Washington I-645 campaign money by side and donor type (2026)
Contributions reported to the Washington Public Disclosure Commission by the committee opposing Initiative 645 (No on 645), the committee supporting it (Vote Yes Repeal the Income Tax), and Let's Go Washington, which backed I-645 and two other 2026 measures. Donors are grouped by type, with labor organizations split by whether their members are mostly public employees. Also includes Let's Go Washington's 2026 spending on I-645 and Brian Heywood's own contributions, union contributions to the legislators who voted on ESSB 6346, and the state cost of four 2025-27 union contracts.
Coverage: 2026 election-year contributions through October 21, 2026; legislator contributions for the 2020, 2022, 2024 and 2026 election years; 2025-27 contract costs.
Built to check claims about who is funding the I-645 campaigns: the No side's description of Brian Heywood's role and the question of how much of the No side's money comes from unions whose members are paid through the state budget. All committees and contributions are taken whole from PDC's open data; nothing is sampled.
Geography
Washington State
Unit of observation
Donor per committee (contributions); legislator (union contributions); bargaining unit (contract costs).
Update cadence
One-time snapshot taken October 21, 2026. Committees keep filing until after the November 3, 2026 election; rerun the build script for later totals.
Curator
FactHub Research Team
Curated data tables
These related tables form this versioned dataset release. Each
table has its own downloadable file and field definitions.
Contributions by donor and committee
Each donor giving $25,000 or more to a committee in the 2026 election year, plus one aggregate row per donor type for smaller donors.
Share of the committee's total 2026 contributions.
fraction (0-1)
derived
Union contributions to legislators, by vote on ESSB 6346
All 145 legislators who voted on final passage, with contributions to their campaign committees from the donor unions' families in the 2020, 2022, 2024 and 2026 election years.
Node.js script that downloads the PDC and Legislature data and builds every table except the contract costs.
Saved analyses
Money raised by committee and donor group
Question: How much has each I-645 committee raised in 2026, and from what kinds of donors?
Result: No on 645 raised $12.80 million: $7.38 million from Washington public-sector unions, $1.70 million from national public-employee unions, $2.35 million from other unions and labor federations, $1.13 million from individuals and $0.23 million from others. Vote Yes raised $2.21 million and Let's Go Washington $4.00 million, none from unions.
Operation: Sum of 2026 contributions by committee and donor group (five groups collapsed from the donor types).
Scope: No on 645, Vote Yes Repeal the Income Tax, and Let's Go Washington (which backs three measures), 2026 election year, as of October 21, 2026.
Let's Go Washington's total covers three measures, not only I-645.
Snapshot as of October 21, 2026.
Union shares of No on 645's money
Question: What share of No on 645's money came from unions, and from unions whose members are mainly public employees?
Result: Unions supplied 89.3% of No on 645's money. Washington public-sector unions supplied 57.7%, or 70.9% counting NEA, AFSCME and AFT. WEA, WFSE, SEIU 775 and SEIU 925 together supplied 57.6%.
Operation: Sum of the donors table for No on 645 by group, divided by the committee total.
Scope: No on 645, 2026 election year, as of October 21, 2026 ($12,796,413.18).
Shares will change as more contributions are reported before November 3, 2026.
WEA members' pay comes from school districts, which got 73% of their 2022-23 revenue from the state.
Union contributions to legislators by party and vote on ESSB 6346
Question: Did legislators who voted for the millionaires tax receive more union money than those who voted against it?
Result: All 78 yes votes came from Democrats, whose median union total was $26,375. The 11 Democrats who voted no had a similar median of $24,500. The 56 Republicans, all of whom voted no, had a median of $2,300.
Operation: Median and total of each legislator's 2020-2026 contributions from the donor unions' families, grouped by party and final vote.
Scope: All 145 legislators who voted on final passage.
Descriptive comparison only; it does not show why anyone voted as they did.
The 11 Democrats who voted no are a small group.
Let's Go Washington's I-645 spending and Brian Heywood's own 2026 money
Question: How much did Let's Go Washington spend on I-645 in 2026, and how much of its money came from Brian Heywood?
Result: Let's Go Washington spent about $2.48 million in 2026 on items it described as supporting I-645, mostly signature gathering. Brian Heywood personally gave LGW $657,136 in 2026, 16% of its $4.00 million, and gave nothing directly to Vote Yes.
Operation: Sum of LGW 2026 expenditures by the measure named in each purpose description; sum of 2026 contributions from Brian Heywood.
Scope: Let's Go Washington and Vote Yes Repeal the Income Tax, 2026 election year, as of October 21, 2026.
Money is fungible: LGW's I-645 spending cannot be traced to particular donors.
$1.08 million of LGW's 2026 spending names no measure; some of it supported I-645.
Near-general-fund cost of 2025-27 contracts for No on 645 donor unions
Question: How much of the cost of these unions' 2025-27 state contracts falls on the near general fund?
Result: OFM put the added 2025-27 cost of the WFSE general-government contract at $463.6 million, $304.0 million of it from the near general fund, and the SEIU 925 family child-care contract at $183.5 million, all from the near general fund.
Operation: Transcription of OFM's cost table.
Scope: WFSE general government and Community College Coalition, SEIU 1199NW general government, SEIU 925 family child care.
Costs of the new agreements only, not total payroll.
WEA members are not state employees; their pay is bargained with school districts.
Statements on record
Exact quotes, unaltered, with what surrounded them, the primary
source, and an archived copy of it.
“Hedge fund mogul Brian Heywood has spent millions backing I-645 because he wants a tax cut for the top 1%, while sticking working and middle class families and small businesses with higher costs.”
No on 645 committee (statement authors include Janie White, WEA President, and April Sims, Washington State Labor Council President), Authors of the official statement against Initiative 645
2026 Washington voters' pamphlet ·
·
Assertion
Context: First sentence under the heading "Vote No: Stop a Tax Break for the Wealthiest" in the argument against I-645. The statement ends by inviting voters to "Join Washington nurses, teachers, and small business owners."
“The Legislature has control over our wages, benefits, and pensions. They adopt a state budget that determines the funding level for the services we provide.”
Washington Federation of State Employees, Union representing Washington state employees; second-largest donor to No on 645
WFSE website, "2026 WFSE Legislative Victories" ·
·
Assertion
Context: Part of the union's summary of the 2026 session, after it says its members "proved, yet again, that no workforce has more at stake in the decisions made by elected officials than public employees." The first win it lists is passing SB 6346, the millionaires tax.
“But the revenue from the Millionaires Tax won’t arrive until 2029, and we’ll have to fend off court challenges and an initiative this November run by the super-rich who want to keep Washington state a tax haven.”
Washington Federation of State Employees, Union representing Washington state employees; second-largest donor to No on 645
WFSE website, "2026 WFSE Legislative Victories" ·
·
Prediction
Context: From the section "What's Next? Bargaining Our Union Contracts," which goes on: "Most of our members enter contract negotiations this spring." Earlier the page says that by passing the tax, "we took the most significant step in state history to balance Washington State’s upside-down tax code."
Retrieved October 21, 2026. Public record (RCW 42.17A); Washington open data. Public disclosure data; redistributed in aggregate with attribution
Reliability:
Government.
Filed by the committees themselves under Washington's campaign disclosure law and published by the PDC. Committees can amend reports, and in-kind values are the committees' estimates.
Retrieved October 21, 2026. Public record. Public government document; figures transcribed
Reliability:
Government.
OFM negotiates these contracts for the Governor and prepares the cost estimates submitted to the Legislature; figures are estimates of added cost, not payroll totals.
Retrieved October 21, 2026. Public record. Public government document; short quotation
Reliability:
Party to the dispute.
Has a stake in this finding. Statements are written by each campaign's committee and printed unedited by the Secretary of State. The No statement's listed authors include the presidents of the Washington Education Association and the Washington State Labor Council.
Retrieved October 21, 2026. All rights reserved (short quotation). Quoted briefly for commentary
Reliability:
Party to the dispute.
Has a stake in this finding. Published by WFSE, the second-largest donor to No on 645, describing its own legislative goals.
Limitations and reproducibility
Fully reproducible from public data: The included script i645_campaign_finance.js queries data.wa.gov (PDC datasets kv7h-kjye, tijg-9zyp, 3h9x-7bvm) and the Legislature's web services and writes every table except the contract-cost table, which was transcribed from OFM's published cost summary. Totals will differ if run later because committees keep filing reports.
Snapshot as of October 21, 2026. PDC totals change as committees file; No on 645 received $250,000 on October 21 alone.
Donor type is FactHub's classification. Labor organizations were classed by whom they mainly represent: WA public-sector unions (WEA, WFSE, SEIU 775, SEIU 925, PTE Local 17, UAW 4121); national unions whose members are mostly public employees (NEA, AFSCME, AFT); and other unions. Some WA public-sector unions also represent some privately employed workers, and SEIU 775 home-care workers and SEIU 925 family child-care providers are public employees only for collective bargaining.
Donors giving less than $25,000 to a committee are aggregated by type rather than named.
National union money comes from national treasuries funded by members across the U.S., not from Washington payrolls.
Let's Go Washington's I-645 spending is taken from the purpose descriptions in its own expenditure reports; $1.08 million of its 2026 spending (mostly legal, staff and overhead) names no measure and is not counted toward I-645.
Legislator totals match PDC candidate committees by last name and legislative district and count contributions from WEA, WFSE, all SEIU locals and funds, AFSCME, UFCW and AFT affiliates under any spelling the pattern catches; small misspelled contributions may be missed. They include all years' giving, not just giving tied to ESSB 6346.
Contract costs are OFM's estimates of the added cost of the 2025-27 agreements, not total payroll. NGF-O (near general fund-outlook) is the state general fund plus three related accounts.
i645_donors.csv
text/csv · 10.6 KB (10,886 bytes)
