Listen to the thunder: Did Sonics leaving doom Nickels?

In a recent colunm this is the question sports columnist Art Thiel explores: did the Sonics leaving Seattle doom incumbent mayor Nickels reelection bid?

First, a little context. Seattle’s incumbent mayor, eight years in office, Greg Nickels, just got beat in the primary by two guys w/ very little to no political leadership experience: one guy says he’s going to fix Seattle w/ managerial skills he learned as a top executive in the wireless industry and the other guy is running on a platform to kill the tunnel project and have the City takeover the public schools. (Writing this, it occurs to me that some might think I’m making this stuff up. I’m not.)

(And let’s also remember that the 75% who did not support Nickels in this primary represent ab 10% of the eligible voters in Seattle. I bet he still would have won in a general election and I bet that’s a bitter pill to swallow in the Nickels camp right ab now.)

Couple points ab Thiel’s question: Did Sonics leaving doom Nickels?

Settling for cash, as Nickels did, rather than continuing a case to make the Sonics stay in Seattle until their contract with the Key Arena ended in 2010, a case that most think the law was on the side of the City, was a cowardly nebbish move. No question. Right, anything could have happened in those two years— like an economic meltdown! Maybe Clay Bennett and his Oakies could have been pushed to sell the team to someone local. I don’t know.

But Howard ‘Starbucks’ Schultz-- repeat after me-- sold the Sonics to someone from out of town in the first place, w/out making any public gesture to sell the team to someone who would for certain keep the team in Seattle (there are plenty of people with that kind of money here), thereby flagrantly fucking over Seattle Supersonic basketball fans!

So Schultz is Seattle enemy Number One on losing the Sonics. But Nickels
does at least deserve more blame than Bennett, who I still hear people blaming. B/c, they say, he said he’d try to keep the team in Seattle, are you kidding me?! It is complete idiocy to have expected him to do anything other than what he did.

Commissioner David Stern deserves special mention as a creep here, too, for his patronizing blackmail threats to move the team if the City couldn’t build an arena— unlike The Key, he decreed— up to NBA standards. Standards that have nothing to do with the cost or spectator experience for the average fan, by the way.

Thiel also throws some shame on Seattleites for not supporting large public subsidies for sports franchises. I’m of two minds on this one. I can sympathize w/ taxpayers. Safeco was built even though the public had just voted down public support for a new stadium b/c of the ecstatic momentum created by the M’s victory over the Yankees in the ’95 playoffs (the peak moment so far in the M’s 30 plus year history). I’m glad we have Safeco but can see how the public might be sore over this. W/ the revenues coming to pro sports it doesn’t make much sense that they receive tax subsidies, or not w/out the public having more of a stake in their connection to the city. Meaning: they can’t be sold to another city w/out the public’s consent. Look at the case of the Sonics, duh! This is where Nickels did have a chance to stand up for the city and he turned the ball over, gave it away, so to speak. Maybe some sonic fans voted in the primary. I did and not for Nickels.

On the other hand, this city does seem to have a problem getting behind big civic projects. It’s astonishing how long it’s taken this city to get a little patch of light rail. Oh, light rail’s a huge developer’s appropriation of public funds that would be better spent on more buses or bicycles on every corner or stand-up scooters for everyone, shouts the opposition. Rail transit seems like a nice feature in Portland and SF and NY and Chicago and D.C. For every big civic project proposed here there is a virulent opposition. Now it’s the tunnel. This guy, Mike McGinn, garnered enough support to oust Nickels b/c he opposed a tunnel project to replace Highway 99 through downtown and open up the waterfront to more touristy foot traffic. Again, the imagined result sounds nice. But it’s a huge misdirection of public funds, so say the opposition.

You might expect this is your typical anti-tax/govt spending stuck-in-the-muds but most those people live outside the city. More likely it's a swelling eco-friendly civic responsibility movement that is popular enough to block such big projects but, for me, hasn’t yet (or can’t?)come up w/ appealing big vision alternatives.