This is getting kind of interesting: Lori Saldaña, a candidate challenging San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer in this year’s election, has come out in favor of the citizen initiative to authorize a new downtown Chargers stadium/convention center expansion that team owner Dean Spanos has thrown himself behind. Ed Harris, another mayoral candidate, has already endorsed the initiative plan.
Neither of them would be in office to directly affect the plan, obviously — the initiative vote will be held the same day as the mayoral election — but having two prominent political candidates on their side certainly helps give the Chargers plan an additional soapbox. There are still a million obstacles to this plan, starting with where all the money would come from and how much it would cost to buy out and relocate existing businesses on the site, but stranger things have come to fruition, so don’t count this out entirely just yet.
Note that if any candidate secures a 50% majority in the June primary the mayor’s race is taken off of the November ballot. There’s some question of whether or not Saldana and Harris can pull enough votes from Faulconer to push the election out to the November ballot.
A citizens initiative vote being held during a general election ? That’s scary for Spanos. There’s a reason Paul Allen and others paid so much to make their vote a special election.
Neil. Not related to this subject. I just wanted that mention that tickets for the San Francisco Giants v. Sacramento River Cats exhibition game, scheduled for March 30th in Sacramento, sold out in approximately fifteen minutes. How is that for lack of baseball fan support in that city?
1) Nobody ever said Sacramento didn’t have strong fan support. It’s a question of whether it could muster more ticket sales, corporate purchases, cable rights fees, etc., than Oakland.
2) Why exactly are you posting about this here when there are still perfectly good A’s-related comment threads to talk about it on?
1. I believe that is plausible.
2. The last A’s related subject is too far down the list ;(
Go under “posts by topic” and you can select the A’s category. Comments are still open there.