Dem officials accused of concealing 'sneaky attack' by leftist billionaires to scuttle Washington citizen initiatives

Representatives of a citizen advocacy group were blindsided by an effort to invalidate voter-backed initiatives for the November ballot that made it all the way to the Washington State Supreme Court without anyone informing them.

On Friday, a reporter who happened to be looking at the case docket asked Let’s Go Washington for a comment about the group’s initiatives being challenged at the high court, which came as a total surprise to the organization. In an exclusive interview with The Ari Hoffman Show on Talk Radio 570 KVI, Brian Heywood of Let’s Go Washington called the effort to challenge the initiatives “very hush, hush.”

This November, voters will decide on the initiatives that would repeal the state’s capital gains tax, repeal a carbon tax that has spiked gas prices, allow residents to opt out of the state’s long-term care program, and prevent state and local governments from banning natural gas. Let’s Go Washington and volunteers gathered millions of signatures to qualify the measures for the ballot.

In January, the anti-initiatives organization Defend Washington, backed by leftist billionaires including Bill Gates, Steve Balmer and Nick Hanauer, filed a lawsuit against Washington’s Democratic Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, claiming signatures to qualify the initiatives for the ballot were gathered illegally, attempting to force the measures to re-qualify for the ballot. The case against the initiatives was also backed by SEIU and the Washington Education Association, a teachers’ union.

While signatures were being gathered for the initiatives, SEIU and the ACLU set up a “snitch line” asking for physical descriptions of signature gatherers and even offered to bribe paid signature gatherers thousands of dollars to move to Florida until the end of December when time would run out to collect signatures.

Attorney General Bob Ferguson, a current candidate for Washington governor, who helped implement the policies the initiatives are repealing, has many donors that oppose the initiatives, and who personally opposes the initiatives, represented the secretary of state in the case.

In April a Superior Court Judge dismissed the case but the plaintiffs appealed and the case should have gone to an appeals court but because the plaintiffs asked for expedited action, it was sent directly to the state Supreme Court. The case was heard by the court behind closed doors and was not open to the public.

A second case brought in July by the Washington Conservation Action Defense Fund against Hobbs attempted to invalidate the secretary of state’s certification of the initiative to prevent the government from restricting natural gas.

Throughout the entire process, there was no attempt made by Hobbs or Ferguson to contact Let’s Go Washington or any of the people involved in the initiatives who were named in the suits. Heywood called the effort to challenge the initiatives a “sneaky, sneaky, quiet attack that no one told us about.”

On Friday afternoon the court unanimously rejected the claims and dismissed the cases against the initiatives which recent polls have predicted passing by wide margins. The Attorney General's Office did not respond to requests for comment.

Hobbs' office told Hoffman, "The Office of the Secretary of State fulfilled all obligations in defending its signature review process in this public court proceeding."

Over the weekend, Ferguson tried to quell the backlash when challenged by his Republican opponent Dave Reichert for not informing anyone the cases were happening, falsely claimed on X that the cases were “public every step of the way” because “Supreme Court dockets are published,” implying that the public should check all court dockets everyday to see if they might be involved in a lawsuit they had no idea would be filed.

Ferguson’s office even admitted in a July court filing that the interested parties weren’t notified arguing against an injunction claiming it would “affect voters throughout the state. At a minimum, reasonable notice should require notice to the sponsor of the initiatives that the injunctive relief would exclude from the ballot.”

Yet Ferguson failed to provide notice to the interested parties. Ferguson’s office has a history of concealing information from the public and together with the Department of Social and Health Services was fined over $200,000 for deliberately withholding documents in a lawsuit involving a developmentally disabled adult who was abused and neglected in the adult home where she was placed. The judge in the case called Ferguson and DSHS behavior “egregious,” and that there was “no reasonable justification or excuse” for their actions.

In another incident, Ferguson told a utility company to conceal the price increases the carbon tax would have on bills.

Heywood added, “I think there's sort of two stories. One is, The sneaky attack that they did, which is really trying to thwart the voice of the voters, but there's a second one that I'm going to look into and that's how did it get all the way to the Supreme Court on something that I personally have invested very deeply and everyone that's invested in our campaign is invested in, and that this thing could have just suddenly been thrown out?”