Turmoil inside the Let’s Go Washington paid signature drive: Brent Johnson pushed aside, while some petitioners have reportedly quit

An ambi­tious effort to qual­i­fy six right wing ini­tia­tives to the 2024 Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture is strug­gling to stay on track with less than three months to go until the sig­na­ture sub­mis­sion dead­line arrives, NPI has learned.

Sources inside the peti­tion­ing indus­try tell us that the paid sig­na­ture dri­ve for Let’s Go Wash­ing­ton is in tur­moil, with the oper­a­tive who was orig­i­nal­ly award­ed an exclu­sive con­tract to do pay-per-sig­na­ture peti­tion­ing hav­ing been pushed aside. Some work­ers have also report­ed­ly walked away from the drive.

Let’s Go Wash­ing­ton is the name of the polit­i­cal com­mit­tee formed by Repub­li­can megadonor Bri­an Hey­wood to qual­i­fy a slate of six ini­tia­tives spon­sored by new State Repub­li­can Par­ty Chair Jim Walsh. These ini­tia­tives seek to:

1. repeal the state’s new cap­i­tal gains tax on the wealthy
2. nix the Cli­mate Com­mit­ment Act
3. sab­o­tage the state’s long term care system
4. pro­hib­it the levy­ing of any income taxes
5. allow the police to resume dan­ger­ous high speed pursuits
6. and estab­lish a “parental noti­fi­ca­tion” sys­tem in pub­lic education

Last month, NPI broke the sto­ry that Hey­wood had paid Your Choice Peti­tions, LLC hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars to car­ry peti­tions for the six ini­tia­tives, and that Let’s Go Wash­ing­ton had report­ed an oblig­a­tion of $3.6 mil­lion for addi­tion­al paid sig­na­ture gath­er­ing. That sto­ry turned a lots of heads, and The Seat­tle Times’ Dan­ny West­neat cit­ed it in a col­umn he wrote about Hey­wood’s ambitions.

Your Choice Peti­tions, LLC is, as I men­tioned in that sto­ry, a peti­tion gath­er­ing enter­prise con­trolled by a con­vict­ed forg­er named Brent John­son who has in recent years been based out of Spokane. John­son has been part of the sig­na­ture gath­er­ing land­scape in Wash­ing­ton for sev­er­al years, work­ing on var­i­ous projects.

Notably, John­son was a sub­con­trac­tor for Cit­i­zen Solu­tions, which used to be the sig­na­ture gath­er­ing firm of Tim Eyman’s bud­dies Roy Ruffi­no and Eddie Agazarm, who for years were paid to qual­i­fy Eyman’s destruc­tive ini­tia­tives to the ballot.

(Thanks to inves­ti­ga­tions con­duct­ed by the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion and Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son’s office fol­low­ing com­plaints lodged by Sher­ry Bock­winkel and Wash­ing­tons For Eth­i­cal Gov­ern­ment, we know that Eyman was receiv­ing kick­backs under the table from the now-defunct Cit­i­zen Solu­tions.)

John­son was also entrust­ed with the sig­na­ture gath­er­ing in 2015 for Car­bon­WA’s I‑732, which vot­ers saw and resound­ing­ly reject­ed in 2016. (NPI took a posi­tion against I‑732 and urged a “no” vote.) I‑732 near­ly failed its ran­dom sam­ple check because there were a high per­cent­age of dupli­cate and invalid sig­na­tures dis­cov­ered on the sheets that John­son’s crews cir­cu­lat­ed. The Sec­re­tary of State com­ment­ed pub­licly that they’d not seen an inval­i­da­tion rate that bad in a long time.

PDC records show that two oth­er polit­i­cal com­mit­tees have also expend­ed mon­ey direct­ly to John­son’s Your Choice Peti­tions, LLC since its for­ma­tion: the One Lewis Coun­ty PAC, spon­sored by the Cen­tralia-Chehalis Cham­ber of Com­merce, which was the dri­ving force behind an effort to give vot­ers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to adopt a home rule char­ter for Lewis Coun­ty back in 2017 and 2018, and “Just Want Pri­va­cy,” a right wing group that in 2017 tried and failed to force a statewide vote on a scheme to take away the free­dom of trans­gen­der peo­ple to use restrooms and lock­er rooms des­ig­nat­ed for the use of the gen­der that they iden­ti­fy as.

Inter­est­ing­ly, a Dai­ly Chron­i­cle sto­ry from Feb­ru­ary 7th, 2018 report­ed that One Lewis Coun­ty PAC almost fell short of qual­i­fy­ing for the bal­lot, despite hav­ing paid at least $8,000 to John­son’s firm for sig­na­ture gath­er­ing services:

With 32 sig­na­tures to spare, One Lewis Coun­ty has met the thresh­old required to put the home rule char­ter and the elec­tion of free­hold­ers on the Novem­ber gen­er­al elec­tion bal­lot, the Lewis Coun­ty Auditor’s Office announced Wednesday.

Just before 5 p.m. Wednes­day, coun­ty elec­tions super­in­ten­dent Heather Boy­er sent out a press release con­firm­ing the total valid sig­na­ture count at 1,721.

Lewis Coun­ty vot­ers reject­ed One Lewis Coun­ty’s pro­pos­al to start the process of cre­at­ing a home rule char­ter in Novem­ber of 2018. 13,230 vot­ers (44.98%) were in favor and 16,180 vot­ers (55.02%) were opposed.

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic hit the sig­na­ture gath­er­ing indus­try hard. Some oper­a­tives exit­ed the busi­ness, while oth­ers idled their oper­a­tions and await­ed a change in their for­tunes. Busi­ness records filed with the state indi­cate that John­son was among those bid­ing his time. Your Choice Peti­tions LLC has a cur­rent busi­ness license and account with the Depart­ment of Labor & Indus­tries (L&I).

This past sum­mer, oppor­tu­ni­ty came knock­ing. Hav­ing appar­ent­ly decid­ed that try­ing to do paid sig­na­ture gath­er­ing in-house just was­n’t going to work, Bri­an Hey­wood and Let’s Go Wash­ing­ton hired John­son and Your Choice Peti­tions, LLC. John­son bragged on Face­book that he had an “exclu­sive” con­tract with Let’s Go Wash­ing­ton, as you can see from this screen­shot pro­vid­ed to NPI:

The NPI team has known for years about John­son’s forgery con­vic­tion — he was suc­cess­ful­ly pros­e­cut­ed in 2005 by then-Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney Norm Maleng, a Repub­li­can, for check fraud — but per­haps Hey­wood and his brain trust did­n’t know about that. If they did­n’t know, they have only them­selves to blame. A back­ground check would have told them that John­son was con­vict­ed forger.

Below, you can see the court records per­tain­ing to John­son’s con­vic­tion, in case you’re inter­est­ed in see­ing those details for your­self. While our team believes in reha­bil­i­ta­tion and sec­ond chances, putting a con­vict­ed forg­er in charge of a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar sig­na­ture dri­ve seems like a real­ly risky and unwise decision.

As of this week, though, John­son is report­ed­ly no longer in charge of the dri­ve, despite sup­pos­ed­ly hav­ing that “exclu­sive” con­tract. Accord­ing to a recent post in a pri­vate Face­book group where peti­tion­ers com­mu­ni­cate and swap info (named the Inter­na­tion­al League of Sig­na­ture Gath­er­ers), John­son is out… and Roy Ruffi­no — yes, that’s Tim Eyman’s long­time pal! — has tak­en his place.

“As you may have heard, Brent John­son was ‘removed’ from his posi­tion in Wash­ing­ton State and it affect­ed the flow of sig­na­tures col­lect­ed in that place,” wrote Aren­za Thig­pen Jr., who facil­i­tates the group and reg­u­lar­ly posts updates for peti­tion­ers to read. “There’s been some changes… and despite the down­fall, the turn-in times will most like­ly con­tin­ue in the same direction.”

“Brent was in Alas­ka on a fish­ing trip and when he returned, his world was ‘flipped upside down.’ A hand full [sic] of peti­tion­ers have left or are expect­ed to leave the state to fol­low his path, Thig­pen Jr. related.

“After the inter­nal bat­tle, Wash­ing­ton is pay­ing $10.50 still on 6 issues ($1.25 parental, $1.25 gas, & the rest at $2 per sig). Roy Ruffi­no is now ‘in charge.’ ”

“The only sol­id coor­di­na­tor we know in Wash­ing­ton State that stayed behind and is rep­utable to this project is Nao­mi Bras­field [num­ber redact­ed]. There may be oth­ers, but none have sur­faced. Although he was­n’t ‘on the call’ last night, Roy indi­cat­ed the changes of what 2 of the 6 peti­tions went through dur­ing the call.”

The last time that Roy Ruffi­no helmed a statewide sig­na­ture dri­ve, to our knowl­edge, was in the fall of 2018, when he and his crews col­lect­ed hun­dreds of thou­sands of sig­na­tures for Jesse Wineber­ry’s Ini­tia­tive 1000 — a mea­sure that sought to amend Tim Eyman and John Carl­son’s I‑200. I‑1000 qual­i­fied as an ini­tia­tive to the 2019 Leg­is­la­ture and was adopt­ed by the House and Sen­ate, only to be nar­row­ly over­turned via ref­er­en­dum about six months later.

For unknown rea­sons, Ruffi­no decid­ed to work for Wineber­ry on spec rather than get­ting cash upfront, as is the usu­al prac­tice. Ruffi­no appar­ent­ly ful­ly expect­ed to be paid by Wineber­ry after the dri­ve was over, but Wineber­ry’s com­mit­tee failed to hon­or its agree­ment with Ruffi­no. Ruffi­no’s key sub­con­trac­tor in that dri­ve was — yes, you guessed it! — the one and only Brent John­son. Via NPR:

The bulk of the I‑1000 campaign’s debt, more than $750,000, is owed to one sub-ven­dor, Brent John­son, who owns Your Choice Peti­tions in Spokane. […] “Every­thing that I’ve ever worked for since I start­ed this busi­ness, every dime they’ve tak­en from me by being lied to and deceived,” John­son said.

That’s quite the state­ment com­ing from a con­vict­ed forg­er who was caught and suc­cess­ful­ly pros­e­cut­ed for com­mit­ting check fraud and then spent years run­ning a busi­ness that was­n’t com­ply­ing with Wash­ing­ton State’s work­er pro­tec­tion laws. But these are the sorts of shenani­gans that go on in the murky world of paid sig­na­ture gath­er­ing, where cash is king and work­ers are often tak­en advan­tage of.

The final C4 report filed by Wineber­ry’s One Wash­ing­ton Equal­i­ty Cam­paign com­mit­tee in Jan­u­ary of 2020 shows out­stand­ing lia­bil­i­ties of $1,332,387.49, with the vast major­i­ty of that sum still owed to Cit­i­zen Solu­tions. The com­mit­tee only raised $481,546.40 dur­ing its exis­tence — nowhere close enough to pay for the sig­na­ture dri­ve it com­mis­sioned Ruffi­no, his crew chiefs, and their work­ers to do.

With the days get­ting short­er and the hol­i­days approach­ing, Let’s Go Wash­ing­ton’s win­dow for sig­na­ture gath­er­ing is dimin­ish­ing. Like the House Repub­li­can cau­cus, they are now grap­pling with inter­nal dys­func­tion at an inop­por­tune time. Can they mar­shal what resources and exper­tise they have and fig­ure out how solve their logis­ti­cal prob­lems before their sub­mis­sion dead­line? We’ll con­tin­ue to keep an eye on their oper­a­tions as the year winds down.