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.
