Judge to rule in state's campaign finance case against Eyman

SEATTLE (AP) — A Thurston County judge is due to rule Wednesday afternoon in Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s campaign finance lawsuit against initiative promoter Tim Eyman, a decision that could significantly alter the state’s political landscape.

Ferguson is seeking millions of dollars in penalties and an order barring the antitax activist from future financial control of political committees. The attorney general says Eyman solicited kickbacks, laundered donations and flouted campaign finance law in a long-running scheme to enrich himself.

Eyman insists the case is politically motivated, and his attorney, former state Supreme Court Justice Richard Sanders, says Eyman disclosed everything required of him under the state’s campaign finance laws.

Superior Court Judge James Dixon previously found Eyman committed other violations as part of the case, including that he failed to disclose more than $766,000 in campaign contributions that he received in personal accounts. Eyman had to pay more than $300,000 in contempt-of-court sanctions for obstructing the state’s investigation.

Eyman has a long history of campaign finance violations. He called an Associated Press reporter in 2002 to make an emotional confession that he had been lining his own pockets with campaign contributions, despite insisting publicly for years that he had not been. At the time Eyman called it “the biggest lie of my life.”

The Public Disclosure Commission warned him then that he could not accept political contributions personally by characterizing them as “gifts,” and the following year a judge barred him from serving as the treasurer of any political committee.

The state argued that Eyman subverted that ruling by continuing to act as treasurer even though someone else nominally held the position. As for the kickback, the state says Eyman overpaid the signature gathering firm Citizen Solutions more than $308,000, and that the company then funneled the money back to him by purportedly hiring him as a consultant.

Voters in 2019 approved Eyman’s most recent ballot measure, Initiative 976, which would have gutted transportation budgets throughout the state by severely cutting fees for car registrations. The state Supreme Court unanimously struck it down as unconstitutional.