Apparently, initiative profiteer Tim Eyman has failed to produce enough signatures to qualify Referendum 65 for the ballot. More later….
UPDATE:
Andrew Villeneuve of NPI called me from the Secretary of State’s office to report that Timmy made a big show of arriving late, counting petitions in front of reporters, and then… oh no… dramatically announcing that he just fell short with a total of 105,000 signatures. Indeed, I’ve already heard radio reports repeating that number.
But here’s the thing — and this is very important to remember — Tim Eyman is a lying sack of shit. No really… he is. So you cannot believe a single word he says.
The Sec. of State didn’t count the petitions, Tim did. And according to Andrew, he didn’t even count the signatures, just the petitions at hand. So this 105,000 number… it’s total bullshit.
Now that I’ve pointed this out, I expect that no other media outlet will repeat it. And there’s no need to. Eyman failed to qualify R-65 for the ballot. That’s all you need to report. Eyman failed. Once again.
Earlier today the WA state Christian Coalition announced it had collected 14,000 signatures. Big whoop. Sounds to me like Referendum Sunday was dud, and our right-wing Evangelicals have proven themselves to be paper tigers. I mean if you have God on your side and you have our state’s most experienced initiative monger on your side, how can you fail?
I’ll tell you how… it’s what I’ve been saying all along: most people oppose discrimination. Even Republicans. And most people simply don’t think it’s all that American to deny somebody a mortgage just because you think he might be gay. We can’t trust Eyman’s numbers, but from the lack of reports of gee, I dunno… actual signature gatherers, my educated guess is that Tim probably didn’t collect half the signatures he reported. And that, I suppose, is a referendum of sorts, all by itself.
UPDATE, UPDATE:
I guess this is what happens when you dance with the devil:
Leaders of some of the church groups who’d backed the measure, which would have vetoed a ban on discrimination based on sexual orientation, were deeply disappointed and surprised. Some said they were also unhappy at Eyman’s refusal in recent weeks to tell them how many signatures he’d gathered. In the end, the Faith and Freedom Network’s Gary Randall said, Eyman simply stopped replying to his calls.
Um… Timmy didn’t return your calls because he was lying about the signature count all along. Of course, they didn’t seem to mind Tim’s lies when they were repeating them from the pulpit, so I suppose what goes around comes around.
Oh and by the way, as Andrew reminds us, Timmy is not only a liar, but a failure.
This, of course, is simply another failure in a growing list failures for Eyman. Other recent failures include I-892 and I-864 (2004), I-807 (2003) and I-267 (2002).