Squeeze Play: the Campaign for a Ew Twins Stadium
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Squeeze Play: The Campaign for a ew Twins Stadium by The Minnesota Public Advocacy Research Team Organized and edited by Edward Schiappa. Written by Karyl Jo Daughters, Christine Garlough, Amy L. Jester, Julie R. Mactaggart, Jennifer J. McGee, Les J. Opatz, Naomi R. Rockler, Edward Schiappa, Michael Tiffany, Anna C. White, & Brent Whitmore GV 4 'j 6 .M6 S68 ·19gg Squeeze Play: The Campaign for a New Twins Stadium Contents Introduction: Why We Wrote this Book 1 Timeline of the Stadium Campaign 5 Chapter 1: The Twins Campaign: Missing the Strike Zone 15 Chapter 2: The Grassroot Opposition: A Question of Values 48 Chapter 3: The Economic Benefits of a New Stadium: Fact or Fiction? 59 Chapter 4: Declining Fan Support and the Court of Public Opinion 74 Chapter 5: Competing Narratives in Newspaper Coverage 88 Chapter 6: Power Politics: A Political History of the Campaign 106 Epilogue: Lessons Learned 123 Appendix 1: Summary of the Twins' January 1997 Proposed Financing Plan 130 Appendix 2: Analysis of Correlations among Attendance, Win/Loss, 135 and Player Payroll Expenditures. References 142 Introduction Why We Wrote this Book In the fall of 1997 I was only dimly aware of the controversy over a new stadium for the Minnesota Twins. Since moving to Minneapolis in 199.5 I had attended a few games each season and had become a big fan of Paul Molitor, but otherwise I simply had not taken the time to follow the news regarding the particulars of the Twins campaign, the opposition of Progressive Minnesota, and the responses to both in the state legislature. I had picked up on a few of the catch phrases such as Governor Carlson's "vote it in or vote it out!" refrain, the City Pages reference to the 11Give us your money or this kid dies!" commercial, and the three Bs: "billionaire, blackmail, bailout." Like many of my friends and colleagues, I wanted the Twins to stay in Minneapolis but was wary of using large amounts of public tax money to pay for a new stadium. I then received several phone calls from newspaper reporters wanting to know why Minnesota seemed II different" from other parts of the country in its opposition to public funding for a new stadium. I had been referred to these reporters by our university relations office because of my research interests in political communication and popular culture. In response to their questions, I opined that public opposition might be related to the way the media had covered the issue and that our state legislature seemed reasonably responsive to public opinion, but I found when pressed on these matters the best I could say was 11that would make a good research project." After saying this to a reporter for the third time I became convinced the stadium controversy was indeed important and interesting enough to warrant serious investigation. This book is the result. A team of ten graduate students and I met weekly from January through June of 1998. Initially our goal was to answer one question: What the heck happened? Over time we generated a list of questions that grew each week. Some of these included: Do new stadiums really help a team? What went wrong with the Twins' persuasive campaign? Why are so many people so strongly opposed to public funding? Is Minnesota really different from other parts of the country? What lessons can be learned from this campaign? Among our ranks we had all political and sports perspectives covered. The research team included one or two diehard Twins fans who strongly favored public funding for a new stadium as well as nonfans who strongly opposed public funding. Most of us fell in between-not wanting the Twins to leave but feeling uncomfortable about millions of tax dollars being spent on professional sports .. We began the project focussing mostly on the Minnesota Twins, but discovered in the process that the issues involved here are relevant to stadium debates all over the nation. We began by asking What were the persuasive strategies of the Twins organization and why were they unsuccessful? We were surprized to learn that there was no one clearly in charge of lithe" campaign, and in fact there were 2 multiple persuasive efforts going on that sometimes worked at cross purposes. J\1oreover, we soon learned that there was very little effort at a "public" campaign aimed at swaying public opinion, Most effort by the Minnesota Twins owner Carl Pohlad and Twins representatives was aimed at the Governor and the state legislature. The result of our research is reported in chapter one where we chronicle some of the most visible aspects of the Twins campaign and offer our diagnosis as to where the campaign went wrong. Originally we had not planned to do a chapter on Progressive Minnesota1 s grassroots opposition to public funding for a new stadium. However, one member of our research team kept insisting that there was an important story to tell regarding the grassroots movement and she proved herself correct. Chapter two describes some of the opposition movement's history and strategies, and explains some of the reasons this coalition of protesters helped to thwart a corporate-backed multimillion dollar campaign. There are mainly two reasons offered to support a professional baseball team in your town: 1) It is good for the economy; and 2) The great American pasttime of baseball has intrinsic if intangible value. In chapter three we take a close look at the first of these two reasons. The Twins hired the Arthur Andersen accounting firm to compose a report on the economic benefits of building a new stadium. Our research suggests that the direct economic benefits of a new stadium are marginal at best. Furthermore, the Twins project a substantial rise in attendance due to the new stadium. Our statistical analysis of the very teams the Twins cite as examples suggests that rising attendance has less to do with a new stadium than it does the willingness of team owners to invest heavily in quality players. New income from a new stadium could start a cycle of success for the Twins if that income is invested in the team, but new income will not improve win/loss or attendance if it is used simply to pay off the owner's past financial losses. So what was the public thinking about the stadium issue during 1996 and 1997? In chapter four we survey the 21 different public opinion polls that we could find that took place during the stadium campaign. Despite a diversity of questions1 methods, and pollsters, we found remarkable consistency across these surveys. Where the results differed significantly, we found that how the questions were worded probably accounts for the differences. Overall the public is simply far less enthusiastic about the professional sport of baseball than it was twenty or thirty years ago. Declining fan support and impatience with the big business side of sports probably account for the fact that the pubiic was strongly opposed to almost any significant government funding for a new stadium for the Twins. My original hypothesis about the failure of the Twins persuasive campaign was that the media had framed the issue as a rich team owner trying to extort millions from the public treasury. I was wrong. As explained in chapter five, the stories told by the media, particularly the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, and 3 the Twin Cities alternative City Page , were far more complicated than any of us on the research team had anticipated. Thanks to the help of research via the world wide web, we were able to access virtually every one of the hundreds of articles written on the subject of the stadium from late 1995 through June 1998. Our research team found that in general the coverage was quite thorough and fair. Much of the early coverage by both papers approached the issue uncritically as a business deal that was beyond the influence of the general public, which, in fact, is what almost happened. As the issue heated up in 1997, we found interesting differences between the Pioneer Press and the Star Tribune. As the Pioneer Press became more critical of their coverage they also sought to encourage the public to see themselves as active players in the political process. The Star Tribune, while providing very thorough coverage of many aspects of the stadium debate, nonetheless took an editorial stance that basically told the public they did not know what they were doing. The City Pages, cantankerous as ever, provided a valuable and seldom-heard critique not only of the stadium debate but of the coverage provided by major media outlets. Chapter six is a political history of the stadium campaign. As noted earlier, much of the effort to secure stadium funding was not directed to persuading the Minnesota electorate to support the campaign but was aimed at persuading the state legislature. It is strange but true in our democracy that most citizens do not see themselves as "political." The result is that we risk governmental leaders deciding what is best for us either without regard for public opinion or sometimes in direct defiance of the public will. In the stadium debate, the Governor and certain legislative leaders were able for two years to frame the stadium issue as simply one of "how" to fund a new stadium, rather than "whether" such a stadium should be built at public expense. This chapter sums up our story of how and why this stadium campaign unfolded as it did and tries to explain how this chapter in Minnesota political history contains both the best and the worst that Minnesota politics has to offer.