Washington voters will not see a Tim Eyman initiative on their statewide ballots this November.

The for-profit initiative promoter acknowledge, in a letter Thursday to “our thousands of supporters,” conceded that his Initiative 1325 had not collected the 246,000 valid voter signatures needed for a statewide vote.

Unlike past years, Eyman did not receive big business support for I-1325. A top financial supporter of Eyman, financier Michael Dunmire, died earlier this year.

Eyman continued, up through last week, to bombard supporters with I-1325 fund-raising appeals. But his paid signature gatherers were absent from such usual haunts as the Mukilteo ferry dock and the entrance to Wal-Mart in Renton.

Eyman is going out on a sour note, saying: “Only the crazies in Seattle want it to be easy for politicians to take more of the people’s money.”

I-1325 would have, in essence, blackmailed the Washington Legislature.

The measure would have slashed the state sales tax by a full cent, from 6.5 to 5.5 percent, if the Legislature did not act by April 15, 2015, to put on the ballot a state constitutional amendment designed to block the raising of taxes and closing of tax loopholes.

The sales tax cut would have cut state revenues by $1 billion, or actually $2 billion since state government is funded for a biennium.

The constitutional amendment, a longtime Eyman cause, would have required a two-thirds vote of the Senate and the House for new revenue measures.

Eyman-sponsored initiatives, requiring the two-thirds vote, have passed in 2007, 2010 and 2012. Eyman styles himself as a populist, but bucks for his 2012 initiative came from the Beer Institute and big oil refiners — Tesoro, BP and Equilon — fearful that the Legislature would take away their tax breaks.

However, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled the Eyman initiatives unconstitutional, saying only an amendment to the Washington State Constitution could change requirements for raising revenue. A constitutional amendment must originate in the Legislature.

“We worked really hard, but our signature drive for the 2/3-for-Taxes-Constitutional Amendment fell short this year — we’re just gonna have to work even harder next time,” Eyman wrote.

Eyman lost — and lost big — with his last initiative. The 2013 ballot measure would have given initiative petition gatherers more access to business property and public buildings, and restricted those discouraging people from signing. It lost by a 63-37 percent margin.

The measure also alienated longtime Eyman allies in the retail sector and the restaurant industry, who feared the disruptive presence of signature mercenaries.

A longtime Eyman critic, Andrew Villeneuve of the Northwest Progressive Institute, cheered that I-1325 won’t be on the ballot.

“It almost feels as though we won the Washington Lottery,” said Villeneuve. “We are richer for Eyman’s defeat: Our schools and vital services will not be defunded by an extreme measure, the sort of thing we see Texas Sen. Ted Cruz pushing.”

“Nobody wanted to put money behind it,” Villeneuve added.

In one memorable battle, three years ago, Bellevue developer Kemper Freeman Jr., invested $1 million in an Eyman intiative to block Sound Transit from using the Interstate 90 bridge across Lake Washington to extend light-rail service to the Eastside. The measure would also have severely restricted use of tolls to pay for new highways.

It, too, lost, despite an Eyman prediction that the measure would carry in the city of Seattle.

Even when he loses, Eyman continues to have the thick hide of a rhino, the self-promotion instincts of a Trump and an inflated sense of his own importance.

“Even so, look on the bright side: Just the threat of I-1325 and its signature drive was incredibly effective at deterring the Legislature from raising taxes this year,” he wrote.

Eyman will be back, but the promoter may finally have exhausted his 15 years of fame.