The day before Election Day, Tim Eyman said he was praying for a red wave. It never came.

With noth­ing on this year’s bal­lot to sell, and with a mul­ti­mil­lion dol­lar Fair Cam­paign Prac­tices Act penal­ty and its asso­ci­at­ed costs hang­ing over him, right wing provo­ca­teur Tim Eyman has late­ly been focused on self-preser­va­tion, send­ing email after email to his fol­low­ers tout­ing his appeal of Judge James Dixon’s his­toric judg­ment against him in ear­ly 2021 and ask­ing them to bar­rage Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son with hos­tile emails.

From Octo­ber 7th until the day before Elec­tion Day, every sin­gle email mis­sive from Eyman con­cerned Eyman’s appeal in State of Wash­ing­ton v. Tim Eyman, with Eyman’s calls to action rang­ing from “Send an email to Bob Fer­gu­son right now — tell him what you think about tomor­row’s court bat­tle between him and Richard Sanders” to “watch Richard Sanders spar w/ appeals court judges dur­ing his open­ing state­ment. With his sharp mind, he made it look easy — it’s not.”

Final­ly, though, on Novem­ber 7th, with the near­ness of Elec­tion Day impos­si­ble to ignore, Eyman switched gears and sent out elec­tion-relat­ed commentary.

“For our coun­try, I’m pray­ing for a red wave,” Eyman declared in all caps, before explain­ing that he had invit­ed him­self to the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty’s elec­tion night par­ty at the Belle­vue Hyatt with Tiffany Smi­ley, Matt Larkin, and oth­er can­di­dates and was eager to be joined by as many fol­low­ers as possible.

“I urge you to join me at tomor­row’s Elec­tion Night Vic­to­ry Cel­e­bra­tions at the Belle­vue Hyatt. It’ll be a great chance for all of us to hug, high-five, hoop, holler, and cel­e­brate our vic­to­ries togeth­er. Elec­tion returns will be com­ing in from across the nation start­ing at 5pm so let’s start cel­e­brat­ing ear­ly,” Eyman wrote.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly for Eyman and his fol­low­ers, the “red wave” Eyman had prayed for nev­er came. Repub­li­cans even­tu­al­ly cap­tured con­trol of the U.S. House, but by the slimmest of mar­gins, and some Repub­li­cans (like Andy Big­gs) have said they won’t vote for Kevin McCarthy to be speak­er when the 118th Con­gress con­venes, por­tend­ing two years of chaos and divi­sion for House Republicans.

Mean­while, Democ­rats held the U.S. Sen­ate after scor­ing a series of hard-fought wins and flipped three gov­er­nor­ships (Mary­land, Mass­a­chu­setts, Ari­zona) along with hold­ing on to gov­er­nor­ships in a host of swing states.

In Michi­gan, a state Eyman has bragged about try­ing to bring vot­er sup­pres­sion schemes to this year, vot­ers reelect­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic Gov­er­nor Gretchen Whit­mer and Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Gar­lin Gilchrist II, an NPI alum. Vot­ers also end­ed Repub­li­can con­trol of the Leg­is­la­ture and adopt­ed a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment enshrin­ing repro­duc­tive rights into the Michi­gan State Constitution.

In Wash­ing­ton, Democ­rats dom­i­nat­ed: there was a blue wave instead of a red one. Pat­ty Mur­ray defeat­ed Tiffany Smi­ley, Kim Schri­er defeat­ed Matt Larkin, Steve Hobbs was retained as the first Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sec­re­tary of State in over half a cen­tu­ry, and vot­ers enlarged Democ­rats’ leg­isla­tive majorities.

Eyman has said noth­ing pub­licly about any of the afore­men­tioned out­comes, but the NPI team has no doubt that he’s extreme­ly disappointed.

Eyman had fan­ta­sized ear­li­er this year about vot­ers elect­ing a Repub­li­can-con­trolled Leg­is­la­ture that would take on Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee and poten­tial­ly adopt a slew of right wing ini­tia­tives intro­duced by his friend Bri­an Heywood.

Not only did Repub­li­cans fail to cap­ture con­trol of the Leg­is­la­ture, they lost seats to the Democ­rats. That’s right: in what was sup­posed to be a “red wave” elec­tion year, Repub­li­cans went back­wards and saw their own num­bers in Olympia shrink!

Eyman and oth­er Repub­li­cans had assumed that peo­ple would rise up and side with them, furi­ous over Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nance of Wash­ing­ton State.

But we knew from our research polling that vot­ers want­ed con­tin­ued Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­trol of the Leg­is­la­ture. Democ­rats had an advan­tage every time we asked, and our poll­ster asked over 700 like­ly vot­ers which par­ty they want­ed to see in charge of the Leg­is­la­ture three dif­fer­ent times — each in a dif­fer­ent season.

The elec­tion results val­i­dat­ed our research and left Repub­li­cans stunned.

They had fed and then eager­ly bought into a mas­sive­ly hyped “red wave” nar­ra­tive with­out stop­ping to con­sid­er that per­haps a lot of peo­ple just weren’t inter­est­ed in hand­ing pow­er to a par­ty that wor­ships a sociopath, wants to deny bod­i­ly auton­o­my to most Amer­i­cans, end free and fair elec­tions, and ignore the cli­mate cri­sis. It must also be not­ed that Repub­li­cans only cap­tured the U.S. House because of ger­ry­man­der­ing — oth­er­wise, they would­n’t have.

In Wash­ing­ton State, with­out the abil­i­ty to aggres­sive­ly rig the map and stack the deck for their can­di­dates, Repub­li­cans found them­selves los­ing, again and again. With­out con­trol of either cham­ber of the Leg­is­la­ture, they won’t be able to play games like repeat­ed­ly forc­ing spe­cial ses­sions to nego­ti­ate bud­gets or forc­ing Gov­er­nor Inslee’s appointees to leave office by vot­ing down their confirmations.

As for Eyman, he has­n’t run a suc­cess­ful sig­na­ture dri­ve for a scheme to wreck gov­ern­ment since this time four years ago. If he fails to qual­i­fy any­thing to the bal­lot next year, his drought would reach four years in length — a new record.

Will Eyman infer any divine mes­sage from the elec­tion results? Prob­a­bly not — but if he is tru­ly a per­son of faith, he might pause to con­sid­er that what he wants for him­self and the coun­try is not what God wants. Jesus instruct­ed his dis­ci­ples to feed the hun­gry, care for the sick, shel­ter the unhoused, and love their ene­mies — and Repub­li­cans like Eyman have almost total­ly shunned those teachings.

To quote Scripture:

“For I was hun­gry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you wel­comed me, naked and you clothed me. I was ill and you com­fort­ed me, in prison and you came to vis­it me. I assure you, as often as you did it for the least among you, you did it for me.”

— Matthew 25:35–40

I have worked to counter Eyman’s destruc­tive ideas for over two decades, and I can­not recall Eyman ever hav­ing dis­cussed vol­un­teer­ing for a char­i­ty, par­tic­i­pat­ing in a food, toy, or cloth­ing dri­ve, going out to plant trees or clean up the envi­ron­ment, or doing any­thing con­struc­tive for our state and region.

I know many con­ser­v­a­tives who are actu­al­ly into con­ser­va­tion and par­tic­i­pate in the envi­ron­men­tal move­ment; Tim Eyman is not among them. I know many con­ser­v­a­tives who give gen­er­ous­ly to char­i­ty; I am unaware of any char­i­ta­ble giv­ing by Tim Eyman. I know many con­ser­v­a­tives who are active in their church­es help­ing oth­ers. I’ve nev­er seen Tim Eyman use his list to sup­port such efforts.

If Eyman does any good works, he does them pri­vate­ly and quietly.

Eyman uses the word “love” in his emails lot, and he tells his fol­low­ers he loves them. He also clear­ly loves his fam­i­ly. That’s good. But does he love any­one else?

There’s actu­al­ly a rel­e­vant pas­sage from Scrip­ture about this very sub­ject — it’s a part of the Gospel of Luke known as the Ser­mon on the Plain:

“For if you love those who love you, what cred­it is that to you? Even sin­ners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what cred­it is that to you? Even sin­ners do the same. If you lend mon­ey to those from whom you expect repay­ment, what cred­it [is] that to you? Even sin­ners lend to sin­ners, and get back the same amount. But rather, love your ene­mies and do good to them, and lend expect­ing noth­ing back; then your reward will be great and you will be chil­dren of the Most High, for he him­self is kind to the ungrate­ful and the wicked.”

– Luke 6:32–25

What I pray for is that peo­ple like Tim Eyman will find some­thing more use­ful to do with their lives than scam­ming oth­er peo­ple out of their mon­ey and seek­ing the dev­as­ta­tion of our coun­try and state’s com­mon wealth, on which all fam­i­lies and busi­ness­es in Amer­i­ca and Wash­ing­ton State depend.