“Tim, why didn’t you mortgage your house again and do another $250K loan?”
Earlier this week, I was asked that question from a longtime supporter.
For those of you who don’t remember, in 2010, the first bill signed into law by Governor Gregoire and the Democrat-dominated Legislature was the repeal of our Initiative 960 requiring a 2/3 vote of the Legislature to raise taxes. We had sponsored and voters had approved that initiative in 2007 and it worked perfectly: there wasn’t a single tax increase in 2008 and 2009. The repeal of our initiative was incredibly arrogant and infuriating. And during that 2010 session without the 2/3 in effect, the Democrats went hog wild, raising taxes a whopping $7.1 billion.
If we didn’t succeed that year in qualifying our new Initiative 1053 (resurrecting the 2/3), the Democrats would have walked away thinking the voters were “just fine” with the repeal. They would have gotten away with it.
There was no way I was gonna let that happen.
We raised as much money as we could from our regular supporters and from some members of the business community. Even so, it wasn’t enough. To fill the gap, I took out a $250,000 2nd mortgage on my house and loaned that amount to the campaign.
It worked. The initiative qualified. Nearly 2/3 of voters approved it and it protected us for another 2 years. “The cause” was helped tremendously.
But it really rocked my family’s personal finances in the ensuing years. To this day, that decision to do that loan has really hurt.
But I have no regrets for doing it. If not for that huge loan, that year’s effort would have failed. And if there hadn’t been a successful I-1053 in 2010, there probably wouldn’t have been a successful I-1185 in 2012. And without that overwhelming vote in favor of I-1185 in 2012, there likely wouldn’t have been the Majority Coalition Caucus in the Senate.
There’s no denying that doing another huge loan would have helped this year’s Initiative 1325 possibly get on the ballot. But I just couldn’t do it again. I hope you can understand that.
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