In November of 2017, voters in Washington’s 45th Legislative District were tasked with the responsibility of not only selecting a new state senator to complete the term of the late Republican Andy Hill, who had tragically lost a battle with cancer the year before, but also deciding whether a half-decade long era of divided government in the statehouse should continue or be brought to a swift end.
By a decisive margin, they opted to dismantle the Washington State Senate’s Republican majority and put Democrats in charge, embracing Democratic candidate Manka Dhingra’s platform of strengthening communities. (Dhingra has since been reelected twice and is currently running for Attorney General; she also serves on the board of the Northwest Progressive Foundation.)
Thus began a period of Democratic dominance in the Legislature that has continued to the present day. Washington’s Democratic trifecta has now been governing for longer than the chaotic State Senate Republican majority that preceded it — a majority created by Rodney Tom and Tim Sheldon’s defections just prior to Governor Jay Inslee’s first inauguration in early 2013.
Republicans have had three chances to try to reclaim legislative majorities since that consequential 2017 special election, but each time, they have either lost ground or failed to make up lost ground. Democrats today have a twenty-nine member Senate majority and a fifty-eight member House majority (twenty-five seats are needed for Senate control and fifty seats for House control).
Democrats have used their majorities to pass a groundbreaking climate action and investment law (the Climate Commitment Act), levy a capital gains tax on the wealthy to help the state meet its paramount duty to amply provide for the education of Washington’s youth, create the Washington Cares (WA Cares) Fund to improve access to long-term care, improve K‑12 school curriculum by requiring age-appropriate comprehensive sexual health and consent education, and bolster public safety by adopting new safeguards against police misconduct.
Republicans contend these policies are unpopular and hurting Washingtonians, even though credible public opinion research shows voters like them.
Convinced that Democrats have overreached, Republicans have decided to make a big bet on putting a slate of initiatives before the 2024 Washington State Legislature — all of which they expect to be forwarded to voters — that would repeal, roll back, or sabotage the policies listed above. Their initiative gambit is almost exclusively funded by a single individual — right wing millionaire Brian Heywood, who has become a key player in local Republican politics.
Heywood and State Republican Party Chair Jim Walsh — the sponsor of each of the slate of six initiatives — call their effort “Let’s Go Washington.”
Of the $6,698,006.98 Let’s Go Washington has raised this year, $1,737,412.21 of the cash has come from Heywood, and he has also loaned the committee $4,150,000. He is the source of nearly ninety cents out of every dollar the committee has taken in, and consequently, his name is required by state law to be listed as part of Let’s Go Washington’s full legal name. You can see this by opening the C1-PC. It reads: Let’s Go Washington (Sponsored by Brian Heywood).
While many wealthy donors are content to let other people speak for them, Heywood has embraced the limelight and welcomed the opportunity to be a pitchman. On each of the days that his crew of operatives has shown up in Tumwater to turn in signatures, Heywood has been there with them, brandishing the mic and taking a victory lap alongside WSRP Chairman Jim Walsh.
Having invested so much money into this initiative gambit, Heywood has become extremely interested in anything and everything that is written or said about it, including our reporting and analysis here on The Cascadia Advocate.
On Thursday, following his remarks in favor of Initiative 2124 — that’s the measure that would sabotage the WA Cares Fund — Heywood walked over to meet me, shake my hand, and chat about his motivations for funding these initiatives. He insists that he’s not doing this out of self-interest.
“I’m not doing this for me. I’m doing this because it hurts — and all of these other taxes — hurt people,” he commented on Thursday in front of his crew.
In truth, taxes help people.
The right wing view of taxes is that they are punitive — a bad thing to be dismantled. In reality, taxes are a form of investment, by the people and for the people. When we pay taxes, we’re pooling our resources to take care of each other, funding services we otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford — like libraries, parks, pools, schools, roads, ferries, transit, police and fire protection, or healthcare.
Heywood has made a lot of money in the business world, so he understands what can be accomplished through smart and wise investing. But he doesn’t see the Climate Commitment Act, or the WA Cares Fund, or our capital gains tax on the wealthy as tools for investing in a better Washington. Nor is he a fan of the work the Legislature has done to rein in police misconduct and empower youth.
While Heywood can come across as brash and arrogant, he is aware that he and Walsh are taking a risk by forcing statewide votes on all of the aforementioned policies that they don’t like. He’s spent a lot of money to give voters the chance to approve or reject the Democratic-run Legislature’s work.
But what happens if voters don’t vote the way he and Walsh want?
Interestingly, Heywood has publicly acknowledged that defeat is a possibility.
“I’m putting this out there for a vote,” he said in comments noticed by The Seattle Times. “Let’s give everybody a vote on these, and if they don’t pass, if I’m wrong and people don’t support these ideas, then the people have spoken.”
Haven’t the people already spoken by repeatedly electing Democrats to govern Washington, including in last year’s midterms, which were supposed to be a red wave that turned into another blue wave instead? It’s worth remembering the laws Heywood is targeting for repeal were mostly passed in 2021 and that Republicans had decried those laws throughout 2022. Democrats nevertheless emerged from the midterms with even bigger majorities than they had before.
Walsh and Heywood might retort that people voted for Democrats in spite of their policies, and now they’re getting the opportunity to vote directly on those policies.
But the old adage be careful what you wish for is applicable here.
Heywood has already spent a fortune to set up a high stakes battle over key aspects of Governor Jay Inslee’s legacy, and he will probably spend even more to pitch the measures in 2024, but voters are under no obligation to approve his and Walsh’s slate of initiatives. They can say no. And if they do, Washington State Republicans will have ended up devoting a huge amount of money and resources to proving that progressive ideas are in fact popular with Washingtonians.
There have been many times in the past when right wing groups have forced statewide votes on measures to repeal laws passed by Democratic majorities and discovered, to their dismay, that they’d badly misread public opinion.
Several examples come to mind.
On the fiscal front, in the mid-2000s (which were NPI’s early years), several attempts were made by right wing activists and funders, working independently from Tim Eyman, to roll back tax measures passed by the Legislature.
One of those was in 2005, when right wing talk show hosts John Carlson and Kirby Wilbur spearheaded an effort to roll back a major transportation package enacted by the Legislature. No New Gas Tax was their campaign mantra.
Opponents, including the Northwest Progressive Institute, formed a broad and diverse coalition called Keep Washington Rolling to defend the package.
To the astonishment of Carlson and Wilbur, voters sided with the coalition and rejected Initiative 912, thus keeping the gas tax increases in place.
The following year, the right wing tried again to repeal another revenue source, this time targeting the estate tax, which the Legislature and Governor Chris Gregoire had resurrected after a court ruling that went against the state.
Once again, a strong and effective opposition campaign was developed, and the voters had their say. Initiative 920 went down to defeat and the estate tax, a rare tax on wealth in Washington State, remained in place and on the books.
Similar fates have befallen right wing referenda on social issues.
For example, in 2009, the right wing tried to overturn Washington’s civil unions law. Voters sided with the Legislature and upheld it.
Then, in 2012, the right wing tried to overturn the state’s marriage equality law. But, as before, voters sided with the Legislature and upheld it.
In 2020, the right wing mounted a referendum to overturn the state’s comprehensive sexual health education law. NPI’s polling repeatedly found that the law was popular — I wrote several posts here on The Cascadia Advocate presenting our research — yet right wing figures were utterly convinced of a victory.
When their referendum completely flopped and voters again decisively sided with the Legislature, many were in disbelief, with some activists screaming that voter fraud must have taken place. (For the record, there was no fraud.)
Heywood was a resident of California during many of the ballot measure fights I just mentioned, so he may not be aware of, or appreciate, this electoral history.
Or perhaps he is aware of it and simply thinks that 2024 will be different.
I asked Heywood on Thursday if he’d be willing to publicly share the research that he commissioned in support of his slate of initiatives, which he has referenced at several junctures throughout the year in an effort to persuade people to get on board and collect signatures. However, as I expected, he declined.
It’s his research that he paid for, so he’s not obliged to publish it, but if he keeps talking about it without sharing it, he can expect skeptical reactions. If he changes his mind down the road, our team will be happy to look at his data.
Our side has been examining how voters perceive Heywood and Walsh’s initiatives, and as The Washington State Standard’s Jerry Cornfield reported a few weeks ago, our early public opinion research has found a number of them underwater to start out with, which is definitely not where you want to be when you’re an initiative proponent. Heywood’s on-the-record response was totally dismissive. He told Cornfield: “I hope they believe their polls with their entire souls.”
That’s a curious thing to say, especially in the wake of last year’s midterms, when non-aligned and Democratic-aligned pollsters’ work was shown to be accurate and credible, while many Republican pollsters’ work was shown to be garbage. (I will never forget Moore Information’s last-minute poll claiming that Tiffany Smiley was up by a fraction of a point over Senator Patty Murray. That was really something.)
At NPI, we believe that good ballot outcomes aren’t accidental. They are secured through hard work and effective, thoughtful campaigning.
The progressive movement in Washington cannot afford to be complacent about Heywood and Walsh’s initiatives. Their passage would be very destructive and threaten Washington’s future. It’s really important that we unite Washingtonians in defense of the good laws that our Legislature has passed so we can keep moving forwards instead of taking a massive step back. Heywood and Walsh are giving us an opportunity in 2024 to transform a big right wing initiative gambit into a show of support for the work of our elected representatives. Let’s take it.
