Tag Archives: Vikings Stadium

Symmetrical Couples and Asymmetrical Stadiums

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Yesterday was a tough day for traditionalists.  If you like your weddings square and your stadiums oval, it was not your day.

The Minnesota Senate passed a law extending the freedom to marry to gay people.  A few hours later the Minnesota Vikings presented a stadium design that is more likely to be featured in the Hirshorn Museum than the Football Hall of Fame.

I feel for my conservative friends, who are hopelessly nostalgic for the glory days of their youth, when Ward and June were prototypical couples and football was played in Met Stadium’s glorious mud, wind and ice.  Yesterday, they were served a heapin’ helpin’ of contemporary change, and I know it was jarring for them.  As of this post, shrapnel from Joe Soucheray’s head reportedly has been found in three neighboring states.

Yesterday, my conservative friends were told that some married couples will look like Ward and Ward, and June and June.  That does take some getting used to.  But as one who had to get used to the idea myself, I’ve found it helps to focus on the positive.  Even for traditionalists, there is a lot to admire about this new brand of married couple, such as a love so strong it has survived waves of ignorance, bigotry and hate.

On the same day that the legal definition of marriage was broadened by the Legislature, my conservative friends were also told that they would not be able to watch football the way they say it was meant to be watched — in crappy weather in a traditional stadium whose architecture has only slightly evolved since the Flavian Amphitheatre.  Call it Lambeau envy.

Admittedly, the new Vikings stadium design is “different,” a word that passive aggressive Minnesotans tend to use when they actually are meaning “sucky,” but, little known fact, is actually defined as “not the same as others.”

The new Vikings stadium definitely is “not the same as others.”   It looks a bit like a football field grown inside of Reverend Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral, or a hog confinement building after a tornado, or a half-assed green house constructed of scrap materials, or the Walker Art Museum on bovine growth hormones.

That does take some getting used to. But as one who crinkled my nose the first time I saw the asymmetrical design, I’ve found it helps to focus on the positive.  Even for traditionalists, there are a lot of things to admire about this new brand of stadium — stunning skyline views from inside, sunshine to replace the Metrodome’s perpetual dinge, windows that crank open on the rare nice day, a blissfully clear path to spacious bathrooms, and climate control in a land of mostly “different” climate.

Yes, change takes some getting used to, and we won’t all love these changes right away.  But if we keep an open mind, I bet we will adjust to symmetrical couples and asymmetrical stadiums quicker than we think.  Onward.

- Loveland

Is Legalizing Gay Marriage a Minnesota Jobs Program?

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Governor Mark Dayton used his State of the State Address last night to endorse legalizing gay marriage in Minnesota.   And right on cue, Rep. Greg Davids (R-Preston) took the Republicans’ most predictable jab:

 ”He’d rather talk about gays getting married instead of getting Minnesotans jobs that could provide for their families.”

We’re going to be hearing a lot more of that claim from Republicans in the weeks to come, so the argument merits dissection.

Forget for a moment that Davids’ party repeatedly beat down Governor Dayton’s  job-creating bonding proposals when it controlled the Legislature.  Forget that Dayton’s 2013 budget proposal includes several items designed to create jobs:

  • $86 million in low-interest loans for businesses relocating to Minnesota;
  • $25 million for a Minnesota Job Creation Fund;
  • $30 million in transportation and housing spending linked to economic development;
  • A Vikings stadium that will put about 13,000 Minnesotans to work; and
  • A more stable tax system to make our economy more bullet proof during downturns.

Forget about all that for a moment.

Instead, let’s take a look at whether there is any direct connection between legalizing gay marriage and creating and retaining Minnesota jobs. A 2012 article from CNNMoney sheds some light on this question:

 Since gay marriage was legalized in New York state a year ago, marriage license fees, local celebrations and wedding-related purchases have boosted New York City’s economy by $259 million, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn announced Tuesday.

“Marriage equality has made our City more open, inclusive and free — and it has also helped to create jobs and support our economy,” Mayor Bloomberg said in a statement.

More than 8,200 same-sex marriage licenses have been issued over the past year, representing more than 10% of the 75,000 licenses issued in the city, according to a survey conducted by the City Clerk’s Office and NYC & Company, the city’s tourism and marketing organization.

The city collected $16 million in tax revenue from same-sex marriages over the past year. But weddings brought the biggest economic boost to the city, with about 67% of same-sex couples who got married in the city holding wedding receptions at venues like hotels, restaurants and catering halls throughout New York City’s five boroughs.

Same-sex couples spent an average $9,039 on their weddings, while 31% spent $10,000 or more — though that’s still not as high as the $27,021 that the average couple spends on a wedding, according to a national survey of gay and straight newlyweds from TheKnot.com.

More than 200,000 guests flocked to New York City from other parts of the state or country to partake in the celebrations. Hotels booked nearly 236,000 nights at an average rate of $275 per night. More than 40,000 wedding announcements were printed, and couples bought 47,445 wedding favors, the economic impact survey found.

Of course, in addition to the beginning we also have to consider the end.  That is, many a heterosexual can tell you that what naturally follows many weddings is divorce, and it can sometimes cost more to get out of a marriage than it costs to get into one.  Though an expansion of divorce is an unfortunate consequence of an expanded definition of marriage, divorce proceedings do generate additional economic activity.

It should be noted that Minnesota is not as populous as New York, so we would not see economic benefits anything like the New York benefits.  More to the point, equality and fairness are the more meaningful reasons Minnesota needs to legalize same-sex marriage as soon as possible, not job creation.

Still, a look at what is happening in other states with newly legalized same-sex weddings shows that the Republicans’ asssertion that same-sex marriage would have no positive impact on jobs in Minnesota is every bit as silly as their other arguments against same-sex marriage.

- Loveland

Note:  This post was also featured in Politics in Minnesota’s Best of the Blogs.

How In the World Did Minnesota GOPers Screw Up Their Golden Opportunity?

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I have a prediction, though not a particularly prescient one.  Minnesota Republicans will say they lost the election because of bad candidates.  Mitt Romney, Kurt Bills, and the Tea Party-supported freshmen legislators were all just bad candidates, they will say.

“Victory has a thousand fathers, and defeat is an orphan,” as John F. Kennedy observed, and in the coming days a lot of Republican candidates will be orphaned.

But for their own good, Republican leaders need to objectively ponder this question:  Bad candidates, or bad policies?

After all, on a policy level, Mitt Romney made himself into everything the Republican Party activists demanded of him.  He could not have been more ideologically obedient.  He flipped on banning abortion for them.  He flopped on Romneycare/Obamacare for them.  He flipped on assault rifle bans for them. He flopped on the minimum wage for them.  He flipped on stem cell research for them. He flopped on amnesty for undocumented workers for them.

This move toward being what Romney himself described as “severely conservative” was demanded by the extremist ideologues controlling the Republican Party these days.  With Romney now having lost to an embattled incumbent burdened by a long-suffering economy, is the bigger problem really Romney’s relative political skills, or the party ideas that Mitt was forced to espouse?

Likewise, the Minnesota Republican Party picked Kurt Bills, arguably the most conservative candidate in the field, to run against incumbent U.S. Senator Amy Kloubachar.   Bills was joined at the hip with fringe presidential candidate Ron Paul, who backs the legalization of heroin and hookers.  Mr. Bills made a name for himself in the Minnesota Legislature by suggesting, I kid you not, that Minnesota have its own currency.

The Tea Party right demanded Bills, they got him, and he won just 31% of the vote.  Who knew, but it turns out that Minnesotans weren’t craving their own currency after all.  So is the bigger problem really that Mr. Bills failed in the mechanics of campaigning, or that Minnesotans rejected the extreme ideas that Mr. Bills and the Minnesota Republican Party are embracing these days?

And then there is the GOP-controlled Minnesota Legislature that was swept into office in the 2010 wave election. The freshman-dominated GOP-controlled Legislature insisted on an unbalanced approach to closing the budget shortfall, against public wishes.  The GOP legislators’ undying fealty to the tax pledge police caused them to shut down state services, and ultimately to use school budgets as their personal ATM.   They frittered their time in office dreaming up divisive constitutional amendments that voters rejected.  They compared children on Food Stamps to wild animals.  All of this led them to having the approval of just 17% Minnesotans, making them the least popular Minnesota Legislature on record.

So, again, was the bigger problem that every last one of these freshmen legislators lacked campaigning skills, or was it the ideas and values they espoused?

Keep in mind, this should have been a fantastic year for Republicans.  We’ve slogged through high unemployment over four difficult years, and people are understandably weary and worried.  At the same time, Democrats needed to do some very politically risky things, such as rescuing the auto and financial services industries, passing a stimulus bill during a time of high deficits and passing the most sweeping health care reform law in American history.

Against all odds, in the midst of this electoral hellscape for Democrats, the Republicans lost big.  Now they are left to sort whether they lost this golden opportunity because their leaders weren’t sufficiently talented campaigners, or because they weren’t sufficiently temperate leaders.

- Loveland

 

Note:  This post was also featured as a “best of the best” in MinnPost’s Blog Cabin feature.

Photo by Star Tribune

Three Reasons For The Silence On The Campaign Trail About Vikings Stadium Subidies

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In 2012, the dominant issue in the Minnesota Legislature was the debate about public subsidies for the Vikings Stadium.  No issue was more emotionally charged.  No issue was more polarizing.  No issue was more heavily covered in the news.

So just a few months later, why is this marquee legislative issue such an insignificant factor in the campaign for control of the Minnesota Legislature?  After all, based on last year’s debate, you might expect that  it would be The Issue out on the stump.

But I’m not seeing it.  The issue hasn’t been raised once in any of the many political direct mail pieces that have clogged my mailbox, or cable TV ads flooding my living room.  Moreover, I Googled “Vikings Stadium and election,” and found no stories where the mother of all legislative Issues was playing a prominent role out on the political hustings.

How about stadium champions like Senator Julie Rosen (R-Fairmont)?  Surely she must be getting pummeled for championing the Vikings’ cause.  Well, the Mankato Free Press reports that Rosen’s opponent Paul Marquardt isn’t making it an issue:

Marquardt isn’t critical of the stadium bill (other than Rosen’s failure to get a more iron-clad guarantee that the Vikings would keep their training camp in Mankato). His primary complaint isn’t even with Rosen herself as much as with the Republican majority she supports.

“They got hung up on constitutional amendments that were just a complete waste of time and taxpayer money,” said Marquardt, a retired union plumber. “… They created no jobs. And on top of that, we lost our homestead credit.”

On the other side of the aisle, DFL Senator Leroy Stumpf (DFL-Plummer) has no problem bragging to the St. James News about the economic development benefits of the stadium:

“We also have a good commitment on the part of Governor Dayton to create jobs by using the state’s bonding capacity for smart and strategic investments such as the Viking Stadium…”

Mostly, the issue seems to be missing from campaign debates.  When it does come up, it is much more low key than it was during the State Capitol debate.

So, why the has the Vikings stadium debate lost its political edge?

REPORTERS MOVED ON AND POLS FOLLOWED.  During the session, the Vikings stadium issue was the ultimate “water cooler issue,” an issue that almost all Minnesotans could and did discuss in their social spheres.  For that reason, the news media, looking to give the masses what they craved, covered the issue like none other.  Reporters stoked the fire almost daily.  But now that the issue has been resolved, reporters have dropped the issue cold and moved onto new hot button issues, principally the gay marriage ban and voter restriction constitutional amendments.   If reporters are interested at all these days, their interest is limited to whether the stadium roof will be retractable, and how many toilets it will house.  Politicians craft their messaging around what reporters will cover, and reporters have moved on.  As a result, the politicians have also largely moved on.

BIPARTISAN SUPPORT NEUTRALIZES PARTISAN ATTACKS. Because both DFLers and Republicans supported stadium bill, the political operatives who shape legislative campaign messaging have to be cautious about how they play this issue.  Neither party can have a coordinated party-based attack on subsidies, because valued members of both parties supported the subsidies.  As a result, the stadium subsidy issue takes a back seat to issues where the parties can have coordinated messaging, such as taxes, jobs, and education.

THE ISSUE HASN’T BEEN POLITICALLY POTENT IN THE PAST.  Finally, this issue doesn’t have a history of  providing a political payoff.  Like the Vikings, the Minnesota Twins also spent a decade in a bitter debate over ballpark subsidies.  But after the Twins debate ended, I am not aware of a single politician who lost their position over the issue.  If the Twins ballpark subsidy vote had led to a massive political bloodletting, you can bet that the Vikings vote would be a major topic in the 2012 debate.  But it didn’t, so it isn’t.

Whatever the reasons, this much is clear:  The Vikings stadium debate is ending the way all too many Vikings seasons have ended, in stone cold silence.

- Loveland

 

Note:  This post was also featured in Politics in Minnesota’s Best of the Blogs.

Minnesota GOPers Select Their Halloween Costumes!

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Americans spend something like $5 billion per year on Halloween.  Dressing up in costumers has become an increasingly popular form of escapism for stressed out adults.  In fact, some retail outlets now report that more costumes are sold to adults than children.

This led us to wonder what our favorite Minnesota Republican politicians are dressing up as this year?  Wry Wing Politics did a little investigative reporting:

Kurt Bills.  The rarely spotted U.S. Senate candidate challenging popular Senator Amy Kloubachar is reportedly going as Waldo, of the  Where’s Waldo puzzle books.   Mr. Bills is out there in one of Minnesota’s 87 counties.  Can YOU find him?

Mary Franson.  The state legislator who infamously attempted to draw a parallel between not giving families in need Food Stamps and not feeding wild animals, is dressing up as a wild game hunter.

Michelle Bachman. The Member of Congress who maintains that we need to “wean” Minnesotans off of popular programs such as Social Security and Medicare, is going as a, um, weaner.

Michael Brodkorb.  Brodkorb is the Minnesota Senate staffer who admitted to having an affair with a married Senate leader, and is threatening to commit mass politicide by naming others at the State Capitol who Brodkorb says also had extramarital affairs.  Mr. Brodkorb is dressing up as the personification of death, The Grim Reaper.  Will anyone answer the door when he comes knocking?

Allen Quist.  Allen Quist is a former state legislator, current congressional candidate and ever creative Creationist who edits a website that says that dinosaurs lived alongside human beings as recently as the 12th Century.  To educate more Minnesota children about this little known scientific fact, Mr. Quist is dressing up as Pope Innnocent III’s papal pet “Barney.”

Kurt Zellers.  The Minnesota House Speaker who created confusion at the Capitol last year when he announced that he was going to oppose the Vikings Stadium bill, but hoped that it would pass, is dressing up as  comic book figure Two-Face.

Tim Pawlenty.  Former Presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty is dressing up as, get this, a banking lobbyist.  Eeeek!  For a nation that has suffered mightily since the banksters’ wreckless practices caused a financial meltdown, it doesn’t get much scarier than this.

 Norm Coleman.  Former U.S. Senator Norm Coleman is going scary too.  He is dressing up as a slimey leader of a corporate Super PAC.  This costume is all the rage this year with little Republicans.  With millions of Americans hiding from the political pollution brought to us by Super PACs like Coleman’s, the Super PAC Man is the new Freddy Krueger.

What a fright!  Then, six days after Halloween, Minnesota voters will face the same question posed on October 31:  Trick or treat?

Loveland

The Minnesota Vikings and The Butterfly Effect

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Part of chaos theory is something called the butterfly effect, the notion that even a minor change in a nonlinear system, such as the flutter of a butterfly’s wings, can result in large differences in outcome later on, such as the change in the path of a tornado.

Politics is a decidedly non-linear system, where small changes can definitely cause large swings in outcomes. Here are a few the behind-the-scenes flutters that caused the Vikings to finally prevail in their decade-long effort to secure stadium subsidies at the State Capitol.

A Recount.  00.4% of the vote.  That was Mark Dayton’s margin in a general election recount in 2010.  As a result, “Landslide Dayton” became the Vikings most powerful and committed supporter.

But what if Dayton’s 2010 opponent Tom Emmer had not started his campaign so gaffe-prone?  What if pennies had not been dumped on Emmer, turning an obscure issue like tip credits into an enduring symbol of an ideologically extreme candidate?

In a Republican wave election year, it’s easy to imagine that a few small improvements in Emmer’s campaign could have given Emmer an additional 00.5% of the vote, and the helm of state government.

If Emmer had prevailed, he would not have been as aggressively pro-Vikings Stadium as Dayton.  MPR captured Emmer’s position in 2010:

 ”I support a solution for a Vikings stadium, but I don’t think you give $700 million in taxpayer money and hand it over to a private business.”

Emmer suggested a voter referendum linking funds from a new casino to pay for the stadium. He also suggested community ownership (Green Bay Packers model) or giving Wilf the Metrodome.

The Vikings viewed all of Emmer’s demands to be bill killers.  So if Dayton hadn’t squeezed into the electoral end zone — after an instant replay review by the officials — the Vikings likely would not have squeezed into their stadium subsidy end zone.

A Leader.  Powerful House GOP Speaker Kurt Zellers opposed the Vikings bill.  So did powerful House GOP Majority Leader Matt Dean.  That could easily have spelled the end for the Vikings.  After all, there aren’t too many major bills that pass the House with the leadership of both parties opposing the bill.

So if the DFL’s highest ranking House member, the often powerless Minority Leader Paul Thissen, had joined Zellers and Dean in opposing the bill, the Vikings fragile coalition probably could not have scored.

It’s not often that a minority party leader swings the balance in our polarized Legislature, but Thissen did.

A City Attorney.  With the Metrodome site as the only viable option at the end of the session, the whole effort would have collapsed without an endorsement by the Minneapolis City Council, a very tall order at the time.  And if Minneapolis City Attorney Susan Segal had not ruled that a city referendum provision didn’t apply to the City’s stadium proposal, because the City didn’t control the funding in question, City Council Member Sandy Colvin Roy made it pretty clear that she would not have been the final swing vote in support of the proposal.

Vikings MVP?

Think about that a minute.  If a political pundit had predicted before the session that someone named Susan Segal would be the key to whether the Vikings would get their new stadium, even many political savants would have said “who?”

But Susan Segal, Paul Thissen and 00.4% of Minnesotans all fluttered their relatively small wings, and the Vikings decade-long stadium loss streak finally came to an end.

“A game of inches,” indeed.

- Loveland

Note:  This post was also featured as part of the “Best of the Blogs” feature in Politics in Minnesota’s Morning Report.

Pulling Back the Curtain on the Minnesota Legislature

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The one thing that Vikings Stadium proponents and opponents in the Legislature should be able to agree on:  The debate was very bad for all of their reputations.

Why?  Because there was an audience.  While the masses usually are mostly blind to what happens in legislative floor debates, a sizeable audience of casually involved Minnesotans were engaged enough in the high profile stadium issue to seek out legislative coverage on TV or the Internet.   My sense is that they were appalled.

Legislators didn’t really act much worse during the Vikings Stadium debate than they typically do at the end of any session.  It’s just that they usually behave badly in relative anonymity.  Usually, the only witnesses are jaded Capitol insiders, who can no longer be shocked.  Capitol dwellers – legislators, lobbyists, reporters and staff – take it for granted that legislators are breathtakingly rude and disrespectful to each other.  Every day, they see legislators use shallow “if she is for it, then I MUST be against it” policy logic.  To Capitol dwellers, self-serving partisan pranks are de rigueur.

But this is news to ordinary Minnesotans.  They hear about it, but they don’t often see it.

“I hardly ever watch the Legislature, but I tuned in for some of the big stadium debate…,” friends have been telling me.  Then their eyes bug out, and their mouths gape, as if they had just caught a glimpse of Lobster Boy and the Elephant Man at the carnival’s side show.  “Oh my.  I had NO idea.”

This reaction came regardless of how the individual felt about the outcome of the Vikings Stadium debate.  In a way, winners still felt like losers.

Lobster Boy indeed.  Half-baked Plan Z’s were sprung in the closing hours of a decade long debate.  The House’s top “leader” declared he was voting against the bill, but hoped it would pass.  Reckless amendment after reckless amendment were added, making the bill read like the contents of an elementary school Suggestion Box, instead of the product of a decade’s worth of expert study and analysis.

In the midst of a blinding blizzard of amendments, freshman Rep. John Kriesel plaintively held up a sign from the House floor reading “Help!”  From Baudette to Blooming Prairie, ordinary Minnesotans’ on both sides of the issue were collectively nodding at the sentiment.

A recent SurveyUSA poll found that only one of five (21%) Minnesotans approves of the job the Legislature is doing.  That number might be even smaller among those who watched a chunk of the Vikings Stadium debate.  Incidentally, Governor Dayton’s approval rating (56%) is about three times higher than the Legislature’s, despite the fact that he was in the center of the bruising stadium debate.  Demeanor probably explains some of this difference.  Dayton wasn’t perfect, but he wasn’t Lobster Boy.

When Dorothy of Kansas was shocked by what she found behind the Wizard of Oz’s curtain, she declared “you’re a very bad man.”  After Minnesotans pulled back the curtain of public indifference that usually covers up St. Paul’s secrets, they may be feeling the same way.

But most of the legislators aren’t bad people.  It’s just that powerful special interests, partisan bullies and fatigue don’t bring out the best in them.  Sometimes good people can be bad leaders.  As the Wizard of Oz sheepishly responded in his defense, “Oh no, my dear.  I’m a very good man.  I’m just a very bad wizard.”

Loveland

 

Note:  This post was also featured as part of the “Best of the Blogs” feature in Politics in Minnesota’s Morning Report.

Vikings Post Game Show

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Is the Vikings Stadium bill a political boon or bust?  A new SurveyUSA poll brings political hand wringers mixed messages.

Post-game pondering.

One the one hand, Governor Mark Dayton, who unapologetically led a bone-crushing stadium drive, still has a very respectable 56% approval rating.  In other good news for supporters, 55% of Minnesotans are fine with expanding gambling, the primary state financing mechanism used in the bill.  Most (57%) believe that the Vikings will leave without a new stadium.  Bottom line:  An impressive 70% say that if a lawmaker backed the bill, it would either make no difference in their voting (47%) or make them more likely to support that politician (23%).

So, backlash?  What backlash?

But the news in the poll isn’t all skol-worthy.   A slim majority of Minnesotans (52%) either want the Vikings to stay in the Metrodome in its current plain Jane state (16%) or renovate the Metrodome (36%).  In addition, most citizens prefer racino (26% support) and a downtown casino (36% support) over the bill’s heavy reliance on electronic pulltabs (15% support).  Overall, 58% say the Vikings Stadium should be funded entirely with public funding.  Finally, a whopping two-thirds (67%) of Minnesotans say there should be “a public vote before any taxes are raised to pay for a Vikings Stadium,” something the Vikings bill does not allow.

So, political armageddon is nigh, correct?

The fact is, polling on the Vikings Stadium is a bit of a political Rorschach Test.  Politicians can see what they want to see in today’s polling, because Minnesotans’ collective druthers are divided.  As certain as state politicians and pundits’ claim to be about what they think voters want, voters themselves don’t seem to be at all certain.

Is a vote in favor of the Vikings Stadium a political “W” or “L?”  Well, the most difficult day to be a Vikings Stadium supporter was probably last Wednesday.  The most difficult day to be an opponent of the Stadium will be the Minneapolis-hosted Super Sunday in 2016 or 2017.   To every thing, there is a season.

- Loveland