Initiative promoter Tim Eyman is asking the restaurant and lodging industries to pony up $1.1 million for a signature blitzkrieg that would put on the ballot an initiative to repeal Seattle’s new $15-an-hour minimum wage.

While he alienated business with a 2013 initiative — and saw it crushed in the November election — Eyman has embarked on a courtship that reportedly included a meeting with hospitality industry bigwigs at Seattle’s high-end Metropolitan Grill.

The for-profit promoter is pushing an initiative that would require the minimum wage to be uniform and consistent statewide for all employees, and prohibit any conflicting, local minimum-wage requirements.

Whatever wide variance in the cost of living, and the price for renting or buying a home, the minimum wage would be the same from Seattle to Metaline Falls.

In a memo last week, Eyman outlined strategy:

“We have from now until the end of the (sic) December to collect the necessary signatures (the public vote on it will be November 2015). However, this signature drive has to be done quickly.

“The Seattle referendum failed to qualify because the business groups pushing it made a rookie mistake: their fundraising was deathly slow, putting the signature drive on a slow roll-out, giving the SEIU and other opponents time to counterattack with blockers (people who stand around the petitioner and scare away signers).”

The price tag, for a blitzkrieg campaign with signature mercenaries plus Eyman’s cut, is $1.1 million for the fall 2014 signature drive. Cash on the barrel head.

“Our plan is to have our signature drive start on September 1 and end on October 31,” wrote Eyman. “That gives opponents very little time to react. But since it is a ‘pedal to the metal’ strategy, it requires all funding to be available upfront.”

Eyman estimates a “minimum $1.1 million for the fall 2015 campaign,” a laughably low estimate.

Eyman has been at the initiative business for 15 years, since his successful 1999 car tabs initiative.

He has won votes on property taxes, lost in the Washington State Supreme Court on a “supermajority” requirement for revenue increases, and been defeated in a series of measures on transportation and gambling.

In 2013, he suffered a worst-ever defeat with Initiative 517. The measure would have extended the time period for collecting initiative signatures, banned people from discouraging signatures, and extended the right of petition collectors to operate on private property.

Eyman, while posing as a populist, has relied in past campaigns on money channeled through the Association of Washington Business, the Washington Restaurant Association, the Beer Institute, and big oil companies that operate four northern Puget Sound refineries.

But I-517 alienated business and forced former Eyman supporters to spend money to defeat him.

Will Eyman and business lobbies make up?

It depends on whether they feel strongly enough about Seattle’s minimum-wage ordinance to throw in their resources — big bucks — with a mercenary they do not completely trust.

Eyman is pulling out the stops, warning that the minimum-wage movement must be stopped.

“The $15 minimum wage has been passed in SeaTac, Seattle and Port of Seattle and continues to spread (Tacoma, Olympia, Bellingham and other cities),” he wrote. “The good guys have been fighting back city by city. They’ve failed every time.”

Eyman cites, without sourcing, a poll showing the “uniform minimum wage” with a six-point lead, and added: “Our initiative wins statewide with just 25 percent of the vote in Seattle. But in that same poll, 44 percent of Seattle voters support a uniform minimum wage.”

He also quotes a column by Erik Smith, a right-of-center columnist on the Seattle Times editorial page, which furiously opposed the SeaTac minimum-wage initiative last fall. In turn, Smith quotes Republican strategist Randy Pepple: “If Eyman gets 25 percent in Seattle, he wins.”

Pepple was 2012 campaign manager for Republican gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna, who lost because of a big Seattle vote for Jay Inslee. Eyman’s Initiative 517 lost by a huge margin in King County.

Could revenge against Seattle voters be a motive for targeting Seattle’s minimum-wage ordinance?

The business community must ponder the question of why it would target Seattle, triggering a costly and divisive campaign, when the Emerald City’s economy is booming, driving the state’s economic recovery, and attracting major firms.