YAKIMA — Anti-tax advocate Tim Eyman was forcibly removed from a Yakima City Council meeting after ranting against a council member.
Eyman had attended the meeting to read a statement making light of a blogging scandal that has dogged a newly elected city councilman.
But when Eyman began to attack the loser in the race, Councilman Ron Bonlender, and refused to stop speaking, Mayor Dave Edler called security and had him removed from the meeting.
“It was all theater from my perspective,” Edler said Wednesday. “We all realized this was just a venom-laced attack on Ron Bonlender. He’s not gonna come into the city chambers and attack a member of the council like that.”
Eyman, meanwhile, complained that he was the victim of censorship at the Tuesday night meeting.
“I never raised my voice. I used no profanity. I kept waiting for somebody to tell me where I stepped over the line,” he said.
Rick Ensey, a property manager, defeated Bonlender, a sandwich shop owner, with 52.5 percent of the vote in the Nov. 6 election.
An anonymous blogger throughout the campaign repeatedly criticized Bonlender and Democrats on the Internet site InsideYakima.com. The blogger also referred to “rumors” that Bonlender had been arrested several times for investigation of drunken driving and that the arrest reports had been covered up by police, the city manager and the local newspaper.
The blogger offered no evidence and a review of state records by the Yakima Herald-Republic found nothing to back up the claims.
Two days after the election, Ensey acknowledged his wife was the anonymous blogger. Bonlender has since filed suit for defamation and portraying him in a false light.
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