Jay Nixon packs a ‘whole lot of stupid’ into defense of stadium subsidies
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon loves sports metaphors. He once described his governing philosophy as “three yards and a cloud of dust,” the strategy of the legendary football coach Woody Hayes.
So it’s fitting that Nixon, in his final days in office, has been talking (and tweeting) a lot about sports, specifically the public’s role in building stadiums.
First, Nixon took umbrage with Gov.-elect Eric Greitens’ characterization of the effort to build a new Major League Soccer stadium in downtown St. Louis as “back-room wheeling and dealing.”
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A few days later, Nixon met with reporters from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The governor reiterated his support for a plan to build a $200 million soccer stadium. In the current proposal, the city and state would contribute $129 million.
Nixon said the people who think stadium subsidies represent “welfare for millionaires,” to borrow Greitens’ language, need to get over it. “Folks may want to anguish a little bit over all this sort of stuff, but it’s the price of doing business,” Nixon said.
Yael Abouhalkah took issue with Nixon’s comment on Twitter. Nixon responded by reminding the Kansas City Star columnist-turned-blogger that the Truman Sports Complex was publicly financed.
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But others share Abouhalkah’s view that politicians are too quick to socialize the costs of sports stadiums that are “public owned” in name only. (The Chiefs operate Arrowhead Stadium not just on game days but all the time.)
On Monday, the writer Neil deMause broke down Nixon’s comments to the Post-Dispatch. The analysis was unkind. “[T]hat’s a whole lot of stupid packed into just three sentences,” deMause wrote in a blog post at his site Field of Schemes.
Among other things, deMause faults Nixon for his apparent willingness to accept the fact that St. Louis won’t get a soccer franchise without the public paying for more than half the cost of a new stadium.
“It’s the price of doing business.” This is mostly meaningless rhetoric, but to the extent it has any meaning, it’s “this is the best deal we’re going to get.” Except the $129 million in state and city spending being proposed is literally the team owners’ first ask, so there’s no way to know whether this is the price of doing business or just what a couple of wannabe MLS owners decided they can sucker the public into giving them.
Today, when even many sportswriters think stadiums are a bad place to spend the public’s money, politicians who defend the subsidies should expect criticism. Or, to put it in a way Nixon might understand, they need to be like a quarterback who is willing to stand in the pocket and take a hit.
