Memo to Washington State’s right wing: Harassment is not accountability

With Repub­li­can megadonor Bri­an Hey­wood open­ing his wal­let to fund a sig­na­ture dri­ve for six right wing ini­tia­tives to the 2024 Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture spon­sored by Jim Walsh, Ever­green State vot­ers are increas­ing­ly encoun­ter­ing peti­tion­ers out in pub­lic. They’re work­ing fer­ry lines, store entrances, and large events, hop­ing to score sig­na­tures for half a dozen schemes to defund Wash­ing­ton’s essen­tial pub­lic ser­vices and wreck government.

In Yaki­ma, the appear­ance of right wing peti­tion­ers at the Nob Hill Wal­mart prompt­ed a num­ber of peo­ple to lodge com­plaints, appar­ent­ly both with store man­age­ment as well as the author­i­ties. Among those who called 911 was the may­or of Yaki­ma, Jan­ice Dec­cio. The Yaki­ma Her­ald-Repub­lic report­ed that:

Dec­cio said she con­tact­ed police after hear­ing from con­stituents who were con­cerned the sig­na­ture gath­er­ers were harass­ing shop­pers and asked if any­thing could be done if the prop­er­ty own­er did­n’t want them there.

The police dis­patch­er who spoke with Dec­cio and the dispatcher’s super­vi­sor indi­cat­ed that the peti­tion­ers had a right to gath­er sig­na­tures at Wal­mart, and on pub­lic or pri­vate prop­er­ty under the First Amend­ment, accord­ing to a tran­script of the call. The busi­ness own­er would need a court order to have peti­tion­ers removed, police said.

Dec­cio’s 911 call was obtained through pub­lic records and has been cir­cu­lat­ing online, with Glen Mor­gan, Tim Eyman, and oth­er right wing oper­a­tives shar­ing Dec­cio’s mobile num­ber and urg­ing their fol­low­ers to send her angry messages.

Eyman appears in the Yaki­ma Her­ald-Repub­lic sto­ry as Dec­cio’s chief critic:

“Once a store opens itself to Girl Scout cook­ie sales, the Sal­va­tion Army or oth­er groups, they have to be open to every­one,” Eyman said. “(Peti­tion sig­na­ture gath­er­ing) is a First Amend­ment activ­i­ty – you can’t pick and choose.

“Thank­ful­ly the Yaki­ma police and coun­ty sher­iff under­stood that. The elect­ed may­or of Yaki­ma did not, and peo­ple are hold­ing her account­able,” he added.

The arti­cle lat­er relates Dec­cio’s per­spec­tive on the matter:

“Who the group was is not the issue here, as I don’t care, nor even know, what they were peti­tion­ing about, just that he told me they were harass­ing shop­pers and that the man­ag­er had called the police numer­ous times dur­ing the week after she had asked the peti­tion­ers to move from the entrance of the store.”

Dec­cio said since her Sept. 3 call, numer­ous “cred­i­ble, local peo­ple” had told her the petitioner’s behav­ior was aggres­sive and they felt harassed and threat­ened by them.

She said she called 911 because, on the Sun­day of Labor Day week­end, she could not reach YPD Chief Matt Mur­ray by email and no one answered the department’s non-emer­gency number.

“I called 911, iden­ti­fied myself (as may­or) and told them it was not an emer­gency and I need­ed to talk to some­one who may know what was going on,” Dec­cio wrote in her state­ment. “I admit I was unaware of all the nuances of the law at that time… and in hind­sight, I could have wait­ed to hear from the chief.

“But I did know that if peti­tion­ers were harass­ing or inter­fer­ing with shop­pers, the busi­ness could ask them to move. I just wasn’t aware that it took a court order,” she added. “I nev­er asked the police to go out to Wal­mart or demand­ed that any­thing be done.”

In her state­ment, Dec­cio said the harass­ing phone calls, texts and voice­mails in reply to the 911 call have also been direct­ed at her hus­band, a dis­abled vet­er­an with PTSD, as well as her fel­low City Coun­cil members.

“Near­ly all of the emails are from peo­ple from out­side of Yaki­ma,” she added.

Empha­sis is mine.

Tim Eyman and his fol­low­ers have made it clear that they don’t like what the may­or did. And they cer­tain­ly have every right to dis­agree with May­or Deccio.

But harass­ment is not a form of accountability.

Here’s the truth: In orches­trat­ing this bom­bard­ment of an elect­ed offi­cial’s per­son­al mobile num­ber with angri­ly-word­ed text mes­sages, Eyman and oth­ers are seek­ing to intim­i­date an elect­ed offi­cial so she does­n’t cross them in the future. The goal is not to respect­ful­ly dis­agree (which can be done through offi­cial chan­nels), it’s to make Dec­cio feel bad… to inflict dis­tress and emo­tion­al suffering.

Hence the nasty­grams Dec­cio describes above, which her hus­band is also getting.

I myself have been on the receiv­ing end of one of Tim Eyman’s attempt­ed cam­paigns of harass­ment in years past, so I have per­son­al­ly observed how his fol­low­ers car­ry out his direc­tives. The con­tent of a large per­cent­age of the mes­sages could be described as pro­fane, abu­sive, and threatening.

That is just how Eyman likes it. He knows exact­ly how his fol­low­ers are word­ing their mes­sages to his tar­gets because he instructs them to copy him. He likes to be able to rev­el in all of the nasty­grams that are being sent. (It seems not to both­er him that his own troops mis­spell his last name in a zil­lion dif­fer­ent ways.)

Eyman’s attempt to intim­i­date me was an utter fail­ure, and I hope his effort to May­or Dec­cio fails sim­i­lar­ly. But no activist or elect­ed offi­cial should have to be on the receiv­ing end of vicious attacks from peo­ple who have been incit­ed to anger.

All of us have rights under the First Amend­ment to speak our minds, pub­lish our thoughts on the issues of the day, prac­tice what­ev­er reli­gion we’d like, freely assem­ble, and peti­tion the gov­ern­ment for a redress of grievances.

Those rights deserve to be respect­ed and protected.

But respect is a two-way street. The First Amend­ment isn’t just for Republicans.

Vot­ers have the right not to sign a peti­tion if they do not want to and they should­n’t have to put up with aggres­sive behav­ior from peti­tion­ers if they do not wish to par­tic­i­pate in a sig­na­ture dri­ve. Coer­cive tac­tics are unacceptable.

Prop­er­ty own­ers like­wise have rights. A per­son exer­cis­ing their First Amend­ment right to peti­tion is oblig­at­ed to respect oth­ers’ prop­er­ty rights. There have been many dis­putes over the years con­cern­ing whether a prop­er­ty own­er can tres­pass a peti­tion­er oper­at­ing on their prop­er­ty if their prop­er­ty is open to the public.

The courts have devel­oped case law on the mat­ter and any­one want­i­ng to under­stand that case law would be well served to car­ry out their own legal research, because Tim Eyman is not be trust­ed. He lies and dis­torts at every turn.

Eleven years ago, Eyman took mon­ey from one of his anti-tax ini­tia­tives and used it to fund a sig­na­ture dri­ve for a dif­fer­ent, unre­lat­ed ini­tia­tive that end­ed up appear­ing on the bal­lot ten years ago: I‑517. The goal of Ini­tia­tive 517 was to make it eas­i­er and cheap­er for Eyman to qual­i­fy ini­tia­tives to the bal­lot in the future. I‑517 sought to give peti­tion­ers spe­cial priv­i­leges under the law that no one else want­i­ng to exer­cise their First Amend­ment rights would have had.

NPI, the Wash­ing­ton Food Indus­try Asso­ci­a­tion, the Wash­ing­ton Retail Asso­ci­a­tion, the North­west Gro­cery Asso­ci­a­tion, and oth­er part­ners worked togeth­er to secure the defeat of I‑517 in 2013. Our team at NPI devel­oped the argu­ments that the cam­paign pre­sent­ed to vot­ers in oppo­si­tion to I‑517.

Those argu­ments end­ed up being extreme­ly com­pelling and the ini­tia­tive failed over­whelm­ing­ly, with more than 61% of vot­ers vot­ing no on I‑517. It remains, to this day, the biggest mar­gin of defeat of any Tim Eyman ini­tia­tive ever.

Here’s our voter’s pam­phlet state­ment in oppo­si­tion to I‑517.

Fun fact: I am the pri­ma­ry author, Rob McKen­na helped edit it, and both of us signed it. It was a great moment in bipar­ti­san­ship in Wash­ing­ton State!

I‑517 vio­lates Wash­ing­to­ni­ans’ prop­er­ty rights
Courts have ruled that peti­tion­ers must respect pri­vate prop­er­ty rights when col­lect­ing sig­na­tures, but I‑517 pre­vents prop­er­ty own­ers from hav­ing con­trol over sig­na­ture gath­er­ing on their prop­er­ty, infring­ing upon their con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly-guar­an­teed prop­er­ty rights. Under I‑517, law enforce­ment would be direct­ed to vig­or­ous­ly pro­tect peti­tion­ers col­lect­ing with­in a twen­ty-five foot zone. Busi­ness own­ers would not be able to stop aggres­sive peti­tion­ers from block­ing and harass­ing cus­tomers who are try­ing to enter or exit a store. Instead, their prop­er­ty rights would be disregarded.

I‑517 ben­e­fits Tim Eyman
Spon­sor Tim Eyman is a full-time ini­tia­tive pro­po­nent who makes mon­ey off the mea­sures he pro­motes. Under I‑517, it would be eas­i­er and cheap­er for Eyman to qual­i­fy future ini­tia­tives to the bal­lot, mean­ing he could dou­ble his out­put and increase his profits.

I‑517 would make peti­tion­ing more intrusive
I‑517 allows out of state peti­tion­ers to be active in Wash­ing­ton year-round – both inside and out­side pub­lic build­ings. Peti­tion­ers could go inside sports sta­di­ums like Safe­co Field or Com­cast Are­na, pub­lic libraries, and even pub­lic school events like high school foot­ball games to ask Wash­ing­to­ni­ans to sign stacks of petitions.

I‑517 would increase elec­tions costs
A pro­vi­sion tucked away in I‑517 forces cities and coun­ties to put local ini­tia­tives on the bal­lot even if they’re ille­gal or invalid, wast­ing tax­pay­er dol­lars on unnec­es­sary elections.

Join for­mer Sec­re­taries of State Ralph Munro and Sam Reed in vot­ing no on I‑517.

Again, these argu­ments res­onat­ed with Wash­ing­to­ni­ans: More than three in five vot­ers reject­ed I‑517 in the Novem­ber 2013 elec­tion. Vot­ers made it very clear that they’re against intru­sive peti­tion­ing and abuse of the ini­tia­tive process.

Wash­ing­ton’s right wing would do well to remem­ber that.