ty-nine out of one hun­dred emails he sends include a plea for money.

In the wake of Judge Dixon’s court deci­sion, in addi­tion to send­ing out his email mis­sives, he pre­dictably was on John Carl­son and Dori Mon­son’s shows pitch­ing his legal defense fund and name-check­ing his web­site as fre­quent­ly as possible.

As men­tioned, at every turn, Eyman has made get­ting his hands on mon­ey his pri­or­i­ty. Even when that has meant break­ing his word. Eyman’s fol­low­ers may not remem­ber all those bro­ken promis­es, but my team and I do.

Like this one from 2003:

Eyman, who runs a fra­ter­ni­ty watch busi­ness out of his Muk­il­teo home, con­ced­ed that he and the Fagans had repeat­ed­ly said they would ask for salaries only if they qual­i­fied one or both of their 2003 ini­tia­tives for the statewide ballot.

He announced Thurs­day that nei­ther mea­sure had gained enough vot­er sig­na­tures to qual­i­fy. They dealt with state tax-and-spend­ing lim­its and light rail in Puget Sound. Eyman is best known for ini­tia­tives that pro­vid­ed $30 car-license tabs and prop­er­ty-tax limits.

Ear­li­er today, Eyman asked sup­port­ers for their under­stand­ing, and their checks.

Empha­sis is mine.

The late Ken Schram, who worked for Fish­er Broad­cast­ing for years as a radio host and TV com­men­ta­tor, was one of the few peo­ple work­ing in local media dur­ing the 2000s who saw right through Eyman’s schemes. We have a col­lec­tion of his Eyman-relat­ed com­men­taries up at Per­ma­nent Defense.

In one July 2002 com­men­tary, Schram neat­ly cap­tured the absur­di­ty of Eyman going back to his fol­low­ers to bail him out of the trou­ble he got him­self into:

I’m tryin’ to iron out this new Tim Eyman wrinkle.

Let’s see if I got it right:

Tim’s ask­ing peo­ple to send him mon­ey to bail him out of the trou­ble he’s in for tak­ing mon­ey that at one time he said he nev­er took.

Now, since Tim cer­tain­ly could­n’t pay tax­es on mon­ey he lied about tak­ing, he’s in that hole.

And, since he got caught with cam­paign dol­lars stuck to his fin­gers, Tim’s also being sued by the state.

Which means he’s got legal bills and fines like­ly lurk­ing in his future.

And so, that’s why Tim has come back to the peo­ple whose mon­ey he took, ask­ing them to send him more money.

A year lat­er, in anoth­er sum­mer com­men­tary, Schram opined:

Maybe it’s some­thing Pavlov­ian, but I just can’t ignore Tim Eyman.

How Tim has duped so many for so long is mys­ti­fy­ing to me.

He’s lied. He’s cheat­ed. He says one thing, does another.

Eyman has helped no one more then he’s helped him­self, and he’s at it again.

Those words were uttered and writ­ten all the way back in 2002 and 2003. Here we are, near­ly two decades lat­er, and Eyman is still run­ning cons, prey­ing on the gullible, against the back­drop of one of the biggest cons ever in Amer­i­can polit­i­cal his­to­ry… the Trump orga­ni­za­tion takeover of the Repub­li­can Party.

We tru­ly do seem to be liv­ing in the age of the con man.

Thank­ful­ly, though, as a result of Judge Dixon’s deci­sion, it will be hard­er for Eyman to run his cons than it was before. That’s progress. That’s worth cel­e­brat­ing. So is the fact a grow­ing num­ber of peo­ple in Wash­ing­ton State pol­i­tics have real­ized that Tim Eyman is tox­ic and untrust­wor­thy. It has hap­pened too slow­ly for my lik­ing, but again, progress is progress, and worth celebrating.

Next week, we will be shar­ing some mate­r­i­al from Attor­ney Gen­er­al Fer­gu­son’s law­suit against Tim Eyman that will allow Wash­ing­to­ni­ans to bet­ter under­stand how Tim Eyman’s prof­it machine works. Look that for series start­ing in a few days, right here on NPI’s Cas­ca­dia Advocate.