Tim Eyman Initiative to Kill Seattle's Minimum Wage Picks Up $100,000 in Donations

Mayor's Office

Tim Eyman wants to stop this schedule of wage increases in Seattle dead in its tracks.

Hey there! You enjoying the feeling of living in this beautiful progressive city on this beautiful late summer day? Ahhh, yes—the sun on your shoulders, the knowledge that it's Friday and we're on the path to the highest minimum wage in the nation, the glow of a hard-fought labor-and-business compromise deal, the warmth of knowing we survived that fight and can move on to new ones, like public preschool or mandatory compost or whatever.

Well, goodbye warm fuzzy feelings and hello, Tim Eyman! Sorry to harsh your buzz, but dude is BACK. And he's just gotten his first $100,000 to fight the $15 minimum wage. His plan, as we've mentioned before: pass a statewide initiative next fall that would pre-empt local minimum wage laws and instead require a uniform statewide minimum wage, regardless of the difference in the cost of living from city to city. And he's raked in some dollars from Seattle business owners to get started.

Sources and a leaked memo say Eyman shopped his initiative plan around to potential donors at the end of August, saying it'll cost $2.2 million to run the campaign. And it looks like some people took the bait.

As of September 9, campaign contribution reports show his Fair and Uniform Minimum Wage Initiative campaign now has $100,000 to work with. Just two donors gave $50,000 each: the Fremont Dock Company, run by Suzie Burke, and Garneau Properties, run by Faye Garneau—two age-old wealthy land owners from North Seattle who have long given money to political campaigns.

Which means the big fight—we'll call this one "Rich People Who Like to Buy Votes for Fun and Profit versus Poor Folks Who Struggle Every Day Just to Survive"—is likely gonna happen.

About that $2.2 million that Eyman estimates he needs to run the anti-$15 campaign: He was passing a memo around in recent weeks (PDF of the full memo here, Joel Connelly reported on it at the time here) saying that he'll need only 25 percent of the vote in Seattle to get a majority statewide, and polling shows support is already above that. He wanted to start a signature drive on September 1 and finish by the end of October, giving "opponents very little time to react." (Anyone seen these guys out there yet?) Because of the quickness required, he wrote that he needs "all funding to be available upfront." You know, the old "Dear rich people, send me all your money" strategy.

An initiative like this one could "put progressive Seattle at the mercy of our much more conservative state, essentially hamstringing us forever," reads one of the quotes from unnamed press outlets that Eyman cites in his memo. And that quote looked awfully familiar to me... Oh, right, because I wrote it. And much to my delight, his reading that post means he also read the phrase "Tim Eyman, weasely turd-man that he is." Aw, that warms my heart!

But if he thinks that a political machine can steamroll the grassroots movement that has taken root in Seattle around wages and affordability, he could be way wrong. Just this week, fast-food workers walked the fight for $15 across the water to Bellevue. No one here is running scared.