Bei­jing Win­ter Olympics view­ers recent­ly mar­veled at sta­mi­na dis­played by Norway’s Nordic skiers and their abil­i­ty to face sub­ze­ro tem­per­a­tures and fierce head­winds on tracks in north­ern China.

No soon­er were the clos­ing cer­e­monies com­plete than Wash­ing­ton wit­nessed sev­er­al remark­able dis­plays of endurance under pres­sure by a pub­lic official.

We are talk­ing, of course, about State Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Ferguson.

The AG first took out after the Gro­cery Man­u­fac­tur­ers Asso­ci­a­tion in 2013, blow­ing the whis­tle on use of a front group called the “Defense of Brands Asso­ci­a­tion” to con­ceal mil­lions of dol­lars of dona­tions and iden­ti­ties of the donors. The GMA, since renamed Con­sumer Brands Asso­ci­a­tion, was spend­ing heav­i­ly to defeat an ini­tia­tive requir­ing label­ing of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied foods and seeds.

Nine years lat­er, Con­sumer Brands set­tled the state’s long-run­ning mon­ey-laun­der­ing suit for $9 mil­lion, plus a writ­ten apology.

Savor words you will not often read:

“The Gro­cery Man­u­fac­tur­ers Asso­ci­a­tion accepts respon­si­bil­i­ty for fail­ing to dis­close donors in a time­ly man­ner on a 2013 bal­lot ini­tia­tive and fail­ing to reg­is­ter as a polit­i­cal com­mit­tee in accor­dance with Wash­ing­ton State cam­paign finance laws.”

A day after that, nine state Attor­neys Gen­er­al – includ­ing Fer­gu­son – wit­nessed pay­off of a gam­ble they took in long-run­ning law­suits against Pur­due Phar­ma and the Sack­ler fam­i­ly, mak­ers and aggres­sive mar­keters of the often lethal painkiller Oxy­Con­tin. The opi­oid addic­tion cri­sis has killed at least 500,000 Amer­i­cans in the last twen­ty-three years.

The nine hold­outs per­suad­ed a fed­er­al judge to reject an agree­ment signed by every oth­er state. Under a revised agree­ment, announced Fri­day, the Sack­lers will pay an increase of at least $1 bil­lion while Pur­due will put up what is expect­ed to be $1.5 bil­lion by 2024.

“We stood up to the Sack­lers and forced them to relin­quish more of their for­tune to help undo the dam­age they caused,” Fer­gu­son said. The state’s share will climb, from $70 mil­lion to $183 mil­lion, over the reject­ed plan.

Good news comes in clusters.

As the Sack­ler set­tle­ment was announced, the Leg­is­la­ture was com­plet­ing pas­sage of an NPI pri­or­i­ty bill, ESSB 5078, which pro­hibits the man­u­fac­tur­er, sale, import or trans­fer of large-capac­i­ty mag­a­zines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammu­ni­tion. The leg­is­la­tion was intro­duced at the request of AG Ferguson.

Wash­ing­ton State Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son at the Yes on I‑1639 elec­tion night party

NPI’s polling found 60% sup­port (and 50% strong sup­port) for leg­is­la­tion pro­hibit­ing the sale or pos­ses­sion of high-capac­i­ty mag­a­zines. The sur­vey by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling pegged oppo­si­tion at 35%.

Fail­ure by the Wash­ing­ton Leg­is­la­ture to act prompt­ed suc­cess­ful gun safe­ty ini­tia­tives on the state’s 2014, 2016 and 2018 ballots.

The ban on high-capac­i­ty mag­a­zines rep­re­sents a water­shed, leg­isla­tive action at last. Fer­gu­son has advo­cat­ed such a pro­hi­bi­tion since 2016, when three stu­dents were mur­dered and a fourth wound­ed at a Muk­il­teo house party.

The week end­ed Sat­ur­day with a “Free­dom Fes­ti­val” ral­ly in Olympia against COVID-19 man­dates and fea­tur­ing ini­tia­tive sponsor/grifter Tim Eyman.

Eyman was, as usu­al, appeal­ing for dona­tions to his legal defense fund.

Bob Fegu­son speaks at a press con­fer­ence announc­ing new law­suit against Tim Eyman

“Is it any won­der the Attor­ney Gen­er­al is work­ing so hard to stop all my future polit­i­cal activ­i­ty?” asked Eyman.

The real­i­ty, of course, is a five-year legal strug­gle that result­ed in a $2.6 mil­lion civ­il fine imposed by Thurston Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court Judges James Dixon for what he called “numer­ous and par­tic­u­lar­ly egre­gious” vio­la­tions of state cam­paign finance laws. Eyman has also been ordered to pay up $2.9 mil­lion in state legal costs, the price for stonewalling the dis­cov­ery process and try­ing to block requests for documents.

Tak­ing off from an orig­i­nal inves­tiga­tive report by the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion that was prompt­ed by a com­plaint filed by Wash­ing­to­ni­ans For Eth­i­cal Gov­ern­ment board­mem­ber Sher­ry Bock­winkel, the Attor­ney General’s office made the case that Eyman laun­dered cam­paign dona­tions, received kick­backs from a sig­na­ture gath­er­ing firm, secret­ly moved mon­ey from one ini­tia­tive cam­paign to anoth­er, and hid sources of contributions.

Whew! But there’s more. In the sum­mer of 2020, Montsan­to agreed to pay out $95 mil­lion to set­tle a suit filed by the state.

The AG charged the big chem­i­cal firm with con­tin­u­ing to pro­duce and mar­ket poly­chlo­ri­nat­ed biphenyls (PCBs) even though it knew the haz­ards to human health and the envi­ron­ment. Wash­ing­ton, in 2016, became the first state to sue.

“Wash­ing­ton has been shoul­der­ing the health and envi­ron­men­tal costs of PCB con­t­a­m­i­na­tion and cleanup for decades: This record pay­ment holds Mon­san­to account­able for the harm they inflict­ed on our state,” said Ferguson.

Over more than half-a-cen­tu­ry, activists have been march­ing down Seattle’s Pine Street to West­lake Mall chant­i­ng, “What do we want? (Peace, free­dom, rev­o­lu­tion) When do we want it? Now.” Alas, what Dr. King called the “fierce urgency of now,” has not moved caus­es to the front burner.

Action is in the pol­i­cy and legal trench­es, and often takes years.

What has been dif­fer­ent in Ferguson’s case?

Attor­neys Gen­er­al savor quick, high-pub­lic­i­ty hits, or splashy fil­ings of suits that will go nowhere. (For instance, Texas tried to block count­ing of some elec­toral votes in the 2020 elec­tion.) It has been con­sid­ered a vic­to­ry for pub­lic pol­i­cy when a car deal­er agrees to quit rolling back odometers.

Fer­gu­son had a famous­ly fast vic­to­ry, block­ing the Trump regime’s first Mus­lim trav­el ban in U.S. Dis­trict Court and the U.S. 9th Cir­cuit Court of Appeals. The win was ampli­fied by a tantrum from the 45th pres­i­dent and Trump’s ref­er­ence to a “so-called judge.” Oth­er “wins” were made pos­si­ble by slop­py legal work, notably fail­ure by the Trump admin­is­tra­tion to con­form with the Admin­is­tra­tive Pro­ce­dures Act when rolling back fed­er­al con­sumer and envi­ron­men­tal regulations.

With Fer­gu­son, how­ev­er, oth­er fac­tors have come into play.

Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son is a cham­pi­on chess play­er (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

The AG is a chess cham­pi­on, with exper­tise in a time-con­sum­ing game whose out­come depends on cal­cu­la­tion of future moves.

Nor does Fer­gu­son go in for what some cor­po­rate defen­dants call “cost of doing busi­ness” set­tle­ments, a slap on the wrist fine with no acknowl­edg­ment of respon­si­bil­i­ty or regret. Where there’s a large – or just – reward down the road, he goes for it.

The Attor­ney Gen­er­al heads Washington’s largest law firm. When Fer­gu­son announces a win, he care­ful­ly lists lawyers with the AG’s office who worked on the cause, and co-plain­tiffs numer­ous in such cas­es as the Sack­ler-Pur­due lawsuit.

He has enjoyed a strong sup­port­ing cast. State Solic­i­tor Gen­er­al Noah Pur­cell argued the Mus­lim trav­el ban before the 9th Cir­cuit. Pur­cell was also called upon to argue the state’s case in the Sack­ler-Pur­due litigation.

The nine states won some­thing more than mon­ey. The Sack­ler fam­i­ly have agreed to place in a pub­lic doc­u­ments repos­i­to­ry con­fi­den­tial doc­u­ments that detail lob­by­ing, pub­lic rela­tions, sales tech­niques and mar­ket­ing. Aggres­sive mar­ket­ing was a key aspect of this state’s case against Pur­due Pharma.

Oth­er suits against major drug man­u­fac­tur­ers, dis­trib­u­tors and such retail firms as Wal­greens and CVS are wind­ing their way through the courts.

Wash­ing­ton is press­ing lit­i­ga­tion against those who dis­trib­uted, as well as man­u­fac­tured OxyContin.

The record estab­lished by Bob Fer­gu­son makes a point: If man­aged right, time need not be the ene­my of justice.