Tuesday is election day, when voters go to the polls to decide on funding new stadiums for the Texas Rangers and San Diego Chargers, and also some other stuff. But anyway, how are those stadium votes looking?
- In Arlington, according to the we’re-not-editorializing-at-all Fort Worth Star-Telegram, “Despite warnings from city officials that the Texas Rangers could leave town unless the team’s owners get help to build a new ballpark, Arlington voters are evenly split on spending taxpayer dollars to subsidize construction of a $1 billion, retractable-roof stadium, according to an exclusive WFAA/Star-Telegram poll.” The current tally is 42-42%, with 16% undecided, which is pretty remarkable in a race where the pro-stadium side has outspent opponents by 200-to-1. ($1.47 million to $7,192, to be precise.) There’s still a good chance that all that campaign money will be a decisive factor with undecided voters over the next few days; nonetheless, it’s becoming clear that that whole “we need a new stadium because the old one doesn’t have air-conditioning” argument isn’t as convincing as the Rangers owners might have hoped.
- In San Diego, where the ballot initiative to spend $1.15 billion on a new Chargers stadium plus convention center expansion already had no hope of getting the two-thirds majority necessary for passage, it now looks unlikely even to come close to a simple majority: “A Union-Tribune/10News poll released Thursday shows that Measure C is trailing 55 percent to 45 percent among actual voters and likely voters who are certain how they will vote, down from a 52 percent to 48 percent margin against the measure in mid-October.” And the Chargers owners, reports the U-T, have already spent “millions of dollars” on TV and radio ads, to no avail.
What does all this mean? That’s it hard to get voters to willingly give over hundreds of millions of public dollars to a private sports team owner. This isn’t really new — it’s been hard for decades, which is why owners like those of the Minnesota Twins and Miami Marlins had to spend 10 years or more trying again and again before winning subsidies — and is why most team owners usually like to deal directly with elected officials where possible, because you can win them over by horse-trading with only a handful of people.
Still, if both the Rangers and Chargers votes go down to defeat, I’m pretty sure this will be the first time that sports team owners were shut out by voters on subsidy demands in a single November. Yet another reason to stay up late on Tuesday to see how this all turns out.
As long as Dean Spanos is the owner of the Chargers there is no chance of public funding for a stadium. His disrespect for the people of San Diego will never be forgotten. Vote NO on measure C.
Maybe KJ can move to San Diego and become their mayor, too.
Sure the Rangers could “leave town” but only for another nearby town. There aren’t that many baseball ready metroplexes of 7 million people available.
OMG! The Rangers might leave D-DW and move somewhere in…D-FW!
How about a stadium swap. Dallas could easily support another football team, and with some marketing, southern California could support a fourth baseball team.
Or the owners simply plant the elected officials to get what they want. Not too many people bother to run for elected office, anyway, so it should be fairly simple to ask a local “puppet” to run and finance their campaign.
I’m a Charger fan but this is a terrible deal. If I didn’t read this blog and other economists for years about all the other dumb deals cities made then maybe I would have been fooled.
San Diego can do better. NO on C!