The Sassy Mouth Of The Masses -- Meet The 33-Year-Old Who Got The $30 Car Tax On Ballot

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 '92 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."

Jim Lynch's phone message number is 360-943-9882. His e-mail address is jlynch@seattletimes.com

----------------------------- Initiative 695: pros and cons -----------------------------

I-695 would cut most car-tab fees to $30 a year and require a public vote on almost any state- or local-government tax and fee increase.

Proponents call it needed relief from Washington's motor-vehicle excise tax, which is among the highest in the country. The timing is perfect, they say, considering the state has a $1 billion surplus. They also argue that the lost revenues - about $550 million a year - will not vanish, because the money will flow back into the economy and increase sales-tax revenues.

Giving voters final say on future tax increases protects the public, they say.

Opponents say I-695 would derail the $2.4-billion transportation-spending plan voters approved last November and further snarl state highways. They also point out that local governments rely on their share of motor-vehicle excise-tax revenues to help fund transit and criminal-justice programs.

Voting on every fee or tax increase would be a nuisance, they argue, and would encourage needless micro-management of government.

-- Jim Lynch