Question: What do you get when you cross conservative Washington initiative king Tim Eyman with a former Republican legislative candidate and one of the state's most vocal anti-Obama "birther" conspirators?

Answer: The latest fight against light rail crossing the Columbia River from Portland to Vancouver.

Debbie Peterson, who lost the 49th District Senate race to Democrat Sharon Wylie in November, has recruited Eyman to help pressure the Vancouver City Council to put the so-called "Stop Light Rail" initiative on the ballot.

Last month, the city rejected the group's initiative petition because it didn't contain enough valid signatures.



More than 8,000 signatures were invalidated because they belonged to people who live outside the city, who were not registered to vote or were duplicates. In the end, the 5,440 signatures determined to be valid were 32 short of the number needed.

Now, the petitioners are threatening to bring a costly lawsuit if the city doesn't have a change of heart on Monday night.

"We're really excited," Peterson wrote in an fund-raising email blast to anti-light rail foes over the weekend. "Last week, we got in touch with 'Mr. Initiative' Tim Eyman and told him about the unfair and unjust disqualification of our stop light rail initiative. Tim dove right in and got us hooked up with Stephen Pidgeon, an absolutely brilliant constitutional attorney, to handle our lawsuit."

Who is Stephen Pidgeon?

Pidgeon unsuccessfully ran for attorney general in 2012 as a Republican and is the author of "The Obama Error," a book claiming President Barack Obama is a British citizen who changed his name from "Barak Mounir Ubayd" to "Barack Hussein Obama" in 1982 in British Columbia.

You can hear Pidgeon talk about his birther theory on "TruNews with Rick Wiles," a radio show that claims to keep track of news pointing to the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Pidgeon is also known for representing faith-based groups fighting Washington's same-sex marriage law.

In November, Clark County voters rejected a sales tax to fund light-rail on the Columbia River Crossing. Critics of the measure dismissed the defeat, saying the giant bridge doesn't need the local sales tax to extend TriMet's MAX over the Columbia.

But Peterson, City Councilman Bill Turlay and other opponents want to go even further -- a public vote on a proposal explicitly banning the city from using any local tax dollars on a light rail line. Not on the CRC. Not on anything. Ever.

After more than two years of trying, however, they have been unable to get such a measure on the ballot.

In a letter sent to the council on Sunday, Pidgeon threatened to sue the city unless it changed course on the rejected ballot initiative by Vancouver's Light Rail Initiative.

"All of that time, effort, and expense can easily be avoided with a simple majority vote of the city council on Monday," he writes.

At issue was a legal decision to invalidate voters who signed the petition more than once. Speaking from his home in Mukilteo, Wash., Eyman said the city has disenfranchised at least 608 voters by rejecting signatures because they signed the petition twice.

"We're talking about the first signature and any duplicate signature being thrown," he said. "No signature was counted. One of those signatures should have been counted."

Eyman, who calls himself an "advisor" in the Vancouver light rail fight, said Pidgeon's birther stance doesn't bother him. "He's an absolute pitbull," Eyman said, noting that Pidgeon successfully sued to get a successful initiative seeking to ban red-light cameras on the ballot in Bellingham, Wash.

Despite the legal ultimatum, the Vancouver City Council agenda for Monday night's meeting doesn't include a vote on putting a light-rail initiative on the ballot.

It's also hard to know if Eyman, who has been fighting taxes and public-transit projects for two decades, still has the clout to sway public officials. His most recent initiative to block tolling and light rail on Interstate 90 bridge across Lake Washington in Seattle failed.

Two state senators from Clark County are also sponsoring a bill that would block the light rail component of the Columbia River Crossing project.

Also, by all appearances, the group is not opposed to building the controversial $3.5 billion Columbia River Crossing for auto traffic.

But the federal government has made one thing clear: No "high capacity" transit, no money from Congress to build a replacement for the aging Interstate Bridge.

-- Joseph Rose

