What should Tim Eyman do next?

I agree that Tim Eyman has become the central focus of all his iniatives. People have limited information on iniatives and to the extent that Tim has a negative image among a majority of voters this will rub off on his iniatives. It is very easy for a voter to say "Oh, Eyman is sponsoring another initiative. Is this guy just a professional fly in the ointment? I think I will just vote against it." I would much rather see some iniatives coming from some of the tea party folks.

Eyman per se isn't the issue. The inner financial dynamic of his organization is. He's become a professional initiative promoter whose personal economic bottom line hangs upon gaining financial backers for putting his initiatives on the ballot. He isn't paid contingent upon their ultimate success at the polls, and therefore money spent on the campaigns themselves is to him unnecessary overhead. What is needed is an Eyman-like organization whose financial structure is transparent, and which is incentivized & committed to going the whole distance - i.e., committed to actually winning. A tragic example of Eyman's deficiency is the most recent effort: the initiative put forth a highly saleable idea, that was run over by dishonest ads whose falsehoods went largely unanswered, essentially because one man's financial incentives to actually win the thing simply weren't there.

equals the price of notoriety, depending on your side. I do agree that elections now focus on the bearer of change rather than what the bearer brings. Initiatives by themselves aren't celebrity-conscious, the human element is and that's where the focus gets fuzzy (welcome to the American 21st Century, "unlike any other!!"). Let it be an unknown party or better still, an unexpected or surprising factor to bring about changes to the political circus.

People vote against Eyman initiatives because it's an "Eyman" initiative. Time to get a real job Tim.

A liberal friend of mine once told me that she voted no on a Tim Eyman initiative because she didn't like him...not because the initiative didn't make sense, but because she didn't like him.

I think that in a representative government, if our representatives aren't doing what we ask them, then we should have 100's of eyman-esque initiatives on the ballot every year. I know that would be a lot of work to go through for the average family, but think of all the issues we could address on a local and state level that the politicians aren't. The way representative legislation is supposed to work, is a constituant sends a request to his/her rep, and the rep if he/she thinks its a good idea, drafts up a bill and the body votes on it. These days, politicians know it's easier to get 100 people to get you $1000 than it is to get 5,000 people to give you $20, so they suck up to the 100 people that will give them $1000 and ignore the rest. Year after year we see more and more "nanny-state" bills where the state is going to decide what is good for us while ignoring the people. I have a lot of respect for Tim Eyman because he got out there and played ball within the system. I do think the media and politicians have worked to put him into a bad light so you do get voters who will vote yea or nay based on their opinion of Mr. Eyman, which is too bad. And playing devils advocate, Eyman seems to have developed what career politicians develop after a couple of successful terms, which is where they start losing sight of why they're doing what they're doing and start focusing more on being concerned on how they can keep contributions coming in to pay their mortgage and car payments etc.

Maybe not 100 Eymans, but more people involved in the initiative process. This venue may be the only way that conservatives can counter the liberal agenda that has a stranglehold on Washington State politics. If conservative issues are on the ballot more often, by various people, the focus would be off the individual, and on the issues.

...as a domestic partner with Michael Dunmire. R71 passed.

I'm not so sure that the Eyman-fatigue analysis is right. It's a popular theory, but where is the evidence? I think a better theory is: in the past decade, the tax-spend forces in WA have greatly refined their ballot measure tactics. In the late 90's, the left was caught by surprise and conservatives had great success with ballot measures. No more. I-912, the gas tax init went down, and Eyman had little or no involvement. Prop 1 (light rail expansion) also passed easily.

Tim Eyman seems to be doing what no one else will do - trying to maintain some degree of fiscal responsibility in this oh-so liberal state. I think the next initiative should be to limit donations for financing people running for state offices (including U.S. Senate and House) to residents of the state only. People of our state should be the ones to decide who will represent us, and should not be dictated by outside influences with a different agenda.