Republican megadonor Brian Heywood opens his wallet to fund six-initiative signature drive

A wealthy donor to the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty has begun fun­nel­ing seri­ous mon­ey into a sig­na­ture dri­ve that aims to qual­i­fy a slew of six right wing ini­tia­tives to the 2024 Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture, reports filed this week with the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion by his polit­i­cal com­mit­tee show.

Bri­an Hey­wood, who lives just out­side of NPI’s home­town of Red­mond on a prop­er­ty known as Wil­low­crest Sta­bles, is one of the rich­er men in Wash­ing­ton, and by his own admis­sion, he real­ly, real­ly does­n’t like pay­ing taxes.

His net worth is esti­mat­ed to be between $10 and $25 mil­lion, so he’s not a bil­lion­aire by any stretch, but he’s cer­tain­ly rich enough to be among those who has to pay Wash­ing­ton State’s new cap­i­tal gains tax on the wealthy.

Hey­wood is the co-chief exec­u­tive of Taiyo Pacif­ic Part­ners and has exten­sive expe­ri­ence work­ing abroad in Asia, includ­ing for com­pa­nies such as JD Pow­er and Citibank. His cor­po­rate biog­ra­phy notes that he is flu­ent in Japan­ese and has a deep under­stand­ing of Japan­ese cor­po­rate procedures.

In the last few years, Hey­wood’s inter­est in right wing pol­i­tics has deep­ened con­sid­er­ably. An advanced search of the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion’s data­base indi­cates that Hey­wood has giv­en a total of $2,438,266.35 ($2.4 mil­lion!) to right wing can­di­dates and caus­es since 2010, with over 95% of the con­tri­bu­tions hav­ing been received between 2019 and the present.

About half of that sum — $1,228,626.21 — has gone to a polit­i­cal com­mit­tee Hey­wood con­trols that is focused on get­ting the right wing back in the ini­tia­tives busi­ness. Hey­wood calls his com­mit­tee Let’s Go Wash­ing­ton, but a more accu­rate name would be Let’s Regress, Wash­ing­ton! since its pri­ma­ry goal is to weak­en Wash­ing­ton’s com­mon wealth by giv­ing the rich and oil com­pa­nies big tax breaks.

Let’s Go Wash­ing­ton tried to qual­i­fy a grand total of eleven ini­tia­tives (yes, eleven!) to the 2023 Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture last year, but they all flopped. Hey­wood and his asso­ciates were unable to col­lect enough sig­na­tures to even attempt a turn-in for one of the eleven mea­sures.

But they’re still very much enam­ored with the fan­ta­sy of qual­i­fy­ing a whole slew of bad right wing ideas to either the Leg­is­la­ture or the bal­lot at the same time.

So, they’re try­ing again. And this time, instead of attempt­ing to rely pri­mar­i­ly on vol­un­teers (which any­one with deep exper­tise work­ing on bal­lot mea­sures could have told them was­n’t going to work), they’re run­ning a paid sig­na­ture dri­ve. Hey­wood and fel­low Repub­li­can Sharon Hanek even formed their own com­pa­ny to employ sig­na­ture gath­er­ers ear­li­er this year — TDM Strate­gies.

The plan, judg­ing by the job post­ing for peti­tion­ers pub­lished by TDM Strate­gies, was to pay crews of sig­na­ture gath­er­ers by the hour rather than by the sig­na­ture, as is the typ­i­cal indus­try prac­tice. Evi­dent­ly, Hey­wood and his oper­a­tives were hop­ing to con­trol costs and run a more effi­cient sig­na­ture dri­ve by employ­ing peti­tion­ers in house and offer­ing ben­e­fits along with hourly wages.

But they seem to have con­clud­ed this approach is just not going to get them there, judg­ing by the con­tents of their August C4 report.

(The C4 is the form where com­mit­tees’ finances are sum­ma­rized, includ­ing con­tri­bu­tions received, expen­di­tures made, and oblig­a­tions incurred.)

That report shows on August 29th, Hey­wood gave $400,000 to a long­time shady play­er in Wash­ing­ton’s sig­na­ture gath­er­ing indus­try: Brent John­son, a con­vict­ed forg­er. John­son runs Your Choice Peti­tions, LLC out of Spokane, and has worked for Roy Ruffi­no and Eddie Agazarm’s “Cit­i­zen Solu­tions” in the past.

The report also shows that in addi­tion to Hey­wood’s in-kind dona­tion, the com­mit­tee has incurred an oblig­a­tion of $3.6 mil­lion to Your Choice Peti­tions for sig­na­ture gath­er­ing ser­vices. That’s a total of four mil­lion dol­lars. We haven’t seen an out­lay for peti­tion­ing that large in Wash­ing­ton for many, many years.

As of the end of August, the com­mit­tee’s receipts for 2023 now total $1,281,986.71, with expen­di­tures adding up to $5,010,327.52.

Here’s a table show­ing all of Hey­wood’s recent in-kind contributions:

The last time any right wing ini­tia­tives were on the bal­lot was four years ago, when Tim Eyman alleged­ly drained much of his retire­ment account to get I‑976 on the bal­lot. I‑976 sur­vived a well-fund­ed oppo­si­tion cam­paign but nev­er went into effect due to being struck down as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in its entirety.

Eyman’s ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry is defunct, but he’s hap­pi­ly set­tled into a new role as a pitch­man and peti­tion­er for the Let’s Regress, Wash­ing­ton! effort. (Eyman must always have some­thing to sell, and if he can’t sell his own mea­sures, he’ll sell some­body else’s.) Each of the ini­tia­tives that Let’s Regress, Wash­ing­ton! hopes to qual­i­fy to the 2024 Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture is spon­sored by State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive and new­ly elect­ed State Repub­li­can Par­ty Chair Jim Walsh.

These six mea­sures and the aims of each are as follows:

• I‑2109: Repeal the cap­i­tal gains tax on the wealthy
• I‑2117: Repeal the state’s cap and invest system
• I‑2111: Pro­hib­it the levy­ing of any income taxes
• I‑2124: Sab­o­tage the state’s new long term care system
• I‑2113: Allow dan­ger­ous police pur­suits to resume
• I‑2081: Imple­ment a “parental noti­fi­ca­tion” scheme for school curricula

The ini­tia­tives also have the sup­port of Dann Mead Smith’s Project 42 network.

(At a media event Project 42 and the nation­al right wing group Amer­i­cans For Pros­per­i­ty orga­nized this week in Kent to bash the Cli­mate Com­mit­ment Act, peo­ple were being giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to sign peti­tions for I‑2117.)

Right wing oper­a­tive Glen Mor­gan, who has spent years try­ing to weaponize Wash­ing­ton’s pub­lic dis­clo­sure laws against Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates and orga­ni­za­tions, is also a cog in Hey­wood’s grow­ing polit­i­cal machine. On YouTube, you can find a series of videos where Mor­gan inter­views Hey­wood about the ini­tia­tives he’s hop­ing to get qual­i­fied and his polit­i­cal aspirations.

To get all six mea­sures qual­i­fied, Hey­wood’s com­mit­tee will need to gath­er around 2.4 mil­lion sig­na­tures by the end of the year — around 400,000 for each measure.

If they’re suc­cess­ful, all six ini­tia­tives would be placed before the Demo­c­ra­t­ic-con­trolled Wash­ing­ton State House and Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate in January.

The Leg­is­la­ture would have three options as to what to do with each measure:

1. Pass into law (but the chances of that hap­pen­ing are basi­cal­ly nil)
2. For­ward to the vot­ers in Novem­ber by tak­ing no action
3. For­ward to vot­ers along with an alter­na­tive — a com­pet­ing proposal

By open­ing his wal­let to ramp up the sig­na­ture dri­ve for this ini­tia­tive slate, Hey­wood is demon­strat­ing he’s seri­ous about qual­i­fy­ing these six initiatives.

He has stat­ed to sup­port­ers that he con­sid­ers last year’s effort to have been a test run. This year’s do-over is meant to be the real thing.

It’s prob­a­bly going to take more than $4 mil­lion to reel in the 2.4 mil­lion sig­na­tures the six ini­tia­tives col­lec­tive­ly need. But hav­ing com­mit­ted a sig­nif­i­cant sum thus far already, we imag­ine Hey­wood will be writ­ing more checks in the weeks ahead. And per­haps he’ll recruit oth­er wealthy Repub­li­cans to do likewise.

Hey­wood has semi-pub­licly bragged that he has com­mis­sioned polling for the six ini­tia­tives in King, Pierce, Sno­homish, and Spokane coun­ties (the four largest in Wash­ing­ton) that found sup­port for each ini­tia­tive between six­ty and nine­ty per­cent. More inter­est­ing­ly, he has claimed that his poll sam­ples did not skew Repub­li­can (as many sur­veys released pub­licly by right wing poll­sters do), but instead prop­er­ly rep­re­sent the num­ber of Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers in the electorate.

In polling, how­ev­er, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple isn’t enough to yield sound, cred­i­ble data. The ques­tions must also be neu­tral­ly word­ed — it isn’t pos­si­ble to find out what peo­ple real­ly think if they are told what to think first. We know from our own research that our argu­ments in sup­port of the poli­cies Hey­wood wants to repeal res­onate con­sis­tent­ly with majori­ties of like­ly vot­ers in Washington.

It would be inter­est­ing to see what ques­tions Hey­wood’s group asked, and how or even whether they effec­tive­ly pre­sent­ed pro­gres­sive argu­ments to respon­dents of their sur­vey, but the like­li­hood of them show­ing us their work seems very low.

To vet­er­ans of past bal­lot mea­sure cam­paigns who know what it takes to qual­i­fy an ini­tia­tive, Hey­wood’s gam­bit might come across as absurd. Run­ning just one ini­tia­tive, par­tic­u­lar­ly in a pres­i­den­tial cycle like 2024, is a tough and com­plex endeav­or; try­ing to do that six times over is beyond next lev­el dif­fi­cult. This is an unprece­dent­ed effort, cer­tain­ly at least in mod­ern polit­i­cal times.

But Hey­wood has this going for him: Repub­li­can precinct com­mit­tee offi­cers and right wing vot­ers need an out­let… some­thing to devote their ener­gy to that they can believe in. The par­ty is on the outs in so many ways: it has­n’t won a guber­na­to­r­i­al con­test since 1980, a pres­i­den­tial vote since 1984, or a U.S. Sen­ate elec­tion since 1994. Democ­rats con­trol every statewide exec­u­tive office and have firm majori­ties in both cham­bers of the Leg­is­la­ture. Last year’s sup­posed red wave was a total bust and turned out to be anoth­er blue wave instead.

With the Repub­li­can brand in Wash­ing­ton in awful shape, there’s no prospect of elect­ing a Repub­li­can gov­er­nor or leg­is­la­ture in 2024, 2026, 2028, or any cycle over the hori­zon. And recent right wing legal chal­lenges have been unsuc­cess­ful in gut­ting the big pro­gres­sive accom­plish­ments that Repub­li­cans intense­ly dislike.

That leaves the ini­tia­tive process.

Tim Eyman demon­strat­ed for more than a decade how the peo­ple’s ini­tia­tive pow­er could be abused and manip­u­lat­ed to force votes on bad ideas intend­ed to destroy the state’s essen­tial pub­lic ser­vices and wreck government.

Thank­ful­ly, after many years of inac­tion, the Leg­is­la­ture has begun to imple­ment safe­guards to pre­vent future ini­tia­tive spon­sors from decep­tive­ly con­ceal­ing the con­se­quences of their mea­sures. Sev­er­al of Hey­wood and Wal­sh’s ini­tia­tives seek to par­tial­ly defund Wash­ing­ton’s trea­sury, and if they qual­i­fy for the bal­lot, their bal­lot titles will be extend­ed to include a fis­cal impact dis­clo­sure required by a law that NPI cham­pi­oned. That means vot­ers will be informed, before they fill in an oval, of the loss of rev­enue that a Yes vote would entail.

Walsh is well aware of this fis­cal impact dis­clo­sure require­ment, which our research showed is wild­ly pop­u­lar with Wash­ing­ton vot­ers. Amus­ing­ly, Walsh tried to amend our bill repeal­ing Tim Eyman’s push polls to get rid of the require­ment back in April. The House nixed his amend­ment. The dis­clo­sure require­ment stayed, while Eyman’s push polls went away for good, in anoth­er win for voters.

Our team believes that even if Hey­wood gets all six of his mea­sures qual­i­fied, they can be defeat­ed… yes, each and every one of them.

We are con­fi­dent it can be done because it has been done, right here in the PNW.

NPI, which has a region­al focus rather than a sin­gle-state one, has seen a threat like this before… down in Ore­gon. The year was 2008, and Bill Size­more — Tim Eyman’s Ore­gon equiv­a­lent — was able to qual­i­fy five right wing ini­tia­tives to the statewide bal­lot then with the help of wealthy bene­fac­tor Loren Parks.

Despite fac­ing a gaunt­let of bad bal­lot mea­sures, we in the pro­gres­sive move­ment were able to rise to the occa­sion that year in Ore­gon. We built strong no cam­paigns and invest­ed in GOTV and vot­er edu­ca­tion. We knew pro­gres­sive turnout would be strong in the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and were prepared.

We took full advan­tage of the more favor­able elec­toral envi­ron­ment, and dis­patched Size­more, defeat­ing all five of his mea­sures. Yes — all five!

It was a great moment in Ore­gon polit­i­cal history.

Should Hey­wood qual­i­fy his slew of schemes, pro­gres­sives in Wash­ing­ton can and must strive for the same out­come: the defeat of the whole bad batch. Wash­ing­ton has made a lot of progress these past few years and we sim­ply can’t afford to go back­wards. By build­ing an effec­tive oppo­si­tion cam­paign, we can max­i­mize our chances of pro­tect­ing Wash­ing­ton from the forces of greed.

We main­tain a project devot­ed to the task of deal­ing with these kinds of threats when­ev­er they emerge: Per­ma­nent Defense. It is so named because eter­nal vig­i­lance is the price of lib­er­ty, as Wen­dell Phillips once said.

There will always be threats to our Con­sti­tu­tion, our com­mon wealth, and our future. It’s imper­a­tive that pro­gres­sives be able to respond to them quick­ly, ener­get­i­cal­ly, and capa­bly. We have over two decades of expe­ri­ence com­bat­ing right wing ini­tia­tives, and we’ll put it all to work to ensure that Bri­an Hey­wood and Let’s Regress, Wash­ing­ton! are unsuc­cess­ful in their endeavors.