Spin Control: Legislature faces record number of initiatives thanks to record spending on signature gathering

Along with the usual decisions on budgets and local concerns, Washington lawmakers will have a record number of initiatives to ponder this year that cover everything from police pursuits to requiring some people to pay more taxes.

Six initiatives to the Legislature are likely to have enough valid signatures to delight minority Republicans and give majority Democrats a three-way Hobson’s choice: Pass initiatives they don’t like. Ignore initiatives they don’t like, thus sending those proposed changes to voters on the November ballot. Come up with an alternative to the initiatives they don’t like – something that’s at least slightly more palatable – and send the original and the alternative to the November ballot for voters to choose between.

In the 112 years since Washington voters approved this populist-progressive addition to the state Constitution as a maneuver around the moneyed interests that many felt had an outsized voice in Olympia, never have so many initiatives landed in the legislators’ collective lap. Most are designed to eliminate or pare back laws passed in the past several years.

Initiative 2089 would allow parents to review instructional materials at their children’s schools, be notified of any medical treatment and let them have their children opt out of sex education instruction. I-2109 would repeal the tax that would be levied on a person with more than $250,000 in capital gains in a year. I-2111 would ban the state or any local government from imposing an income tax. I-2113 would repeal restrictions on police pursuit of criminal suspects. I-2117 would repeal a new system designed to reduce carbon emissions by limiting the amount of pollutions some businesses can emit and requiring those over the limit to purchase credits, with some of the money dedicated to cutting greenhouse gases. I-2124 would make it easier for workers to opt out of the state’s new long-term care insurance program.

There will be plenty of time in the coming months to discuss the merits of all six. But at the start of the session, it seems appropriate to begin the discussion with the typical grumbling of those who oppose the initiatives – that they represent the vested interests of a select few rather than the voice of the people at large and thus do not align with the democratic ideals of our populist/progressive forebears.

It’s true that the organization behind all six initiatives, which goes by the somewhat innocuous name “Let’s Go Washington,” spent a record amount on buying signatures – or more accurately paying a bounty for each signature contracted workers collected. The Public Disclosure Commission reports show it shelled out slightly under $6.1 million to signature gatherers.

Most of that money came from Brian Heywood, a hedge fund manager living near Redmond, who has contributed about $1.7 million to the campaign outright and loaned it about $4.5 million more.

At a recent legislative preview, this political largesse was not lauded as public spirit by House Speaker Laurie Jinkins, a Tacoma Democrat, but as “an ultrawealthy millionaire buying his way onto the ballot.”

That prompted podcaster Brandi Kruse to question whether Jinkins expressed similar views of other ultrawealthy folks who shelled out money to get issues like gun control on the ballot.

Kruse is correct that gun control and other liberal measures have been helped onto the ballot by wealthy donors. In 2014, the Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility got almost $1.4 million from venture capitalist Nick Hanauer, $1 million from Steve and Connie Ballmer and $500,000 each from Bill Gates and Paul Allen, although the alliance spent only about $715,000 of that on buying signatures to get I-594 on the ballot.

The $6.1 million spent on this year’s legislative initiatives is the most spent in a single year, although some could argue that it should be divided among the six proposals, bringing it down to just over $1 million per. Others could argue the money should be grouped together because the signatures were often collected together, with signature bounty hunters holding clipboards for multiple measures and proffering additional petitions once a voter showed interest in the first.

The $1 million per measure would put any individual initiative behind the $2.9 million spent to get the Yes on Charter Schools initiative on the ballot in 2012, the signature bounty record, according to PDC reports. Gates gave more than $3 million to that campaign, but most of it after the signatures were collected.

It would also be behind the $1.6 million spent by the American Beverage Association to get I-1107, a 2010 measure to roll back new taxes on candy, bottled water and soda. Overall, that campaign cost about $16 million, with about $14.5 million coming from the beverage association.

It would be roughly the same the amount Costco spent in 2011 for signatures in its second – and ultimately successful – attempt to get to get voters to pull the state out of the retail liquor business.

It would be ahead of the more than $832,000 spent in 2018 to get I-1631, a different pollution tax onto the ballot, where it ultimately failed. It’s also less than the $758,000 spent to get recreational marijuana on the ballot in 2012. It’s almost twice what supporters of GMO labeling spent to get qualify I-522 in 2012. All three had deep pocket donors, either in state or out of it.

Just as it is expected campaign practice for supporters of ballot measures to shrug off their high-spending “angels” as necessary to get the signatures needed to give voters their say, it is standard operating procedure for opponents to question those donors’ motives. Supporters are right about the high cost of compliance; opponents are right that the people who wrote the 1912 constitutional amendments would no doubt be appalled at the spending.

But the signature campaign for the six legislative initiatives raises two separate questions.

Will it become a blueprint for wealthy activists who want to tie up a short legislative session, like the current one is, with controversial issues that give the majority options it doesn’t like?

Will a joint campaign that spent $6 million to gather signatures set records for overall spending on gaining voter support, considering campaign ads?

We’ll know the answer to the first question in a few weeks. The answer to the second might wait until November in a year in which campaign ads will have to be expensive in a presidential year and will have to be numerous to stand out among the crowded ballot choices.