Eyman Sidekick Loses Bid for Spokane City Council

Periodically it seems one of the taunts made to Tim Eyman has been to urge him to run for office and then see how he would deal with the reality of his tax cuts and the public demand for services. Well this year, one of his principal sidekicks, Mike Fagan of Spokane did just that. And he lost decisively. It’s one thing to propose radical anti-government proposals like Initiative 1033. It’s quite another to have to stand for election yourself.

Mike Fagan ran for the District 1, Position 2 seat against Amber Waldref. Fagan is a co-director with Tim Eyman of Voters Want More Choices which has run a number of anti-governemnt, anti tax initiatives, including this year’s  decisively defeated Initiative 1033, which proposed to freeze both state and local public services.

 Amber Waldref is the Development Director of the Lands Council in Spokane. The Lands Council describes itself as a grassroots, nonprofit that has worked to protect the forests, water and wildlife on thousands of acreas of public lands in the Northwest.

 Here are the vote totals.

Amber Waldref…..6411…..62.72%
Mike Fagan…..3811…..37.28%.

Fagan lacked in the money raising department as well as the voting department.  Washington State Public Disclosure Records show that Fagan only raised $9,193 in cash and $2,749 in kind. He had a total of 53 contributions.

 Meanwhile Waldref raised some $30,935 in cash and some $9,958 in kind. She had 277 contrbutions.

Interestingly Fagan did not report any contributions from Tim Eyman but he did get $500 from Michael Dunmire and $500 from Mrs Phyllis Dunmire of Woodinville. Dunmire contributed $300,000 to the I-1033 campaign and has been a long time contributor to Eyman and Fagan’s initiative campaigns. Besides the Dunmires,  Fagan also got
$2500 from Mrs Cynthia Zapotocky
$1000 from Monroe Court Limited Partnership
$500 from Leo Fagan
$500 from the Spokane County Republican Party

Waldref’s largest contributors were:
$4015 Inland NW Leadership PAC
$5000 from IAFF Local 29 Political Action
$2000 from Washington St Council of County and City Employees
$1000 from Avista Corporation
$1000 from Spokane Com. for Political Education
$500 from Don Barberi
$500 from Paul Brainerd

Initiative 1033  lost decisively in Spokane County, with the latest percentage No vote slightly above the state average.  The Spokane County vote was 70,729 (57.93%)  No to .51.373 (42.07%) Yes for I-1033.