$11 million spent to get other 3 initiatives on the ballot. How much for our $30 Tabs Initiative? $700K. We’ll make it for 1/5 the cost. Why?

The final reports for initiative campaigns were posted on Friday.

So now we know how much each initiative spent to qualify for the ballot:

* The carbon tax initiative I-1631 spent $2.1 million to qualify.
* The anti-gun-rights initiative I-1634 spent $4.1 million.
* The no-more-taxes-on-groceries initiative I-1634 spent $5.4 million.

Gulp.

Those are stunning numbers. The previous record holder for most money spent to qualify was in 2012: the charter schools initiative spent $2.9 million. This year’s I-1639 and I-1634 both shattered that record.

And the carbon tax initiative’s “bargain basement” cost of $2.1 million? Let’s put that in perspective. In 2016, there were 4 liberal initiatives that qualified: one spent $1.8 million, another $1.7 million, another $1.6 million, and the last one spent $1.2 million. So $2.1 million for the carbon tax initiative? That’s big.

You have to spend a lot of money when not as many people support your initiative. A petitioner has to slog through a lot of “hell no” voters to finally find the “yes” voters who want to sign. That costs a lot of money.

So how do we compare? Our last report for our $30 Tabs Initiative shows we’ve spent $495,189 so far. That’s one-tenth of the I-1634 campaign. That’s a quarter of the I-1631 campaign.

Why is our campaign for $30 tabs costing a fraction of what other campaigns are spending?

No other initiative has as much widespread support as $30 Tabs Initiative does.

There’s an overwhelming number of voters who support bringing back our $30 tabs.

To keep our momentum going, I loaned another $50,000 to the signature drive yesterday, which brings my total loan to $500,000 which is the amount I pledged in April. I’m all in. That infusion of early money allowed us to hit the streets right away and has kept our overall costs way down. And it also inspired a lot of our supporters to donate dollars and collect signatures on a volunteer basis.

In our first 3 months, we collected 202,172 signatures. That leaves us Aug, Sept, Oct, Nov, and Dec to get the rest (about 100,000 more). We need everyone’s help to get this over the finish line by the December 31 deadline.

Imagine paying just $30 to license your vehicles.

Here’s a super short 60 second video — watch it and then share it far and wide:

Imagine how great it’ll feel to write a check for just $30 to license your cars, trucks, SUVs, motorcycles, motor homes, and other vehicles.  Imagine how good you’ll feel telling politicians — emphatically — that we’re sick and tired of them disrespecting the taxpayers.

To do that, we need to raise a lot more money. Me and my wife Karen’s decision to sell off our family’s retirement fund and loan the campaign $500,000 really inspired folks to donate. But we need a lot more.

We need more supporters to contact me and get petitions. We need more supporters asking folks to sign.

We need to take advantage of all the great summer events and collect signatures while the weather is good.