“Get the big things right in the face of adversity”: This is what stadium lobbying looks like

The Nashville metro council is set to cast its final deciding vote today on spending $1.2 billion in public money on a new stadium for the Tennessee Titans, with the plan expected to pass handily given the results of prior votes. And just in time for that, local Nashville resident Kelly Chieng has turned up a stash of lobbying emails and other documents that were sent to councilmembers in advance of last week’s penultimate vote. Let’s take a gander and see how the sausages get made:

Good morning CM XXX,

Today is the big vote day on the Titans Stadium. The last few weeks in Nashville have been momentous, and it’s a challenging time to be in your shoes. We’ve faced those challenges head on and had some real victories along the way. You’re proof that our City gets the big things right even in the face of adversity. 

The most important part of political advocacy is less specific arguments than framing: To get the job done, you need to build a compelling narrative that paints a vote for your thing as being on the side of the angels. Here, Sam Reed of Jigsaw (“a dynamic strategic consulting firm focused on finding solutions custom fit to our partners’ needs,” which is some A+ framing right there) recasts trying to pass $1.2 billion in public funding over the opposition of most city residents as facing “challenges” and “adversity,” like it’s climbing Mount Everest or something. (Yes, public opinion is here presented as “adversity.” Only true heroes can overcome the perils of democratic accountability!)

What’s before you tonight is the chance to fix a big, unfunded problem for the city with a sustainable solution that takes the burden off of Nashville taxpayers and put it onto the Titans. This is the culmination of over two years of work by the country’s top experts that brings together state, local, and private partners to build a state-of-the-art stadium to host internationally significant events, keeps the Titans in Nashville for another generation, and provides a catalyst to unlock East Bank development.      

More framing: Spending $1.2 billion is fixing an “unfunded problem” by taking “the burden off of Nashville taxpayers.” This is simply a lie, but “the country’s top experts” (in what exactly? never mind such details!) couldn’t be wrong, could they?

The letter goes on to include a point-by-point summary of all the amendments that were on the table last week, helpfully sorted into “Titans Support” and “Titans Oppose,” with several of the latter being on the grounds that they’re “contrary to the negotiated deal,” even though the whole point of the council voting is to give it the right to help negotiate the deal. Finally, there’s a series of “data points” that contain little data, but mostly arguments about how democratic (39 public meetings! 153 public comments!), necessary ($1-2 billion in needed renovations without a new stadium, though the actual number appears to be much less than that), and unavoidable (“Opponents offer no alternative financing plan” for, uhhh, not building a stadium?) the Titans plan is.

Again, all of this is less meant to win rational arguments than to provide butt-covering talking points: If a metro councilmember can explain away their vote for handing $1.2 billion to the local sports billionaire as “getting the big things right” to save Nashville taxpayers money, that’s far more important than whether it actually would save taxpayers money or, you know, cost them $1.2 billion. And it doesn’t hurt that it’s coming from Reed, a former staffer to Nashville’s then-Congressional representative Jim Cooper (and owner of “trendy coffee shops”), for which the Titans owners are paying … less than $150,000? That’s pretty cheap — maybe somebody should start a GoFundMe to buy a former government staffer to represent Nashville residents who aren’t billionaires.