Right wing group “Let’s Go Washington” fails to qualify any of its 11 statewide initiatives

A right wing group formed and pri­mar­i­ly fund­ed by Repub­li­can donor Bri­an K. Hey­wood of Red­mond has admit­ted defeat in its efforts to qual­i­fy a batch of eleven right wing ini­tia­tives to the 2023 Wash­ing­ton State Legislature.

Despite spend­ing $363,846.10 — most­ly on adver­tis­ing, print­ing and tex­ting — the group was unable to suc­cess­ful­ly com­plete a sig­na­ture dri­ve for any of its mea­sures, which var­i­ous­ly pro­posed slash­ing fund­ing for pub­lic ser­vices, rolling back pop­u­lar police reform laws, repeal­ing the state’s new cap­i­tal gains tax on the wealthy, ter­mi­nat­ing Wash­ing­ton’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Nation­al Pop­u­lar Vote Com­pact, and requir­ing pri­vate com­pa­nies to over­see some bal­lot tabulations.

As the clock ran out, Hey­wood and his asso­ciates spoke of qual­i­fy­ing at at least one mea­sure by the Decem­ber 30th dead­line, but could not fin­ish the task of gath­er­ing 425,000 sig­na­tures for even their favorite of the eleven schemes.

In a pub­licly post­ed mes­sage, Hey­wood com­plained that the ini­tia­tive process in Wash­ing­ton is “dom­i­nat­ed by deep-pock­et­ed spe­cial inter­ests, increas­ing­ly expen­sive con­sul­tants, and paid sig­na­ture gatherers.”

He added:

“Let’s Go Wash­ing­ton was found­ed on the idea that build­ing a grass­roots vol­un­teer net­work and ween­ing the process from an over-reliance on con­sul­tants is a worth­while pur­suit. How­ev­er, this takes time — more than we first thought.”

Hey­wood isn’t wrong that ini­tia­tives have become a big busi­ness, but in truth, his group was­n’t stymied by “spe­cial inter­ests” or “expen­sive con­sul­tants” or the Leg­is­la­ture’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic majori­ties. It fell short prin­ci­pal­ly because — from what our team has been able to ascer­tain — the group did­n’t know what it was doing.

Sim­ply put, its ambi­tions far exceed­ed its logis­ti­cal capac­i­ty, as evi­denced by its  deci­sion to try to run eleven ini­tia­tives simultaneously.

Hav­ing failed to qual­i­fy any of them, Hey­wood pro­ceed­ed to award him­self and his group the equiv­a­lent of a par­tic­i­pa­tion tro­phy, crow­ing: “We gath­ered more sig­na­tures than any oth­er effort in our nation.”

But not enough to pass Go and col­lect $200.

Qual­i­fy­ing an ini­tia­tive to the bal­lot with most­ly vol­un­teers is pos­si­ble, and has been done as recent­ly as 2015, when WAmend — chaired by NPI Pres­i­dent Diane Jones and staffed by a team includ­ing NPI Advi­so­ry Coun­cilmem­ber Steve Zemke — suc­cess­ful­ly gath­ered enough sig­na­tures to qual­i­fy I‑735 to the Legislature.

I‑735 sub­se­quent­ly appeared on the Wash­ing­ton State bal­lot and was approved by over 62% of vot­ers. Its find­ings are cod­i­fied as RCW 29A.05.030.

Thanks to I‑735, Wash­ing­ton law now declares that the peo­ple of the Ever­green State do not approve of Supreme Court prece­dents sanc­tion­ing the legal fic­tions that cor­po­ra­tions are peo­ple and mon­ey is speech.

I‑735 suc­ceed­ed because it was backed by a team who had a grasp of the logis­tics need­ed to exe­cute a sig­na­ture dri­ve successfully.

Since I‑735 made it, the sig­na­ture require­ment has gone up (twice, ris­ing with the lev­el of guber­na­to­r­i­al elec­tion turnout as required by the Wash­ing­ton State Con­sti­tu­tion), paid peti­tion­er labor has become more expen­sive, and the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has made sig­na­ture gath­er­ing more dif­fi­cult. No ini­tia­tives have appeared on the statewide bal­lot for three con­sec­u­tive years as a consequence.

How­ev­er, the right wing did qual­i­fy one ref­er­en­dum, in 2020, which attempt­ed to get rid of a com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion law passed by the Leg­is­la­ture. Vot­ers decid­ed to keep the law, to the aston­ish­ment of the state’s right wing, which expect­ed a dif­fer­ent out­come and cried foul after being sound­ly beaten.

That cam­paign sym­bol­ized the grow­ing dis­con­nect between the vot­ers of Wash­ing­ton and the state’s right wing polit­i­cal forces. They inhab­it their own bub­ble or echo cham­ber and they seem not to under­stand or appre­ci­ate that their views are not wide­ly pop­u­lar. Con­sid­er this bit from Hey­wood’s letter:

Washington’s ini­tia­tive sys­tem was designed as a “safe­ty valve” for when the leg­is­la­ture pass­es laws opposed by the major­i­ty of vot­ers. Late­ly, the leg­is­la­ture has shown itself will­ing to ignore the peo­ple — repeatedly. 

Empha­sis is mine.

It’s amus­ing that Hey­wood is renew­ing his claim that the Leg­is­la­ture’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic majori­ties are total­ly out of touch mere­ly a few weeks after vot­ers returned every sin­gle Demo­c­ra­t­ic leg­isla­tive incum­bent who sought reelec­tion to Olympia and even expand­ed the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s majori­ties in both the House and Senate.

Wash­ing­to­ni­ans seem sat­is­fied with the work of their Demo­c­ra­t­ic Leg­is­la­ture and total­ly unin­ter­est­ed in the prospect of putting Repub­li­cans in charge: they sent even more Democ­rats to the state­house in an elec­tion that Repub­li­cans had expect­ed for a long time to be extreme­ly dom­i­nant in.

It’s worth remem­ber­ing that at the time Hey­wood launched Let’s Go Wash­ing­ton, Repub­li­cans were open­ly fan­ta­siz­ing about hav­ing con­trol of the Legislature.

That’s part­ly what spurred the group to attempt so many ini­tia­tives at once: they want­ed the abil­i­ty to send what they thought would be a House run by J.T. Wilcox and a Sen­ate run by John Braun a set of pro­pos­als that could be adopt­ed into law with­out the need for a guber­na­to­r­i­al sig­na­ture, know­ing that Jay Inslee would hap­pi­ly wield his veto pen against their destruc­tive schemes.

In August, how­ev­er, Democ­rats romped in the Top Two elec­tion and the air instant­ly went out of the right wing’s bal­loon. Wilcox, Braun, and Repub­li­can Par­ty Chair Caleb Heim­lich con­ced­ed pri­vate­ly and lat­er pub­licly that Repub­li­cans stood no chance of flip­ping either cham­ber. Democ­rats con­tin­ued their leg­isla­tive elec­toral dom­i­nance in Novem­ber, leav­ing Repub­li­cans shak­ing their heads.

At NPI, we’re real­ly inter­est­ed in what peo­ple think about the work of our elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the issues of the day, so we do a lot of research, and we pub­lish new poll find­ings reg­u­lar­ly here on the Cas­ca­dia Advocate.

If Repub­li­cans like Bri­an Hey­wood paid any atten­tion to our research, they’d know that they are the ones who are ignor­ing the peo­ple and push­ing unpop­u­lar ideas. But they seem well and tru­ly ensconced in their echo cham­ber, unwill­ing to con­sid­er that pro­gres­sives actu­al­ly have a bet­ter grasp of pub­lic opinion.

And so it goes.