They’re going for it. KVI's Kirby Wilbur (m-f, 6-9a) and John Carlson (m-f, 3-6p) are stoking their mighty conservative listener community into action.
The task seems like Mission Impossible: to collect 250,000 signatures in 6 weeks to put an initiative on the ballot in November to stop the much needed transportation bill passed by the Democratic Legislature which added 9 cents a gallon gas tax increase. It's the first money spent on this infrastructure in decades.
They’ve got a website up soliciting funds and volunteers; Wilbur’s been promo-ing it hourly on his morning drive. Carlson will do the same this afternoon.
Since Legislators put an emergency clause on the bill which precluded a referendum, the repealing instrument with an easier standard to put on the ballot, they were stuck with the more difficult initiative.
It never ceases to amaze us: the left, the Democrats, the progressives who dominate the Puget Sound region have nothing like this. Their grassroots are a vacant lot full of weeds compared to the manicured Republican putting green tendered by the likes of Carlson, Wilbur (and to some extent Mike Siegel). They're experienced political operatives, and over the years, they’ve been able to drive many issues for the Republican minority leaving the majority D’s behind flatfooted.
This from blatherWatch’s funny but definitive KVI Radio: An Irreverent Histoire:
* "Talk radio--particularly KVI--was really helpful getting out the word for I-695," says anti-tax activist Tim Eyman about his first successful initiative campaign. Indeed--and it didn't cost him a dime. Talk hosts statewide aired campaign logistics and activated citizens who'd never before voted to make the grassroots tax revolt an historic success.
* "We made a real impact defeating R-51," says Kirby Wilbur of the 2002 transportation package that infuriated the talk radio demographic with a 9 cent gas tax increase.
* Ward Connerly, the black University of California regent and businessman who spearheads anti-affirmative action movements all over the country told us in 2003, "KVI radio was absolutely crucial in passing [anti-affirmative action] I-200 in Washington."
* In just two drive times in April 2003, Wilbur and Carlson raised $70,000 in small donations for a national pro-war TV spot. "We even put it on 'The West Wing.'" Wilbur laughs because the national show is often excoriated on talk radio as leftist propaganda. A half-assed, lackadaisical effort on the Mike Webb Show (KIRO m-f, 9p-1a) for a similar antiwar ad never got off the ground.
Carlson and Webb are longtime Republican activists. They carry its water, they’re powerful forces within it and there’s no one nor any comparable entity in the Democratic Party.
Can they pull this off? Stay tuned, blatherWatch will be listening.
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