Today’s big spending liberal – Nick Hanauer

Now that ballots are going out, campaigns across the state are shifting in to high gear. And, as a public service, the folks at Shift have decided to shine a light every day until November 8 on the special interests who are putting carbon-based fuel – in the form of big money – in the tank of Democrat candidates and liberal causes across our state.

We start today with Nicolas Hanauer – the Democrats’ biggest sugar daddy since Tom Steyer got more interested in trying to buy the next governor’s race in his home state of California and stopped polluting Washington with his millions.

Mr. Hanauer, whom fortune shined on when Jeff Bezos offered him the chance to be the first non-family investor in a little company called Amazon, is closing in on $3 million in Washington State donations this year, according to Public Disclosure Commission records. As of today, he stands at $2,943,000 in personal checks

To help you decide what initiatives and candidates to vote against, here is where the state’s most mega-liberal donor/partisan hypocrite is investing his millions:

1. $1,540,000 to raise the state’s minimum wage – Initiative 1433 – though, of course, Hanauer does not want to pay his own company’s North Carolina employees anything close to the $13.50 he wants in Washington state, so he’ll keep it at $7.50 an hour there, because apparently even economic hypocrites can afford accountants to tell them not to do stupid things like overpaying for entry-level labor unless government makes you do it.
2. $1,290,000 for the gun-control initiative 1491, to make sure he continues to get invited to all the right Seattle cocktail parties despite his wacky economic ideas.
3. $83,000 to various Democrat campaign efforts, including $50k to the state party, $10k to the State Senate Democrats, and $23k to three statewide candidate – Jay Inslee, Cyrus Habib and Tina Podlodowski – and 15 legislative candidates. Amazingly enough, all of them are Democrats who want to raise your taxes!
4. $30,000 to three other initiative campaigns, including the $54 billion-dollar Sound Transit boondoggle.

There you have, a veritable Who’s Who of candidates and causes in debt to Nicolas Hanauer.