Sometimes no news is big news, as was the case with Friday’s monthly PDC filing deadline for campaign contributions and expenditures. The National Rifle Association, potentially facing a momentous defeat at the polls, reported raising and spending absolutely nothing during the month of September in opposition to Initiative 594, which would impose background checks on all private gun sales. Assuming they’re actually obeying Washington’s campaign disclosure laws (and that’s merely an assumption), it sure does look like the NRA has turned tail and fled rather than shoot it out with I-594’s well-heeled backers.
Cowards.
As for professional initiative sponsor Tim Eyman, he’s never been one to run away from certain defeat—although that sort of boldness is easy for a guy who has only ever played with other people’s money. But what happens when the well runs dry? Irrelevance. As in the zero dollars raised in September for his yet to materialize statewide anti-minimum wage initiative.
Eyman had kicked off his campaign to personally profit from the minimum wage debate with a neat $50,000 each from two Seattle real estate baronesses, but has yet to raise another dime to toward the $1 million he says he needs to buy enough signatures to qualify his initiative by the end of the year. I suppose it’s possible that a deep-pocketed backer like, say, the International Franchise Association could dump in the necessary cash all at once. But why bother with Eyman? He’s just a middleman. And an expensive one at that.
It’s now been two years since Eyman has managed to qualify an initiative for the ballot. If you’re struggling to make ends meet, Tim, I hear The Stranger is hiring.
Skinflint Timothy Keck, however, has contributed $2,000 to the pro-594 group WA Alliance for Gun Responsibility…. though that’s significantly less than Nahauer’s $1.4 million.
Eyman would be a better fit at Publicola, where the two clueless brats who run it are every bit as out of touch with reality as Timmy Boy is.
Eyman is losing his funders as they have figured out they no longer require his services in order to achieve their goals. So it’s a mixed blessing. Good riddance to him, but he’s merely obsolete, rather than defeated.
Have to go with Robert on this one. Why go through Eyman when you can spend your money directly in Olympia and get the same results. It’s called eliminating the middleman.
” It’s called
briberyeliminating the middleman.”There is a rumor that Eyman has anew job explain the failure of the Sea Hawks to their owner,
@3 Eyman’s sugar daddy, Michael Dunmire, dropped dead. That has happened to other rich donors, too: Richard Scaife, Harold Simmons, and Bob Perry are gone now. It’ll happen to Sheldon Adelson and the Koches. See, the great weakness of conservative political finance is that most billionaire donors are old and have a short shelf life. When they stop breathing their money dries up. Then, if you’re Karl Rove or Timmeh Lieman, you have to go find another sugar daddy, and you’re out of business if you can’t, and super-rich donors don’t grow on trees.
The McDonald’s at 3rd and Pine used to have a sign up saying that they were not part of the Franchise Association lawsuit or the Eyman Initiative. I wonder if they changed their position?
Goldy, I think the NRA is breaking state law when it comes to PDC reporting. The AP reported last night that the NRA donated $150K to their anti-594 PAC here in WA. The donation was made on September 16 but not reported until October 13. According to my sources, at this point in time, weekly reporting should be in place. Waiting a month to report a large donation is a violation.
Anyone out there want to investigate? Is the NRA intentionally breaking state law and delaying their reporting? Perhaps they’ve donated huge sums already this month and just aren’t telling anyone. Maybe they plan to dump $10M in right now for TV ads these final weeks but don’t plan to report on time. I think this needs to be investigated, and if they’re breaking state law, it needs to be covered widely.