Tim Eyman has quit pitching initiatives and pivoted to lobbying against progressive bills

Late in the morn­ing of Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 2nd, 2023, a curi­ous­ly word­ed email arrived in the mail­box­es of thou­sands of Wash­ing­to­ni­ans from Tim Eyman, who needs no intro­duc­tion to reg­u­lar read­ers of The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate, but who could be described very sim­ply as one of Wash­ing­ton’s best-known right wing politi­cians for those new to or unfa­mil­iar with Ever­green State politics.

The email declared that Eyman had been cut off from all of his old address­es and that there was only one email address he could now be reached at, asso­ci­at­ed with the web­site set up for his legal defense fund, timdefense.com.

“You can text / email me any­time at: [num­ber redact­ed] but when it comes to email, send­ing email to [redacted]@gmail.com, [redacted]@yahoo.com, [redacted]@protonmail.com, [redacted]@comcast.net, or oth­ers means I’ll nev­er get it. Yes, it’s a pain in the arse, but it is what it is,” Eyman wrote.

He did not elab­o­rate fur­ther or explain what had caused him to lose access to his Google, Yahoo, Pro­ton, and Com­cast accounts simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

NPI looked for evi­dence of a court order or oth­er action that might explain what Eyman could pos­si­bly be refer­ring to by imply­ing that his email accounts had all been tak­en away from him, but we found noth­ing. Noth­ing at all.

There were a few oth­er inter­est­ing aspects of Eyman’s first mis­sive of 2023.

One was that this mes­sage came from a dif­fer­ent MailChimp account than the one he had been using to send his pre­vi­ous mass emails.

Anoth­er was that the mes­sage lacked a pitch for dona­tions to Eyman’s polit­i­cal com­mit­tee, Per­ma­nent Offense, which is now sup­pos­ed­ly under the juris­dic­tion of two friends of Eyman named Lar­ry Jensen and Sid Maietto.

Up until Christ­mas­time 2022, when Eyman sent his final email of the year ask­ing for mon­ey, his mis­sives had includ­ed stan­dard ver­biage from “Lar­ry & Sid” ask­ing for mon­ey for Per­ma­nent Offense. The text of that bit was:

We’re ask­ing folks to donate to our PAC so we can keep fight­ing for tax­pay­ers with Jim Wal­sh’s ini­tia­tive I‑1491, the stop all income tax­es ini­tia­tive.

The tax­pay­ers of Wash­ing­ton need our help now more than ever. Donate to our polit­i­cal com­mit­tee so we can keep fight­ing for you:

Mail your check — made payable to “Per­ma­nent Offense I‑1491” — to: Per­ma­nent Offense, PO Box 6151, Olympia, WA, 98507
Or donate online: PermanentOffense.com

Kind­est Regards,

Sid Mai­et­to & Lar­ry Jensen

Begin­ning Jan­u­ary 2nd, this appeal dis­ap­peared (Jim Wal­sh’s I‑1491 failed to qual­i­fy, hav­ing nev­er got­ten off the ground) and so did the Donate page on Per­ma­nent Offense’s web­site. If you go there, you’ll get a Page Not Found error because it has been tak­en offline. Yes, that’s right: tak­en offline!

What’s more, Per­ma­nent Offense has­n’t report­ed a sin­gle con­tri­bu­tion or expen­di­ture for all of 2023. The PDC’s web­site rolled the com­mit­tee’s reg­is­tra­tion over into 2023, but no reports have been filed this year.

The com­mit­tee end­ed 2022 with bal­ance of $25,741.96, accord­ing to its last amend­ed C4 report, which was filed Jan­u­ary 10th, 2023. It is appar­ent­ly now inop­er­a­tive, judg­ing by the take­down of its dona­tion page and the removal of the “Lar­ry & Sid” pitch from Eyman’s emails. Eyman is still fundrais­ing, but only for him­self and his legal defense fund — not for Per­ma­nent Offense.

And unlike in recent years, Eyman isn’t try­ing to pre­tend that’s he’s doing a sig­na­ture dri­ve for a new scheme to defund pub­lic ser­vices or wreck gov­ern­ment despite not hav­ing access to wealthy bene­fac­tors will­ing to restart his ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry. He’s still fil­ing ini­tia­tives by the buck­et­load — in fact, of the sev­en­ty-six ini­tia­tives filed so far this year, a whop­ping six­ty-four are his.

(Eyman likes to file mul­ti­ple sim­i­lar iter­a­tions of a scheme in the hopes of get­ting a good bal­lot title, an abu­sive prac­tice known as bal­lot title shop­ping that needs to be pro­hib­it­ed through the adop­tion of ini­tia­tive reform legislation.)

How­ev­er, Eyman isn’t pitch­ing any of these schemes in pub­lic. Every sin­gle one of his emails going back to the begin­ning of the year has con­cerned either state leg­is­la­tion or pol­i­cy at the local lev­el, like in Camas, Washington.

We have no doubt Eyman would like to return to being an ini­tia­tive pitch­man; his bal­lot title shop­ping demon­strates that he’d rather be try­ing to qual­i­fy some­thing bad to the bal­lot right now than mak­ing trips to Olympia to yell at leg­is­la­tors from the tes­ti­mo­ny table. But he can’t. And he knows he can’t.

Statewide ini­tia­tives require huge resources, and Eyman is broke.

Eyman’s ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry is no longer mere­ly idle, it has com­plete­ly crum­bled to the ground. The sec­ond incar­na­tion of his bud­dies’ cor­rupt peti­tion­ing busi­ness Cit­i­zen Solu­tions (which once han­dled his sig­na­ture dri­ves annu­al­ly) was admin­is­tra­tive­ly dis­solved by the state in 2020, his past wealthy bene­fac­tors have either passed on or aban­doned him, and he is barred by court order from fly­ing solo as a polit­i­cal com­mit­tee offi­cer with no over­sight, as he did for so many years.

Eyman tried run­ning for gov­er­nor in 2020 after he real­ized that I‑976 (his scheme to gut Sound Tran­sit and ruin mul­ti­modal trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture across Wash­ing­ton) was not going to be imple­ment­ed. But his cam­paign flopped. Vot­ers reject­ed Eyman’s can­di­da­cy and he did­n’t make it out of the Top Two.

Eyman then became a sur­ro­gate for fel­low grifter Loren Culp, who also went on to lose in 2020 along with their mutu­al idol, the insur­rec­tion­ist inciter Don­ald Trump.

After the 2020 cycle, Eyman tried a few times to get his old ini­tia­tive busi­ness rolling again, even mak­ing pub­lic pleas for new wealthy bene­fac­tors to come forth and pro­vide mon­ey for him­self, Lar­ry, and Sid to use in procur­ing sig­na­tures. Those pleas went unan­swered and Eyman’s schemes went nowhere.

After so many years of try­ing the “fake it till you make it” approach to get­ting back into the ini­tia­tives busi­ness, Eyman seems to have giv­en up.

Nei­ther I nor any­one else on our team can recall this much time hav­ing passed where Eyman was­n’t solic­it­ing mon­ey for a cam­paign, be it an ini­tia­tive he want­ed to do or his failed guber­na­to­r­i­al run. Instead of pitch­ing bad right wing stuff, Eyman is busy try­ing to get Repub­li­can PCOs and oth­er right wing activists to oppose leg­is­la­tion they don’t like in Olympia. Here’s a list of the major 2023 bills Eyman has either spo­ken against or urged his fol­low­ers to help him defeat:

• SB 5082 / HB 1158: This is NPI’s leg­is­la­tion to repeal Eyman’s advi­so­ry votes push polls — the anti-tax pro­pa­gan­da items that auto­mat­i­cal­ly appear on Wash­ing­to­ni­ans’ bal­lots if the Leg­is­la­ture does any­thing to increase rev­enue. SB 5082 received a bipar­ti­san vote in the state Sen­ate and is now mov­ing along in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives (HB 1158 was the com­pan­ion bill). Nat­u­ral­ly, Eyman is furi­ous­ly opposed to it.
• SB 5723: This is NPI’s leg­is­la­tion to allow cities to move their reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled elec­tions to even years if they want. It’s a new idea that has got­ten a lot of inter­est; Eyman was the only per­son to speak against it. It was not con­sid­ered before cut­off and is now in the Sen­ate Rules “X” file; but it could eas­i­ly be revived in 2024 and select­ed for floor action.
• SB 5486 / HB 1473: This is the tax on extreme wealth intro­duced by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive My-Linh Thai and Sen­a­tor Noel Frame, cham­pi­oned by EOI, NPI, the Wash­ing­ton Bud­get & Pol­i­cy Cen­ter, and a long list of pro­gres­sive orga­ni­za­tions that want to bal­ance our tax code. Though Eyman is now poor, he absolute­ly despis­es this bill, per­haps part­ly on behalf of the wealthy right wing folk that he wish­es would give him mon­ey but keep ignor­ing him.
• SB 5284: This is leg­is­la­tion NPI has tes­ti­fied for that would update sec­tions of Wash­ing­ton’s pub­lic dis­clo­sure laws, which are col­lec­tive­ly known as Chap­ter 42.17A RCW. Eyman knows all about this sec­tion of the Revised Code of Wash­ing­ton because he’s been con­vict­ed of seri­ous­ly vio­lat­ing it.
• HB 1589: This bill would reduce the North­west­’s depen­dence on petro­le­um gas, a dirty fos­sil fuel, by bar­ring large util­i­ties like Puget Sound Ener­gy from accept­ing new res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial gas hookups after June 30th of this year. To man­age the tran­si­tion away from gas for cook­ing and heat­ing, it spec­i­fies a process for merg­ing the rate bases sup­port­ing gas and elec­tric oper­a­tions of a com­bi­na­tion util­i­ty into a sin­gle rate base.
• HB 1389: This is a ten­ant pro­tec­tion bill that would restrict by how much land­lords can raise rents with­in a giv­en year. Specif­i­cal­ly, the bill pro­hibits, in most cas­es, “a land­lord from increas­ing the rent for a ten­an­cy sub­ject to the Res­i­den­tial Land­lord-Ten­ant Act or the Manufactured/Mobile Home Land­lord-Ten­ant Act dur­ing any 12-month peri­od in an amount greater than the rate of infla­tion as mea­sured by the Con­sumer Price Index or 3 per­cent, whichev­er is greater, up to a max­i­mum of 7 per­cent above the exist­ing rent.”
• HB 1333: This bill would have cre­at­ed a thir­teen-mem­ber com­mis­sion on in-coun­try vio­lence extrem­ism. The bill is no longer mov­ing this ses­sion, but right wing blogs and orga­ni­za­tions have been furi­ous­ly lob­by­ing against it for weeks, denounc­ing it in the most absurd and hyber­bol­ic terms, and com­plete­ly dis­tort­ing the scope and pro­vi­sions of the leg­is­la­tion. Eyman decid­ed to join the big pile-on with gusto.
• HB 1832: Estab­lish­es a vol­un­tary road usage charge (RUC) pro­gram that would become manda­to­ry in 2030. The goal is to replace declin­ing gas tax rev­enues as elec­tric cars replace those with inter­nal com­bus­tion engines and dri­ving decreas­es. Ore­gon has a road usage charge pilot pro­gram already with a few hun­dred active participants.
• SB 5618: Amends Eyman’s prop­er­ty tax restrict­ing Ini­tia­tive 747 (unwise­ly rein­stat­ed by the Leg­is­la­ture and Gov­er­nor Gre­goire in a one-day spe­cial ses­sion in 2007) to stop the mea­sure from slow­ly chok­ing local gov­ern­ments to death as it has been doing for two decades.
• HB 1628: This bill would mod­i­fy the real estate excise tax to raise more mon­ey for hous­ing. It advanced out of the Local Gov­ern­ment Com­mit­tee, but did­n’t get act­ed on in Finance. Spon­sored by Frank Chopp, it is sup­port­ed by the Asso­ci­a­tion of Wash­ing­ton Cities, Hous­ing Devel­op­ment Con­sor­tium, and Habi­tat for Humanity.

In years past, Eyman con­fined his tes­ti­fy­ing and lob­by­ing to bills con­cern­ing ini­tia­tives or which sought to raise rev­enue to fund Wash­ing­ton’s essen­tial pub­lic ser­vices. But as you can see from the list above, Eyman has become a sort of jack of all right wing caus­es lob­by­ist, weigh­ing in against rent con­trol, updates to pub­lic dis­clo­sure laws, and attempts to study and mon­i­tor mil­i­tant extremism.

This is like­ly to be his role in state pol­i­tics for what­ev­er is left of his career.

No wealthy per­son has any rea­son to trust Eyman with any sig­nif­i­cant amount of mon­ey and Eyman does­n’t have bud­dies he can fun­nel cash to for a sig­na­ture dri­ve. The Eyman ini­tia­tive error appears to be in the rearview mir­ror, hav­ing last­ed from 1998 until 2018, when Eyman raid­ed his retire­ment fund for one final sig­na­ture dri­ve that yield­ed anoth­er decep­tive ini­tia­tive, I‑976, men­tioned above.

I‑976, which our team was heav­i­ly involved in oppos­ing, was sup­posed to be a “Son of 695,” but it nev­er went into effect. After the Supreme Court struck it down, Democ­rats did not both­er try­ing to rein­state it, demon­strat­ing that at least one impor­tant les­son had been learned from the I‑695 disaster.