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Meet the 33-year-old who got the $30 car tax on the ballot
Meet the 33-year-old who got the $30 car tax on the ballot
Local News : Sunday, August 15, 1999
by Jim Lynch
Seattle Times Olympia bureau
As a child, Tim Eyman got in trouble reselling bags of candy at his grade
school. In college, he performed in mock pro-wrestling matches and helped jog
with a pizza across the state to promote his fraternity.
His latest splash? Terrorizing the establishment with a ballot measure that
would strip politicians of their power to raise taxes.
And he's loving it, relishing his role as the sassy mouth of the masses, smiling
as he rips "Big Business," "Big Labor" and "King Locke," urging Washington's
"peasants" to rise up against the state's "tyrannical" politicians.
Eyman's mother marvels at his ambition, but says sometimes she'd like to "put
a sock in his mouth."
Timothy D. Eyman is the little-known sponsor of Initiative 695, which
rumbled onto the political stage last month after the 33-year-old Mukilteo entrepreneur
turned in a jolting 514,141 signatures, the second-largest number ever gathered
for a ballot measure in state history.
If I-695 passes in November, car owners would pay just $30 a year to license
their vehicles, whether they drive a 1999 Jaguar or a 1967 Volkswagen Beatle.
And voters would get final say at the polls on almost any state- or local-government
tax or fee increase, whether it's a jump in property taxes or higher school-lunches
prices.
Critics say the proposal, while deceptively sweet for voters, is suicide Kool-Aid.
Eyman laughs off the uproar as the fear-mongering of "Chicken Little" politicians.
He often quips that as November nears, he expects people to start claiming I-695
will kill children.
Meanwhile, people who follow initiatives are scrambling to figure out how
Eyman got so many signatures. Political insiders are wondering if he'll parlay
all the attention into a run for office.
Boyish and upbeat, Eyman sells enough mail-order wristwatches during the holidays
to allow him to browse the Web for causes to champion. Learning from his mistakes
in two previous initiative efforts, he has turned his mass-mailing know-how
and growing anti-tax network into a formidable machine.
Eyman appears drawn to the game for the thrill of the action more than the
notoriety or even the call of his own convictions. Asked if he feels overtaxed
himself, he pauses and says "hmm," as if he isn't sure.
He explains that he saw a similar anti-car-tax crusade sell well in Virginia
and wanted to try it here. Plus, he says, "everyone is overtaxed."
He calls I-695 a battle for the "little guy," who he says hasn't had a good
tax break in Washington for more than 20 years. But Eyman doesn't fit the "little
guy" profile.
Last year he bought a $433,000 home the Harbour Pointe Golf Club in Mukilteo.
His wife, Karen, drives a 1998 Saab that cost the couple $900 to license this
year.
When people talk about Eyman they often mention his salesmanship and relentless
energy. He seems confident he can accomplish almost anything with the phone
and the U.S. mail. Adopted as a baby, he tracked down both his birth parents
- by himself, by phone.
He talks fast and frequently interrupts himself to apologize for "rambling."
He drives fast, too - 80 to 90 mph, according to his past three speeding tickets.
He runs across the hardwood floor to answer the doorbell, sock-sliding the last
few feet.
Eyman ignored politics until Ross Perot ran for president in '192 and even
now isn't sure how to label his views. "I'm a Libertarian-leaning Republican
with Perot inclinations. But I also admire Ralph Nader."
Republican campaign consultant Brett Bader says Eyman might be an appealing
maverick candidate for political office. "Someone who doesn't appear to be part
of the club can really capture the voters' imagination," Bader said. "Tim hasn't
done that yet, but he's proved himself an individual to be reckoned with."
Eyman says he'll never run for public office. "It just won't happen," he says.
"It doesn't look fun. The thing I can't stand about politics is there's no humor
allowed."
`Torturous Tim'
Eyman's mother, Dolores Eyman, has a story about her son's Yakima upbringing
that she believes sums up his goal-setting, achievement-oriented character and
drive.
"He wanted a unicycle. He was 12. he wanted it very badly. My husband and
I debated it, and we decided to buy him one for Christmas. His goal was to go
up this hill, around this curb, up to the top to the main street and then come
back down the hill and into the yard. He finally did it. And that was the last
time he rode it."
Eyman left Yakima's West Valley High School with a 3.94 grade-point average
and an academic scholarship to Washington State University.
He wrestled at WSU, finishing third in the Pac-10 Conference as a 177-pound
sophomore, and joined Delta Tau Delta fraternity, where he showed a flair for
media stunts.
A Pullman sports page in 1988 featured a shirtless "Torturous" Tim Eyman flying
across a wrestling ring in mock attack of Mike "The Slasher" Lingasher as part
of the fraternity's "big-time wrestling" event.
Eyman also led the "Domino Pizza Run," his favorite college story. He and
his frat brothers jogged with a pepperoni pizza from Pullman to Seattle in less
than 50 hours to raise $2,000 for the Arthritis Foundation. Eyman says he fell
in love with the idea, then later picked a charity, somewhat at random.
Fraternity life appealed to Eyman so much that he served as the chapter's
new-member recruiter in the summer of 1988 after he graduated with a business
degree. He ultimately found a way to remain tethered to the Greek system to
this day.
An ad for personalized wristwatch faces gave Eyman his business niche: putting
sororities' and fraternities' Greek letters on watches and selling them as keepsakes.
After figuring out how to market to parents - "Give your son a gift that will
serve as a daily reminder of his lifetime commitment to Sigma Phi Epsilon,"
reads a typical mailing - he's had the national Greek watch market almost to
himself.
Melody Colbert, whose company sells watches to Eyman's firm, says Eyman was
so green when he started that he didn't realize he needed to ask sororities
and fraternities for permission to use their logos. Now, she says, his market
analysis is "far more sophisticated than the average business owner."
Eyman's promotional mailings say he shares half his profits with the Greeks.
He says his business generates between $30,000 and $50,000 a year in "royalties"
for fraternities and sororities. Does that mean his annual profits are about
the same? Eyman refuses to discuss it.
He says he lost $7,000 on his car-tab initiative last year that failed to
qualify for the ballot. He doesn't intend to spend his own money on a campaign
again, he says, or accept any compensation beyond expenses.
I-200 involvement
Less than three years ago, Eyman was a rookie in the initiative business,
collecting signatures at Green Lake for a King County petition to force a vote
on the Mariner stadium.
He then watched the successful initiative campaign in California to abolish
racial preferences in hiring and education, and grew enamored with the notion
of trying a similar initiative in Washington. "I'm perfectly happy copying people
who are successful," he explains.
Eyman teamed up with Scott Smith, a former state legislator, and co-sponsored
Washington's anti-preference Initiative 200.
"He's a talker," Smith says of Eyman, "and he can get people to talk to him.
He's a good salesman. He doesn't get tired out."
But I-200 floundered under Smith and Eyman. Three months before the signature
deadline, Eyman was claiming he had about 50,000 signatures, still well short
of the number needed. He actually had 12,000, a blunder he blames on trusting
petition gatherers.
I-200 later was saved by conservative commentator John Carlson, who helped
guide it onto the ballot and to victory at the polls last fall.
Eyman learned from Carlson and other veterans and bounced back in 1998 with
a proposal to cut car taxes to $30 a year. It came close enough to qualifying
to tempt Eyman to try again. This year he added the clause requiring public
votes on future tax or fee increases, to ease concern that cutting the car tax
would trigger a tax increase somewhere else.
He also teamed up with aggressive Eastern Washington co-chairmen - he calls
them "kamikazes" - who set up signature "trap lines" by persuading businesses
to put petitions on their counters.
Eyman also conducted mass mailings - "the air war" of the campaign - using
the same hard-sell tactics with which he sells watches. And he persuaded Costco
to letsupporters gather signatures at its busy stores.
Late into June, Eyman says, he was still uncertain he'd get the 180,000 signatures
needed before the July 2 deadline. He called an unusual news conference in the
Tri-Cities June 22 to announce he needed a big push to guarantee I-695 would
make the ballot.
An avalanche of signed petitions soon arrived in the mail.
"He just planned this perfectly," says Sherry Bockwinkel, a Tacoma initiative
consultant. "I'm sitting here thinking this guy's a genius."
To win, Bockwinkel says, Eyman needs to polish his message and temper his
attacks on politicians. A broad opposition coalition is considering spending
$2 million to $4 million to defeat the measure. By comparison, Eyman's campaign
has about $37,000 in the bank.
"It's hard for him to deliver his message," but "the more politicians pound
on him, the more likely he's going to win," Bockwinkel says.
Carlson, considered an initiative guru after I-200 won, puts it this way:
"His message is stronger than their money."
Eyman talks about the upcoming war over I-695 like an excited athlete before
a big game:
"I can't wait. The people that are going to be attacking us aren't exactly
dripping with credibility. They're going to have to convince people that their
car taxes aren't too high and that they're not overtaxed."
His recent mailings send a different message. "Don't get cocky," Eyman warns
supporters. "The government will illegally spend millions of taxpayer dollars
fighting our initiative. Help us counter their lies by sending us a generous
donation."
What's next?
Eyman says he's constantly asked what he'll do next. He tells people he can't
even think about focusing on anything but I-695 until after Nov. 2.
"You should do one thing and do it well," he says. "And then you move on to
the next thing and do it well. And then you can put away your unicycle and move
on."
So what's the next thing?
"I don't know," he says, then admits if I-695 passes he'll likely be looking
for another initiative to push. "There's got to be some other Washington injustices
out there."
