Don’t let them fool you
Every statewide initiative you might be asked to sign before January 1st—as you scurry about doing your Christmas shopping (or your returns)—every one of them is a cynical attempt to breathe life into the state’s Republican Party for the 2024 election. Don’t be fooled. The initiative signature gathering is funded almost solely by one very rich man, Brian Heywood, who moved to the State of Washington from California in 2010 “to make money”.
That these initiatives are being foisted upon us by paid signature gatherers is undisputed fact. Brian Heywood is nearly the sole contributor to Let’s Go Washington, a political committee which, as of yesterday, reported “Voter signature/petition gathering” expenditures of $5,441,115.35.
I first wrote of Mr. Heywood’s gambit in a post published November 29 entitled The Perversion of the Initiative Process (click to read). I was not convinced that the paid signature gatherers would make it to this side of the state, but on Monday I received reports from friends who had been approached in local shopping malls by signature gatherers presenting dubious information to encourage hurried passersby to sign.
On November 30, the day after my post (probably coincidence), in Sue Lani Madsen’s opinion column published in the Spokesman, she tried to point the finger in the opposite direction. Ignoring (or ignorant of?) the millions of Brian Heywood’s dollars spent on signature gathering, Ms. Madsen insinuated, without evidence, that some imagined group associated with Democrats was paying “disruptors” [the bold is mine]: “The usual modus operandi is to send paid signature disruptors to make it unpleasant enough for customers that retail businesses ask signature-gatherers to leave.” Then came the insinuated connection, “…there was no response to repeated attempts to contact Shasti Conrad, chairman of the Washington state Democrats”. It’s a classic turn-around: try to paint the opposition as purely monetarily motivated, that is, lacking in sincerity. It’s the same game plan as Fox News’ and the Republican Party’s bogus BS about George Soros busing and paying protestors.
Totally ignoring the decades-long, CPAC-lauded, Republican anti-tax ballot measures visited upon our ballot measure system by the now-disgraced Republican/Libertarian Tim Eyman, Ms. Madsen stretches to retrieve obscure examples of Democrats playing the same game.
Then she comes up with this imagined zinger:
Democrats are probably not planning to send thank you notes to citizens for exercising their democratic right to petition their government. Or to congratulate businesses for allowing petitioners to gather on their property.
Of course, she fails to mention that the money and the spearhead behind the current bevy of initiatives is from Just. One. Wealthy. Man.
Bottom line: Be on the alert for pesky signature gatherers—and pointedly Decline to Sign. According to Ms. Madsen one of the six measures is already over the top for signatures—which should surprise no one, I suppose, considering the documented money invested. We’ll learn of the final tally in January from Washington State’s Secretary of State.
Keep the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. Right on cue, the Washington Policy Center’s Republican blare machine lurched into action in the December 13 WPC reserved space on the Opinion page of the Spokesman Review. In his article Todd Myers, employed by the WPC, drummed on idea that Governor Inslee’s climate efforts have egregiously driven up the price of gas, the subject of Initiative 2117, the Heywood initiative that Ms. Madsen claims has gathered sufficient signatures to get it on the 2024 ballot. Mr. Myers provided a blur of numbers, but the real thrust of his piece was an accusation that Governor Inslee lied—playing on anger as the most effective means of riling one’s followers. Expect a lot more of this sort of thing—and understand it for what it is.