WA-Gov: Tim Eyman, a conservative gadfly who makes his living by profiting off his efforts to spearhead anti-tax initiatives, announced Thursday that he would run against Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee in next year’s top-two primary. Eyman told KUOW that night that he didn’t currently have a party affiliation because both Democrats and Republicans had frustrated him equally.
According to Ballotpedia, Eyman has put at 17 statewide measures on the ballot beginning in 1998, and voters went on to pass 11 of them. However, eight of those successful Eyman initiatives were later partially or entirely invalidated in court. This includes a 1999 measure that capped annual vehicle registration fees (known locally as "car tabs") at $30 that was struck down a few months after passing.
This year, Eyman narrowly passed Initiative 976, which would again cap car tabs at $30 and would cut an estimated $451 million out of the state transportation department's $6.7 billion biennial budget. Several lawsuits are already underway to overturn it, but for now, Inslee has placed a temporary halt on any transportation projects that are still in the planning stages (anticipating a large and imminent revenue shortfall), though those that are currently underway are not affected.
While Eyman has had success at least getting voters to approve his initiatives, he’s likely to have a very tough time actually getting them to vote for him for governor. In 2017, Democratic Attorney General Bob Ferguson sued Eyman for allegedly breaking state campaign finance laws to profit off his many ballot initiatives. Eyman, in Trumpesque fashion, responded by nicknaming the attorney general “Fascist Fergie.”
Eyman has been held in contempt of court twice, and in September, a judge fined his associates $1.1 million for secretly and illegally “mislead[ing] contributors into believing their contributions would go to support ballot initiatives, when in fact, they were benefiting Defendant Eyman personally.” The ruling didn’t sanction Eyman himself but his civil trial is scheduled for July, which is one month before the top-two primary.
Eyman also found himself in a very different sort of legal mess earlier this year when surveillance video captured him taking a $70 chair from an Office Depot without paying for it. Eyman responded by saying he had planned to purchase the chair, but had become distracted by a phone call.
An agreement was reached in July where the theft charge would be dismissed as long as Eyman didn’t commit any other crimes and stayed away from that store for nine months. On Thursday, Seattle City Councilmember-elect Andrew Lewis responded to Eyman’s gubernatorial announcement by tweeting, “The only way Tim Eyman is gonna get the governor’s chair is if he steals it... go @JayInslee.”