Contrary to the customary exuberance expressed in his emails, Tim Eyman isn’t having a very good month.<\/p>\n
Washington’s pioneering initiative barker — whose financing creativity is a subject of an ongoing state probe – failed July 5 to turn in signatures needed to get a far-reaching, constitution-bending, tax hike-erasing measure in front of voters this year.<\/p>\n
Two days later, the indomitable Eyman was on the hunt again for signers of petitions to put essentially the same term limits on tax initiative on the ballot in 2020.<\/p>\n
He had momentum and didn’t want to lose it.<\/p>\n
But in those 48 hours he did lose a chunk of it. Leaders of a new affiliation of conservative-minded folks which energized signature-gathering for the failed measure told Eyman they weren’t mobilizing for Round 2.<\/p>\n
Cary Condotta, of Wenatchee who served 16 years in the state House, and Mike McKee, owner of a meat market in Quincy, made clear they didn’t think the new venture, Initiative 1082, had any better chance to pass constitutional muster than the original, Initiative 1648.<\/p>\n
They asked him to pause for a few weeks to draft something different, something more likely to survive a legal challenge, and they’d be on board. They said they were pursuing what they believed to be such an alternative and needed time to parse it out.<\/p>\n
“He said ‘No’. I said, ‘Tim, I guess you’re on your own,’” Condotta recounted. “We didn’t believe in 1082. Tim will be Tim. We’ll see how it goes.”<\/p>\n
Condotta and McKee are guides for the group, Restore Washington whose motto is “Legislation By The People, For The People.”<\/p>\n
It’s an outgrowth from an Eastern Washington-spawned movement to split off a chunk of Washington into a 51st state known as Liberty State. McKee embraces that vision but said Restore Washington is a separate vehicle to deal with the here-and-now of what emerges from the Legislature and governor’s office.<\/p>\n
“The mission is to create a large organized network of folks to keep Olympia in check through the initiative and referendum process,” according to the group’s Facebook page which claimed 10,876 followers as of Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Eyman was one but isn’t now. He got kicked off and blocked from commenting, McKee said, because he wouldn’t stop trying to use it as a platform for raising money for the new initiative and legal defense.<\/p>\n
No surprise there as Andrew Villeneuve, founder of the Northwest Progressive Institute, adeptly noted online this week.<\/p>\n
“Because initiatives are Eyman’s business, he must always have a scheme to sell… it keeps the hustle going,” he wrote Monday.<\/p>\n
So it looks like one can now add Condotta and McKee to a crowd of recognizable conservatives in the state who upon experiencing Eyman up close wish it came with a surgeon general’s warning of its potential impact on their health, well-being and wallet.<\/p>\n
Eyman seems to realize his base of support is shrinking. This week he used email and Facebook to respond, arguing that he’s got a record with initiatives and the newbies — whom he artfully wishes well — don’t.<\/p>\n
“We face a threat: disunity,” he emailed and posted on Facebook Monday. “Here’s what’s happening: there is a competition to earn your support. I welcome it. I take tremendous pride in what we’ve accomplished and are accomplishing. This new group is indicating they want to do it too. I welcome them.”<\/p>\n
Eyman said the “heroic foot soldiers” in his camp “dislike disunity and chafe at infighting. They shake their heads at the idiocy of a circular firing squad. None of them believe that the best way to gain support is to try to drain support from others.”<\/p>\n
“I have faith. I have hope. How ‘bout you,” he concluded with far less than his usual exuberance.<\/p>\n
It’s been a tough month.<\/p>\n
Jerry Cornfield: 360-352-8623; jcornfield@herald net.com. Twitter: @dospueblos<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After getting signatures for a measure that didn’t qualify, Restore Washington wants to do its own. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":41481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-41480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41480"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41480"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=41480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}