I would love to report here on what the results of the U.S. presidential and congressional elections will mean for stadium and arena subsidies — and they are undoubtedly going to mean a lot, for a whole hell of a lot of things — but that’s going to have to wait until I can do a deeper analysis of the fine print of Project 2025. (And see what the likelihood is of even half its proposed economic policy changes happening, especially if the second Trump Administration gets bogged down in figuring out how to detain and deport 13 million people.) In the meantime, there looks to be one likely stadium-related outcome of the just-completed vote:
Early election results Tuesday evening showed 65% of voters favoring the recall of Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, the labor-backed progressive who has struggled to build trust around the city during the first two years of her term…
The early returns indicated that Thao, who was elected in 2022 to a four-year term, was on her way to being removed from office, with voters supporting her recall by nearly a two-to-one margin — the culmination of an expensive recall effort that has focused primarily on Oakland’s crime woes.
Thao’s recall doubles the number of U.S. mayors who have seen sports teams leave their cities and then been removed from office during the next vote, to two. (Former Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels appreciates finally having some company.) While the A’s moving to Sacramento and thence to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ was certainly a factor in the recall, most of the vote was drummed up by a recall campaign funded by a hedge fund billionaire who doesn’t even live in Oakland and inflamed by a moral panic about street crime; if Nickels’ epitaph will be “didn’t shovel the snow,” Thao’s will likely be “didn’t save In-N-Out Burger.”
Still! The A’s leaving clearly didn’t help Thao: It’s one of the top four accusations leveled against her on the recall’s campaign site. While it’s still more likely for elected officials to be removed from office for approving sports subsidies than opposing them — George Petak, Tim Lee, Carlos Alvarez, and several others have entered the chat — they both have their risks, as does pissing off the local coal baron, apparently.
More on this breaking story as news develops. Meantime, I gotta go read me some Heritage Foundation plans for world domination — banning unions for government workers and requiring states to report to the federal government who’s having abortions, you say? Cool, cool.
I seriously doubt the A’s leaving are a major consideration (no matter what people who voted for recall “say” when they leave the voting booth).
The A’s leaving had little to do with Oakland and everything to do with their incompetent fool of an owner.
But since we are actually supposed to talk about sports subsidies here…
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/nov/05/us-sports-team-political-donations-database
I’m sure it’s all just a coincidence…
It’s a healthy dose of five, six-, and seven-figure b̶r̶i̶b̶e̶s̶ campaign contributions in that mix, and that’s just for a specific subset of sports franchise owners… yet the average American is expected to seriously embrace the idea that what they do personally and collectively in the voting booth — and the grander political arena — has a massive impact on their daily lives at the local, regional, state, and federal levels.
Both sides billed this election, just as they have the last several elections, as this battle to “save democracy.” That ship sailed long, long ago.
While I’m 100% willing to blame both parties for this, it’s also true that those campaign donors wouldn’t have nearly so much money without Reagan’s change to the tax laws, and they wouldn’t be able to donate nearly so much without the Citizens United ruling that was enabled by Bush’s Supreme Court appointments.
All of which is to say: This ain’t getting better anytime soon.
Make sure you get your medicines and prescriptions for flu season! make sure to understand what that vaccine stuff is supposed to do and what it really is. find out the news/ rumors about it and make a smart/ wise decision. you should talk to the doctors, vaccine companies(web) and people who took the vaccines then decide if you want to take it/ them.
But maybe you should try to get other ways to deal with the flu ask the doctor and go to the drug store and ask how to handle flu season without the vaccines.
The A’s have made a lot of people
MLB knows a 9 acre stadium is a silly idea. yet they and fans want the luxury and glamour side of the situation to show off being part of the new stadium/ fun area fad that
The A’s are a very good team don’t be fooled! they have one of the best front offices in MLB. that’s not a problem but if you think about it, they could’ve won more if not been contenders for years in the ’00s but refused to do it IMO…they were TANKING. This is what Vegas fans are asking for a con job! to get out of Oakland they were TANKING! No, don’t put it all on Mr. Fischer, many teams will do that for a reason.
MLB should’ve told the A’s look, you got a huge complex and it’s yours. Las Vegas is wealthy and glamorous but its’ got bad weather and the 9 acre thing is very silly and shameful.
A’s should give Oakland or Sacramento a few months to give them money for a new stadium. I don’t think L.V. will be too upset.
The A’s screwed’ over fans and is making MLB look bad. They could’ve made money off tickets, parking, sponsors, revenue sharing and the Bay Area market but like I’ve said there is some move to get pro sports out of Oakland. They had to deal with Oakland politicians’ silly and slow to act actions but they can’t blame them, crime waves and money issue they had a huge area to build a new stadium and now watch how suddenly, they are winning a little more in Sac. This is sad to move to Sac and then to a small stadium in LV.
I got both my updated COVID and flu vaccines last week. Many years back my family did an unintentional controlled experiment where we each got flu vaccines at different times (thanks to who could easily get them when), all ended up getting infected the same week, and then the person who had been vaccinated earliest barely got sick, the person who had gotten vaccinated a week earlier was sick for a couple of days, and the person who had just gotten vaccinated was sick for a week.
If they made a vaccine against John Fisher, I would sign up for it tomorrow.
OOOO, that’s a guaranteed Nobel prize for Medicine winner right there…
The good news is he’s Sacramento’s problem now (and probably for a good long while). He should be pretty anonymous except for the occasional pop up in Vegas to remind everyone that he totally has the money to build his stadium but would like to not use his money to build a stadium and is hoping to have someone else give him some so his harebrained scheme can stumble onward to catastrophe.
Maybe we can all just pretend he doesn’t exist.
Mayor Thao didn’t have the right people’s backing and they took her out (in CA you can recall an elected official with the appropriate number of signature to get the recall on the ballot and then 50%+1 gets them out). The A’s leaving had nothing to do with it
That’s kinda the way I understood it too, but I don’t live there and haven’t heard much from the Mayor except in relation to the city’s dealings with the A’s.
Generally, I am in favour of recall legislation being “a thing” as it is supposed to allow enough angry citizens to remove from office an elected official that isn’t doing their job well/properly/at all.
In fact, to no-one’s surprise, it has become just another avenue for rich people who don’t get their way to subvert democracy. Because freedom means whomever has the most money gets their way no matter what it costs anyone/everyone else.
Recall rules can conflict with ranked choice voting. Sheng Thao got about 45% of the total vote after ~12,000 voters didn’t have either of the top two in their rank. It would be easy to concoct an artificial case in which an unpopular over-all candidate could win a ranked choice vote and be quickly recalled due to a majority not ranking the top two candidates. This is an especially possible outcome if people only vote for their first choice and there are many candidates.
Their first vote only gets nullified and moved to there 2nd choice if their first choice is the lowest vote getter. However as Oakland voting has shown the ranked choice voting can produce interesting results. Don peralta should have won the first mayoral election under ranked choice except that there was ranked choice voting and Don didn’t account for this. His opponents campaigned on a “vote for us second” and once the votes were reranked peralta ended up losing the 2010 Oakland mayoral election to Jean Quan (god what a fuckup Quan was). Peralta was well ahead on the first round of voting but people didn’t vote for him either 2nd or 3rd and he ended up losing by about 2000 votes