Eyman admits to ‘biggest lie of my life’

By David Ammons

Associated Press

OLYMPIA – Tax rebel Tim Eyman, admitting he lied about taking $45,000 in campaign contributions as salary, said today that he doesn’t know whether this will end his political career.

“It’s not going to be up to me,” he said. “I’m totally without power as to what the next step will be.”

Eyman, who became a household name for pushing tax-revolt initiatives, has admitted taking $45,000 in campaign contributions as salary and had intended to divert another $157,000 this year.

“It was the biggest lie of my life” that no donations had made their way into his personal bank account, Eyman told The Associated Press in a telephone call late Sunday night.

“The fact is, it is true that I made money in past campaigns and planned to make money on future campaigns.”

At a news conference this morning at the Mukilteo post office, Eyman fought back tears and gulped a cup of coffee as he told reporters that he had already sent an e-mail to supporters and would send out a letter also, “asking them what is the right thing to do.”

“I lied about it for the stupidest reason in the world – I wanted my ego stroked,” he said. He added he wanted to take a “morally superior attitude” and portray himself as a man who wasn’t paid for his efforts.

He talked of disappointing his supporters. “I put them in a very awkward position,” he said. He said he does not know whether he will take the $157,000 as planned.

“The initiatives were always about ideas, not about me,” he said. “Now that I’m the bad guy, we’ll get a chance to test that theory.”

Petitions for his latest initiative, I-776, are already being mailed to supporters, he said today, adding that he doesn’t know whether they’ll “just throw them in the garbage.” I-776 would roll back car-tab fees statewide to $30.

Eyman said the $45,000 went into his family’s budget and wasn’t spent on anything in particular. “We spent it on stuff,” he said.

As recently as Friday, Eyman stuck to his story that campaign contributions he diverted to his for-proft consulting firm, Permanent Offense Inc., were being held for future initiative efforts and not for his personal benefit.

But Sunday night, he revealed that “the Permanent Offense Inc. organization was set up to have a way to cover the fact that I was making money sponsoring initiatives, and none of my co-sponsors knew that was the case.”

Eyman said he took $45,000 from POI in December of 2000 after running Initiative 722, the so-called “Son of 695” measure that capped property tax increases, and I-745, requiring 90 percent of all transportation spending go to road construction.

He planned to pay himself the full $157,000 later this year, after running two more initiative campaigns. He said he took nothing in 1999 for running the wildly successful I-695, which rolled back car tabs, and he hasn’t gotten anything for running I-747, a property tax cap, last year.

On Friday, after the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported the massive transfers to Permanent Offense Inc., Eyman lied to newspaper, radio and television reporters, saying he wasn’t personally benefitting from the separate organization.

Over the weekend, the weight of his lies caught up with him, he said Sunday night.

“I was in lie mode,” he said. “I became riddled with guilt. It was the biggest lie of my life and it was over the stupidest thing in the world. The biggest thing I’m guiltiest of is an enormous ego. Hubris.”

Eyman said he spends virtually full time on his initiatives and needed to compensate for his lost income. He sells fraternity wrist watches by mail from his Mukilteo home.

He said he tried to hide his backdoor way of getting paid so he could keep the moral high ground.

“This entire charade was set up so I could maintain a moral superiority over our opposition, so I could say our opponents make money from politics and I don’t.”

Eyman said he became consumed with the heady power of running initiatives and felt the man-of-the-people angle was part of his cachet.

“It was addictive. I was getting deeper and deeper and deeper into this charade. I thought I found a way to make money off our initiatives without our opponents knowing it, or knowing it for sure. I was too clever by half. I just got deeper and deeper into this lie.”

He said he is mortified that he has given his opponents the smoking gun they’ve been looking for, to attack him as a profiteer when they can’t beat him on the issues.

Last week, his prime critic and opponent, Christian Sinderman, said Eyman had turned Permanent Offense into “a personal profit machine,” driving a quarter of last year’s contributions into personal profit.

Reached at his home on Sunday night, Sinderman said he was stunned by Eyman’s revelation.

“Oh my gosh,” he said. “I stumbled upon the fact that he was lying and taking money last summer, and Tim Eyman spent seven months stonewalling and lying to the people of Washington state. He owes more than an apology. He owes the donors their money back.”

Eyman said about $40,000 has been contributed to I-776 so far, and that none will go into his pocket, since all will be needed to print and mail petitions.

State Sen. Adam Kline, D-Seattle, commended Eyman for coming clean, but said the mea culpa wouldn’t have been necessary if state law required initiative sponsors to disclose their campaign finances.

“I appreciate it that he is being truthful now, but why make people lie?” Kline said.

Kline is a sponsor of a bill that would force initiative sponsors to file financial disclosure statements just as candidates for public office do.