PART 2 "CHARGING FORWARD!"
In part one of this series, I spoke briefly about a friend of mine who I turned to for their insight, opinions and their advice. They have been kind of a mentor to me through this difficult time. Mr. Jim Steeg and Mrs Jill Lieber-Steeg, I simply say thank you! Knowledge is power and they taught me two very valuable lessons I practiced throughout this process.
Lesson 1. Everyone has an agenda
Lesson 2. Keep asking yourself at certain times, What is their exit strategy? What is their end game?
A BRIEF REVIEW OF PART ONE
Part 1 covered how the timeline was coming to a deadline with Stan Kroenke heading from St. Louis to Inglewood. Oakland and San Diego proposed a jointly owned partnership in Carson. That year, the chargers carpet bombed the city's leaders while the city was preparing a stadium plan after the mayor appointed city stadium advocate group recommended Mission Valley and a financing plan Save Our Bolts a charger fan group of volunteers was formed to assist in keeping the Chargers in San Diego. The owners of the NFL noted down the Carson projected and green lighted Stan Kroenke to move his team from St. Louis to Inglewood to finance his own stadium. The Rams were given permission under one term. Oakland and San Diego had a one year option to move in with them as a tenant. San Diego had the right of first refusal over Oakland. If they returned home to their respective cities then an extra one million dollars from the NFL would e given to help in those two markets. Both the Raiders and the Chargers decided to try one last time in their home cities. Dean Spanos started to meet with the fan groups to bridge the gaps created that was preventing his team from building a stadium in San Diego. A plan was being created by Goldman Sachs to finance a downtown stadium in San Diego with Mark Fabiani and Fred Moss advising Dean along the way. San Diego economy was limited due to bad past business decisions over a span on 20 years and poor on the field performances. The wildfires, war overseas and a housing bubble bursting led the country into a regression. Couple that with San Diego own making of the pension crises, there was no sympathy in the city to build a billionaire a stadium. This would all have a be overcame and voted on by the election November 8, 2016.
By mid-March of 2016, the fan groups were gearing up for the big announcement that was going to kick start the campaign. We were in deep discussions about the Measure C campaign website with the Chargers. We were discussing how we could use social media to our advantage. We thought we should come up with a catchy slogan for the measure and what would be the best strategy to get it out into the public so we could begin to accept volunteers for a project of this magnitude.
It became noticeable that the team was fumbling their way through the early days of the campaign. They were rushed with legal deadlines to get the signatures and have it on the November ballot.
There were times it became crazy to imagine these are the same people that run a professional NFL team. Of course, it's just as crazy to think of the way the people who run this city actually conduct themselves behind closed doors as well. Things are not always what they appear to be.
Frustration was growing with Dean Spanos because he couldn't get any business leaders to come out and support the plan. These are the same issues he had when developing a plan for the stadiums. The Chargers keep mentioning they had 9 previous proposals all shot down by the city. That's a load of crap.
#1 Most of those plans never got by the preliminary planning stages
#2 Dean couldn't find a business partner
Those proposals ultimately failed because Dean had to bring in a developer/ business partner before moving forward on many of the discussed proposals.
However, he never could get one on board. In 2004, the city was recovering from the wildfires and the country was at war.
If you ever worked with or for the Chargers before then you know how extremely arrogant they can be. As we got closer to releasing the details of Measure C. It seemed as if nothing could go right on our side. The early poll numbers showed us with an approval of around 35%.
So much to over come in so little time.
IMPORTANT...San Diego Voters didn't trust Dean. If this was going to be a vote on the Chargers we would win. If this becomes a mandate on the Dean Spanos name then we would lose badly!!!
SO MANY OBSTACLES TO OVERCOME
Sometimes it is not what you do but what you are not doing that can lead people to be skeptical of your intentions truly are. The aura around San Diego at this time is the downtown location was a no go with almost everyone. The residents of East Village started a group opposing downtown and soon another group of Barrio Logan resident formed a group as well. I remember Johnny warning the team many times not to ignore that community fears? Yep, too late.
The Padres were also concerned with what would become of tailgate park and how the plan was going to address the parking. Comic-Con wasn't against the stadium they just preferred a contiguous expansion of the convention center. Comic-Con makes the city the most amount of revenue and our opponents shamelessly used that as a scare tactic to their advantage. Comic-Con was never and will never leave San Diego. That was a hoax.
So the laundry list of those opposed to the measure was miles long. The included the Padres
I was working almost daily with Fabiani on the legal requirements of the signature effort. We had to get 67,000 verified in just 6 weeks. All of them had to be registered city voters living and registered in the 9 districts. If you obtained a voter who didn't qualify you could lose 1,000 signatures for every unqualified signature. This is normally a 6-month process but we only had 6 weeks to accomplish our goal. This was a rush job by the team planning measure C and sadly it showed with all the unanswered questions hidden in the language of the measure.
The pressure was being applied to the Mayor from both sides to take a stand either for or against the measure. It seemed the leadership from the Mayor in 2016 disappeared when the ball dropped on New Years. Of course, this is the same time the mayor was meeting quietly with the FS investors about a plan for Mission Valley and Soccer City.
San Diego Mayor is not just a coward but a sneaky lying coward. The Mayor and the city council members talked a really good game throughout this. In reality, though they were snakes in the grass lying in the mud with the pigs!
The real name of the popular character Boltman was also a member of Save Our Bolts. Dan Jauregui spent decades entertaining the fans on Sundays at home inside the stadium. He bought a domain for the team to use to promote the measure. He spent $500.00 out of his own pocket on it. The team turned him down afterward and told him they wanted to get their own domain. The name of the website they choose was too long for it to catch on, "VoteYesOnC.com".
They never took advantage of the power of social media and the local media
In the entire campaign, their Facebook page for measure C only had 2,216 likes. The cold hard truth is they never took a advantage of the instant impact of today's social media You can compare the time and effort spent on a Vote Yes On C Facebook page and compare it to the FightForLA.com website. Seriously, go look at it. It is worth your time.
This is a link to the campaign Facebook page Website In LA
https://www.facebook.com/VoteYesOnC/ https://fightforla.com/
FUMBLES AND BLUNDERS
They hired an architect guy named David Manick to develop renderings for the new stadium. It was slated to be released at a later date after the details of the measure would be released.
(Great! No vision for the voters to imagine, just hand me over $1.2 billion dollars. That should go over really well with an already skeptical voter). Everyone and their mother is so far against the plan this early.
Slowly and over time they leaked out details of the measure to the media.
(EDITOR NOTE) (In politics and especially in today's new world of social media interaction and it's instant impact when you have bad news or details of something negative and pretty sure it will get you a negative reaction. You want to "release everything all at one time to address it and move on. )
DEAN SPANOS MAKES A COLOSSAL ERROR
On March 29th at around 5pm, the team called four local reporters into Chargers complex for a 5:30 meeting. They proceeded to leak the entire plan to the four local media members. A week earlier, it delivered to Steve Pitz at the mayor's office.
The measure which was asking the public for $1.2 billion dollars was relayed to the voters in a series of tweets from select reporters. In one shot you just left a bad taste in the mouth of the media and the voters. Way to Go Deano!
I found out about the leak from a media member who's a close friend of mine, he called me to tell me about how this leaked out. He said to me, "You won't fucking believe this. There is no presser. They are leaking the details to four of their favorite reporters instead of addressing us in the media ".
I wanted to quit right there on the spot. They just gave the opposing party all day and all night to appear on TV and radio tearing the measure apart piece by piece. No chance for a rebuttal or nothing. You just gave your opponent free air time on the 5 and 6pm newscast instead of having both sides on.
All day the anti-stadium advocates were on the radio, TV and on social media smashing the measure. It was all anti-Dean, anti-stadium, and anti-public money. I don't know about the others in the fan groups did that evening. I know I didn't talk to the team at all that night. I was livid!
Mark Fabiani said in his own book The Master of Disaster "It's not about winning the news cycle, it's about winning the war of the news. It is about rebuilding lost trust" he adds, "Be clear when admitting your mistake. Take personal responsibility and do it in a meaningful way. When responding to a crisis the mission is to restore trust. Sometimes it is best just to suck it up and say I'm sorry."
Contrary to Fabiani advice in his book, this advice was not followed by Dean Spanos.
Measure C is a 110-page document that was very complexed and detailed when first reading it. Yet, it was so easy being analyzed and in extreme detail on Twitter and with prepared public statements from politicians ready to go. How the hell is that even possible to have an opinion on something that was just released?
Here is an article explaining the reaction..
(http://www.voiceofsandiego.or
SAME OLE SAN DIEGO POLITICS
The threat of Comic-Con leaving San Diego was one of the biggest hoaxes in this whole saga. They were never going to go anywhere. Trust me, they just bought land in Balboa Park for three million dollars. It was Tony Manolatos playing with voters fears by using scare tactics. The same way he used "roads and schools" as a selling tactic.
Now that the measure has failed, are your roads any better?
Are the local schools getting the much-needed improvements that they needed? NO! Because it was never the about the stadium.
If we keep electing the same imbeciles to run this city then this is all OUR fault! Don't give me that shit that all politicians are corrupt except for my councilman either. WRONG!
We have elected people with character flaws over and over again and let them be bought out by special interest groups. It is embarrassing. My message to you is this November. Vote all 9 of these assholes on the city council out. As they pack their boxes after the election. We'll go tell them to shove a lightning bolt up their asses. Okay, my rant is over.
2009 PROPOSAL AND MEASURE C
What I'm going to share with you now is what has really never been brought up before. I didn't realize it until I was studying for a podcast and came across it. Measure C was a word for word, a rehashed proposal that was tried and failed before. The details are the same right down to the streets in the plan of Measure C. The plan you voted on in November had already been tried and it failed!
MEASURE C WAS A FLAWED PLAN THAT FAILED BEFORE!"
In 2009, the Chargers wanted an $800 million dollar stadium with $500 million coming from taxpayers contribution using a TOT increase. It would be voted on by a countywide vote and their hope was to get it on a ballot in November of 2012.
The team's lawyers said it had to be a county wide vote if they wanted it to pass. Back then the hoteliers, the city council and the residents of East Village and Barrio Logan were against the plan. Interesting enough, it was set to be built in then-councilman Kevin Faulconer district. Who ran the Centre City Development Group that was helping the Chargers assist on this? That would be good ole Fred Maas. Let's compare the two projects. It appears that all they did was pull out a file from 2009 and told Goldman Sachs to make it into a citizen initiative, came back from Houston and called it Measure C.
You see Measure C was not new at all. The previous proposal called for a 225,000 square feet expansion of the convention center with a multi-use stadium. The stadium would seat 65,000 that could expand by 10,000 seats for Super Bowls. The expansion annex would be 6 blocks from the current convention center. It would have raised the TOT to pay for the project minus moving the MTS depot.
The stadium plan was to be build at the Padres tailgate park and the MTS bus yard site. Plans included an inflatable roof with the materials coming from Asia and Europe made of membrane material called polycarbonate. The Kansas City-based company Populous was working on the design that would eventually be released May 27, 2010. Turner Construction was studying the MTS site and the fault lines by tailgate park which houses 1,040 parking spaces for Padre home games.
It was billed by the Centre City Development Chairman at the time Fred Maas, as a Sports and Entertainment District Plan. The reason for the location was a benefit to voters because it splitting the cost between the stadium and the convention center expansion. They claimed the infrastructure was already in place and no EIR would be needed. It was studied that there were 57,000 parking spaces in a 1.5-mile radius of the proposed site.
This proposal was discussed between Dean Spanos, Fred Maas, Mark Fabiani, Jerry Sanders, and the mayor chief of staff Kris Mitchell on October 27, 2009, at the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club. The 7 previous years leading up to 2009, the Chargers said a stadium would not require public money. This was the first time they admitted it was only possible to include public money. An early projection was the $800 million project would require $500 million coming from a hotel tax on visitors in a TOT with a 1 to 3% increase in the TOT. Another $300 million would come from the NFL and the Dean Spanos.
The benefit to this project for the city is it frees up the Sports Arena land to be sold by the city. The along Sports Arena along with Mission Valley frees up about 266 acres between the two for the city to sell and generate revenue.
As for the lack of tailgating that has become so popular with San Diego fans? "It's something that's really important to people," Fabiani said. "What we've got to do is hopefully convince people that there are other ways to have that kind of experience other than having to maintain a 130-acre parking lot in the middle of the city of San Diego. That no longer makes sense for anyone. It doesn't make sense for taxpayers. It doesn't make sense for the team. It's the one thing I think that even people who could care less about football could agree with the Chargers on. Petco has proved that fans are smart," Fabiani added. "They're adaptable, and they will find other ways to have a great time."
The NFL wants to get away from tailgating in their new stadiums. Similar situations existed in Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit, Indianapolis, New Orleans, and St. Louis. Two of these stadiums - in Detroit and Indianapolis - opened this decade as part of a league construction boom. Chicago also underwent a major renovation.
Fabiani said the architects had been asked to design several hundred thousand square feet of convention space into the proposed downtown stadium which would be located east of Petco Park on the current city bus yard and make it flexible enough that the stadium could also host major sports events, from the Final Four basketball championships to the Super Bowl, as well as other occasions. The facility would be so much more than 10 games a year. Making it a multi-use facility would keep it booked an estimated 200 times or more every year.
The idea was to make room for the convention center to use the end zones in the offseason and to cover the grass as much as needed to provide exhibit space. The stadium also would include restaurants and have meeting spaces usable by convention delegates.
The hope was for a countywide vote in November 2012 or 2013.
The most recent figures from the Chargers, from the 2006 season, showed that 18,562 season ticket holders lived in the city, 8,498 lived in North County and 5,248 lived in South County. Fans from Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties accounted for 13,731 of the season tickets sales.
"We think we would do better on a countywide vote than we would in just a citywide vote," Fabiani said according to the Union-Tribune. "So our lawyers have already advised us, and will continue to, about the kinds of things that would justify a countywide vote."
The Mayor's Office retained Lazard,LTD (A financial advisory and asset management firm) to review a plan that would work best for the tax payers. The companies fees to the city would be less than $250,000. Most of it fees were contingent on a deal being worked out with the Chargers. After about 9 months of studies and reviews, Lazard,LTD would recommend holding off on the project till September.
That timetable left Mayor Sanders a little more than two months to win the City Council approval, not to mention the team's endorsement before he leaves office because of his expiring term limits in early December.
Even though the plan in 2009 ultimately failed. You'll see it is word by word the wording of Measure C. Except for changes to the overall cost of the project and they switched it to a city-wide vote instead of a county-wide vote as recommended to the team by their lawyers back then.
UNDERSTANDING THIS STADIUM SAGA FOR DUMMIES
This is a quick crash course but 100% accurate account of what is going on. Whether the Chargers stays or if leave, it doesn't really have anything to do with a stadium. The stadium is blinders on your eyes meant to keep you from seeing through the fog. This is all about a tax increase called a TOT ( A hotel tax to be paid by visitors.) More importantly, how is going to decide how it is spent.
The hoteliers have built themselves an empire in San Diego of power... Through their campaign donations and fundraisers, they decide who gets put into the seats of power in city of San Diego. The republicans hide their dirty dealings behind the San Diego lodging industry association. Follow the money http://hoteliercabal.com/hotelier-political-donations/
The mayor and city council will do what the hoteliers say, when they say and how they say. For example, in order to raise a TOT it requires a public vote. The Tourist Marketing District ( hoteliers) raised it themselves by 2% to give themselves access to how it is spent.
What does this mean to you? $30 million dollars of your tax paying money was stolen from you and approved illegally by the city council. The city council broke the law when they approved that tax and extended it for 10 years without a public vote. This tax went into effect when the council approved it costing tax payers thousands and thousands of dollars. The courts ruled it illegal, stopped the tax and sent it back to die or for the issue to be voted on. The hoteliers want that money.
The Chargers want the TOT to help with construction costs. On the other side, the Chargers propose a convention center expansion jointly sharing the construction costs with the tot money.
The hoteliers hate this idea and wants a contagious expansion. Shockingly, the city council and the mayor support the hoteliers wishes. The hoteliers know it's a 67.7% vote by the public for the Chargers to receive it. The politicians called the Chargers bluff. San Diego doesn't approve tax increases. A ballot already failed for for a tax increase to support 1st responders in emergencies.
The mayor's convention center expansion isn't looking good now. Earlier this year (2018) he failed to reach enough signatures to get it on the ballot.
Karma a bitch! We got Measure C signatures in a record breaking 6 weeks.
#failedmayorkevinfaulconer
THINGS GO FROM UGLY TO UGLIER
With June primary coming up and the mayor's approval rating at 59%. The mayor made the decision, well Jason Roe made the decision, to just coast to the primary by taking no tough stance on any controversial proposals. Let alone one that was so intense as the stadium issue. But that didn't stop the people who used to work for him or his friends quietly doing his dirty work.
Tony Manolatos once said, "Kevin Faulconer was a client for life." At least he was honest. Damn, can you imagine being another man's bitch for life.
Tony Manolatos, April Boling and Chris Cate were out and attacking the Chargers plan from the outset. It was at this point that Save Our Bolts had some very heated discussions behind the scenes about which way the group should move forward. It got VERY HEATED as we discussed the mayor and the timeline that we had left. We eventually decided as a group that the mayor had till the end of April to take a stance. We would then have to go all out in exposing what the mayor was doing.
CHARGERS RALLY DOWNTOWN
The mayor was already getting heat for laying rocks down to try and move the homeless out of the area. He wanted to look good for when ESPN came to San Diego for the All-Star Game. Homeless kids sleeping on rocks, that is what kind of leaders we have in this city!!!
The Mayor didn't come to the rally on April 23. A year earlier he flew to New York and many other cities meeting with NFL owners to make his case for keeping the Chargers. Now he wasn't willing to walk 5 blocks from his office to the rally. What changed? Once the downtown location became involved it got the hoteliers involved. The same group that bank loaded his campaign. To put it more simple for you. The Chargers got outbid by the hoteliers. San Diego politicians are similar to a cheap hooker. The service goes to the highest bidder.
We held an event at Cali Comfort BBQ with fans making signs for the rally two days prior to the rally. The day before the rally, the union group SD Building and Construction Trade Council inked a deal to do the construction on the project with the team.
The rally was fun for the fans to start the signature effort for the initiative. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell came down as did LT. LT and Rivers got the fans pumped up of course. It was one of the few times we actually saw LT helping to pass the measure. Back in February, I tried to get the legends of Charger past on board with us. I had zero success. Later, I learned from a former Charger employee that worked very high up with Dean that the majority of the former charger legends refused to help Dean unless they were paid. Their dislike for Dean Spanos prevented them from helping out with the measure. Damn, if we only had Junior Seau! Oh, What could have been?
San Diego is a very diverse city. We have many cultures and people from many different ethnic backgrounds. When observing the rally videos it was filled mostly with 35 to 50-year-old white men. There is going to be a lot of groups that we would have to reach out too. In politics, you keep your base while recruiting new followers. This was not done for measure C however. The Chargers base was white males between the ages of 35 and 50. Our commercials had Dick Enberg and Dan Fouts (2 old white men) doing voice-overs. Not exactly reaching out to the woman, young people and voters of different races.
Presidential candidates go around the country and speak to different people in different ways. They try to get as many people to vote for them to win the election. They have their base already but needed to recruit voters beyond their base to win. Dean Spanos never even sold his base let alone those outside that circle. Think if a candidate announced he was running for president but then stopped. No Commercials, no signs on yards and no appearances from then to the election. Would he win the election? That is how Dean Spanos ran this campaign.
We still didn't know for sure if the vote would be a 50.1% or 66.7%. I've read this plan over 100 times and reviewed it with Goldman Sachs, JMI Realty, and the team over the phone more times than I care to admit. I knew the plans details pretty damn good. So, was it a good deal for the team-city? Depends who you are and what your beliefs are. If you believe that some sort of public financing is okay for the rule of civic pride that the team brings to the community. That is one thing. If you could care less about football and civic pride not important to you then it's not to appeal to you. NFL teams are not profitable to a city. Stadium and convention center expansions when done together is rarely supported with studies showing an increase in revenue.
DAVID VS GOLIATH
Measure C became a fight against the ineptitude Chargers vs the powerful in San Diego. As it quickly became clear that they were outmatched. The team basically tagged their tag team partner (the fan groups) and they left for the locker room. When the dust settled the Mayor, the city council, the padres, the residents in East Village, the hoteliers and even their own base (charger fans) because of 1. They loved the Mission Valley location and most San Diegans don't even like downtown and 2. They didn't trust Dean. The decision to announce a partnership with the Raiders built a wall that couldn't be breached.
Fans never felt Dean was one of them. They had passion and dedication to their team. The Spanos's are remembered for being the family from Stockton not San Diego. Years and Years of failing to produce a quality football product on the field and never having a campaign to reach out to their fans in the end was the death of Measure C.
This fight had been brewing for sometime nationally. Voters realized through study after study realized stadiums are not profitable for a city. The days of trying to sell the bullet points of a Super Bowl and jobs just didn't equal stadium that hosts 10 events a year. Stadiums produce low wage seasonal part time jobs. This was discovered by cities in the stadium boom that produced so many stadiums the last 15 years.
NFL stadiums do not generate significant local economic growth, and the incremental tax revenue is not sufficient to cover any significant financial contribution by the city," said Noll, a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic policy research. He has written articles and books and given talks on the public financing of sports stadiums. Basketball and hockey arenas are a better deal for cities, he said. "Arenas are used more often." The NFL does not want all three teams to move to Los Angeles, he explained, but a decision needs to be made before any of them have a firm commitment for a new stadium in its current home city.
"The stadium debates in Oakland, San Diego and St. Louis reflect hesitancy in these cities to sign on to expensive new deals to keep those teams," he said.
Can American professional sports leagues afford to entirely pay for their own stadiums and the operations surrounding them?
"Yes," said Noll, "because most teams are owned by wealthy individuals who could pay for their own stadiums. But teams are businesses, and the additional profit to a team that is created by a new stadium is not worth the cost."
Most likely, if teams and leagues had to pay for their own stadiums, the stadiums would still be built, he said, but at a cost that could be repaid from the rights to personal seats, naming and concessions.
"A significant fraction of the cost of facilities such as Levi's Stadium and the proposed NFL stadiums in LA is accounted for by amenities that generate initial interest in the facility, but in the long run do not contribute much to revenues," he said.
When team owners threaten to relocate elsewhere if they do not get a new stadium, community officials should first make a sober assessment of how much a stadium deal will cost, Noll advised.
Most of the details of recent stadium deals and proposals are in the public record, and they establish a rough guideline for how much a city will have to pay to keep or to obtain a team, he added.
"Cities have very little bargaining power with an NFL team. As long as there are cities without NFL teams that are willing to subsidize a stadium, cities will have to pay part of the cost of a new stadium," he said.
Ultimately, Noll acknowledged, cities can decide whether to view these facilities as a form of "public consumption" rather than as financial investments.
Interestingly, he noted, the city of Pasadena turned down a proposal to convert the Rose Bowl to an NFL stadium – which would have meant adding luxury boxes and fancier concession areas, and reducing the number of seats by 20,000.
"In recent years, several cities have simply decided the price is too high," he said.
Now the NFL is trying to adapt to this change in public thinking by selling multi use stadiums. Final Four, World Cup, Concerts and Wrestle mania's are being highlighted as potential bookings that a multi-use facility could bring in. Santa Clara is the rare not the norm. Bookings in Indianapolis has months of Jewish birthday parties and weddings on the calender. Those events don't bring a return on investment for 1 to 2 billion dollars.
California also has so many environmental laws and regulations that unless a stadium is 100% privately financed no city would approve a stadium. When the California Supreme Court ruled these projects must be voted on by the public and a approval of 67.7% would be required all but killed any chance of a stadium in California.
With all these obstacles and the hoteliers having a firm grasp on the city council and mayor office it was one question was becoming perfectly clear. How the hell are we going to win this?
I think Dean wanted this to work. I think he wanted to turn the hate geared towards him into love. He badly wanted to be loved by Charger fans believe it or not. He craved that emotion from the fans. He just couldn't relate to the average charger fan on their level. So why did the Chargers lose faith? In dealing with them almost every day during this process to help reach an agreement. The answer was the Mayor lack of support. His silence killed any progress.
Kevin Faulconer is the main reason the Chargers moved to LA.
HAIL MARY PASS
Both pro-stadium and anti-stadium groups were upset at his lack of leadership. The mayor was being called out on political talk shows, sports talk show and by the voters. The poll numbers recently showed it was very likely the measure would fail of getting even 50%. Something drastic had to change the entire dynamic of this race. The team made it clear to me that the mayor was killing any hopes of this passing.
The fan groups decided to give the mayor until the end of April in good faith. When the calendar turned to May 2016, it was time for the fan groups to take the gloves off and raise some hell. It might have been the only hope of anything changing.
We were about to enter May with a new message and attitude. I was going to try and take over messaging. We could no longer sit by and quietly be silent in hopes of reaching an agreement with all the parties involved. You were either with us or you were against us. The outcome was too much to even bare thinking about in them moving away. As a last resort, we were going to expose anyone who we felt was being dishonest with the public! They wanted a fight well they got one now!!!
The hit list was the following..
The Mayor for playing political games instead of taking this more seriously.
The Hoteliers who were influencing our city leaders to simply promote their own special interests.
April Boling and Tony Manolatos who were nothing more than speaker boxes for the hoteliers.
We were just football fans. What did we have to lose? We saw enough up until this point to know who was preventing progress for their own personal special interest. We started as some guys gathering around for a talk about football and now we were community activists.
I signed up the Tilted Kilt at both locations to began taking signatures of r the measure. Brian and I worked together and we got Slater's 50-50 to sign up as well. We got Manti Teo, DJ Fluker and Keenan Allen to go and sign autographs at Slater's for the kickoff, Cali Comfort BBQ joined in the effort at his restaurant.
Why didn't the team ask these restaurants? I don't know but Mark did help me get them signed up and fast. Offering the next day for training classes in most cases then later we had our own training.
PROTEST AT THE MAYOR OFFICE
First up was the mayor. The man who would do anything in 2015 to get a stadium deal done but now was completely missing since the hoteliers got involved. I did this event without Save Our Bolts. Their office stopped returning our calls and emails since the last meeting with our group. The group told me what I already knew. The mayor was absent. His effort has vanished and going by the look on his face he knew this stadium saga was over. It was going to fail.
My friend Dan McLellan gave our speeches with our fellow fans in the background. The speeches seemed to have little effect. So I figured, the hell with everything. If the Mayor won't come to us, then we are going to him!
With our "Where is Kevin" signs in hand, we headed to the mayor office on the upper floor. Dan had seen the mayor come out the doors and then he rushed back in as we were approaching the building. What a coward!
We went to his office and -- surprise! -- he was MIA. His secretary said he was gone for the day. As I looked around his office, I saw a picture of the mayor hanging on the wall outside of his office.. PERFECT!!!
I had everyone gather around for a picture with their signs and balloons. We took a picture right there in the mayor office next to his picture on the wall and tweeted it out to the public that "We finally found Kevin!". (We might have also decorated his lobby with about 30 "Where Is Kevin" signs and balloons as well.)
A message was relayed to me that evening from the team. Marshall from the mayor's office called Fred Maas asking them to help get the fan groups off the mayor's back. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! Marshall knew now that we are pissed off and WE'RE NOT GOING AWAY!
VIDEO OF DAN AND I RALLY OUTSIDE THE MAYOR OFFICE
Moving on now I emailed Cory Briggs asking for his support for the measure to be voted on. He agreed it should go to the voters for a vote and we had several fan groups and some businesses offer up their name to endorse the plan. This was attempt to least try and change the negative narrative surrounding the measure I called my own press conference at Charger Complex on May 9th. Two years ago I was just a fan of the Chargers and the NFL. In three days I was preparing to give a press conference outside of the Chargers complex facility. UNBELIEVABLE!!!
To officially began this ass kicking and our new tone as a group. I went on air with Scott Kaplan at the local sports radio station 1090am. He mentions the rally the following Monday. You can hear the interview here. At the 12:00 minute mark he talks about our movement. I come on at the 18:00 minute mark.
https://www.mighty1090.com/episode/the-scott-and-br-show-may-6th-3pm-hour/
MY PRESS CONFERENCE AT CHARGERS COMPLEX
My goal that day was to make the issue more personal for the voters. I had three special guest speakers at the press conference. First up was Neil Conde.
I was up late one night checking the messages on the facebook page of Save Our Bolts. I couldn't sleep so it was like one in the morning one night after work. There was a message with a story and a picture of a man in a wheelchair.
He said he just had his leg amputated two months before and wanted to help our campaign somehow. He got himself in his wheelchair and he wheeled himself over two miles to signing station to sign the petition for the initiative. This touched me greatly. This is why we were fighting so hard. Fans like Nick Conde.
You won't find Neil in any studies of how an NFL team influences a city. Neil won't find Neil in any focus groups that are funded by one side or the other. You will find Neil Conde and hundreds of people like him at a Charger home game. Neil was my special guest speaker about the importance of having an NFL team in your city to root for. Neil made us all want to work even harder against the powers that be. He reminded us thew goal was to important to lose focus of the end game and what that result would mean.
I also had Johnny Abundez sign up a friend of mine up to register to vote and sign the petition to establish how easy it was to do.
Shawn Walchef was next the owner of Cali Comfort BBQ and a Save Our Bolts volunteer. He spoke about what it meant as a business owner to have the team in San Diego and the effect it would have on his business if they left. What it means to be a San Diego Charger fan in San Diego.
That was a very special day in my life standing in front of the team complex and speaking about what being a fan meant to me personally. I always have that day to remember no matter the outcome of this saga.
https://sandiegosportsdomination.com/photography/events/save-our-bolts-rally/
DISCLAIMER... (Everything I did except for the anti-Mayor's rally in downtown included my Save Our Bolts organizers and the other fan groups. They deserve all the credit in the world for the successes that we accomplished. Even if keeping the team here wasn't accomplished. I just don't want to in any way mix my words with them. I have never worked with such a dedicated and hard-working group of people. We fought like hell and accomplished milestones that we never dreamed was possible. I learned a lot a from the other members and cherish my relationship with everyone of them. Well, except one name Sean O'Farrell but that is for another day.) After the press conference we went inside and met with the team for an update on the campaign. The team let Nick Conde attend that one meeting.
MEETING WITH LORI SALDANA MAYORAL CANDIDATE
Three meetings in three days that week. The day after the presser we met with Lori Saldana. There was two candidates running against the mayor in the primary. I wanted a meeting with one of them and Lori Saldana agreed. I informed their campaign that their poll numbers were not looking good and if she supported the measure over the mayor we could provide her with enough fans voting that she would be likely to defeat the mayor in the June primary. Our entire group and the SD Stadium Coalition met with her at her house. She was vocal in the media lately about being cautious of the plan.
She seemed very confused about the details of the measure. We pressured her really hard on knowing the specifics of the plan that she didn't like. We knew the plan page by page yet she was running for mayor and seemed completely lost in our conversations. Finally, she admitted what we knew so many politicians were also guilty of. She was running for office and spoke out as from a anti-stadium position. Yet reeling from the pressure and aggressive questions from us after about 20 minutes she confessed to have not READ ONE WORD OF THE MEASURE!
Dan Jauregui asked her to name sometime to educate herself about the details in the measure and asked her to go meet with the team in person so they could answer any questions that they might have had. Boltman (not in his costume) called the Chargers right then on the spot and set up a meeting with the team and her. She was very apprehensive but in the end agreed to the meeting. The team sounded shocked and amazed at what we accomplished. She later canceled four appointments with the team. She proceeded to get her ass handed to her in the June primaries. The 50,000 fans vote might have made her mayor today. Oh well, for Lori she ignored that offer from us. Having intelligence is clearly not a qualification to run for office in the city of San Diego.
MAYOR CANDIDATE LORI SALDANA
Most of us worked these meetings around our work schedule and three meetings in three days plus a 8 hour weekday left us exhausted often. But next up was a town hall meeting with the residents of East Village the location of the proposed stadium. We were down to do what we could, when we could and so were the fans who at our short request (less than 24 hours) attended the meeting in support of the team.
The residents were not too happy about the teams selection of their neighborhood for their project. The area was also being overrun by the homeless recently. Dean Spanos, Fred Maas, and David Manica the sports architect of the stadium was there with Dean Spanos special advisor Jeffrey Pollack.
The meeting was intense with the residents of East Village. That said, the team did remarkably well. I don't know why we didn't do more of these with the way the team was accepted by the end of the meeting. The team did one more town hall meeting in the same area later that was it all they would do.
The 2nd meeting was not as successful. The failure to reach out to the public in my opinion was another failure from the team to reach out to the public. You can not win an election if you don't try. The fan groups were their soldiers on the front lines. But where the hell was the General? Who the hell is the general? Where is those promises made by Dean to us back in February and April? That vanished almost as fast as a usual chargers fans expectations once the football season started.
The team just sat in the complex and did NOTHING while the fans were working their asses off. Don't ever think the teams not to blame for San Diego not having a football team. We had hundreds and hundreds of volunteers waiting to take action. An army ready to work but they never were contacted. You can't get hit your goals if you don't walk towards them. The team couldn't even crawl. They showed up to a gun fight with a plastic butter knife from the dollar store. They simply wanted everything given to them. The attitude of elite attitude was sickening.
THE EAST VILLAGE TOWN HALL MEETING
WE CALLED ON A HOTELIERS BOYCOTT https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2016/may/17/ticker-chargers-fan-boycott-cripple-hotel-magnates/
Now we were on to them secretive little hoteliers. The names without a face, until now!
They do their work in the shadows of darkness. Hell, for a couple of years Doug Manchester (a hotelier not named in the boycott but the 4th one on my list owned our only city ran the local newspaper. He fired all the older workers and brought in young writers for less payroll then sold off the Mission Valley site and later the Union-Tribune to the LA Times. Doug was not included though in the boycott. The point was not to try and break millionaires. It was to continue to be a knife in their side.
The hoteliers didn't know how to deal with us. They knew we had a microphone through the media but they wanted to discount us as a bunch of retarded football fans. But through Bolt Pride, SD Stadium Coalition and Save Our Bolts national recognition, we could maybe not hurt them. They're to rich for that. But we sure could fuck with their bottom line. San Diego is the #1 tourist destination in the country. Those tourist book themselves at their hotels. BOOM! That's it!!!
The news traveled fast. It was picked up by every media outlet in town and the USA Today newspaper. Johnny got a hold of all 31 fan groups across the country informing them of the boycott. They supported us 100% and told their co-workers and families to boycott as well. We use our friend George Mullen website where you can follow the hoteliers influence on city officials through campaign donations.
Here is his website https://hoteliercabal.com/ and two links to the boycott. One is from UT and the other which is a great read is from The Reader. https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2016/may/17/ticker-chargers-fan-boycott-cripple-hotel-magnates/.http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/tourism/sdut-charger-stadium-hotel-boycott-2016may16-story.html
We heard from a good source they hated their faces shown. So we released a photo of the big three.We released a press release stating for all football fans to boycott their hotels and listed every one by name. We also mentioned that hotel owners are great people who work hard. Except for three of them....
Bill Evans of Evans Hotels...Owner of The Bahia, The Catamaron on Mission Bay and The Lodge at Torrey Pines.
Terry Brown Chairman and President of the Town and Country hotel.
Richard Bartell with Bartell Hotels Owner of The Days Inn , The Pacific Terrace Hotel, Humprey's Half-moon Inn and Suites, The Dana on Mission Bay, The Sheraton in La Jolla, The Hilton Harbor Island, and the Best Western and The Holiday Inn Bayside
Johnny had the visiting cities teams to not book in these hotels as they usually do. The Dolphin fans alone cost the Town and Country Hotel over $40,000 that they usually would have profited.
THE MAYOR FUNDRAISER
The fan groups also protested a fundraiser being held at Bill Evans house for the Mayor. It was a $1,050 a plate event. We got fans to come down and they lined up with signs near the entrance to voice our displeasure with the Mayor and to visibly let the hoteliers know we were still there and still poking at them. Evans flipped the crowd off as he entered. A guest of Bill Evans was Steve Cushman. Steve Cushman, Bill Evans and the Mayor Kevin Faulconer all three together at once. All three very vocal anti-stadium opponents.
Steve Cushman was working behind the scenes to apply political pressure on others to oppose the stadium. “If you were going to line up the people in San Diego who have done the most to block a new stadium over the years, there is no doubt that Steve Cushman would be near the head of that line,” Mark Fabiani once said.
Most of us were fighting this stadium saga now for 20 months now. Fatigue started to take over the fan groups. The frustration of one step forward and a mile backwards was taking it's toll on everyone. The mayor not taking a stance, the city council was against the plan and new groups opposing us popping up what seemed like every day had taken a really good toll on us. The Mayor achieved his goal as he breezed through the primary on June 7th. He now was guaranteed a two term mayor and rumors are he is considering a run for governor.
I voted during the primary on June 7th. One of the teams signature gatherers was outside taking signature at my polling place. She didn't know who I was. She said we needed 40,000 more signatures by midnight or it wouldn't go on the ballot in November. I knew this was false because I talked to the campaign the previous evening. We had our required amount of signatures already. They were just out there to collect extras signatures to assure the 67,000 would be verified. She thought I was just some random voter and was lying to me at a polling location. I took a picture of her and immediately called Mark right there on the spot on his cellphone. She doesn't work as a signature gatherer anymore. She is living proof that you just can't fix stupid.
Although, The NO Downtown Stadium announced they were forming a group of Tony Manolatos, April Boling and Chris Cate among others. They used a lot of fear tactics as if a stadium got funded that 911 would go out of service or half the police force would be laid off. I don't remember all their bullshit claims. I know one thing. Social media needs to invest in a fact checker system.
We turned in all the signatures in the second week of June. We collected 110,780 signatures which amounted to 83 boxes to be turned into the city clerk office. We did in 6 weeks what usually takes 6 months. Dean Spanos paid an unreal record of $15.00 a signature.
Fans needed a break from all the stress. Dave Booga Peters (founder and my buddy from blogging about the Chargers with BoltBlitz.com) held an old fashioned Charger fan get together at the Tilted Kilt. This was the first one of 2016. I got three players to come down and spend time with the fans. Dontrelle Inman, Sean Lissemore and Kyle Emmanuel came out as a favor that I asked from Mark Fabiani.
Soon after, Cory Briggs called us into his office for an urgent meeting. The team, the hoteliers, Cory Briggs and his client former Councilwoman Donna Frye were trying to work out a deal in Mission Valley. WHAT? MISSION VALLEY?
Yep, that was a bomb drop. The stadium goes in Mission Valley, Briggs would drop his lawsuit against the hoteliers that they know they're going to lose, Cory lets the citizen plan die on the ballot ( not campaign for it) and hoteliers would agree to be agnostic on the plan. They would not be for or against it.
We were shocked. Mission Valley would also get a stadium and a riverfront protecting the environment for Donna Frye. This was finally over! A deal has been reached Frye "a half a loaf of bread better than no bread." This angered Frye and reminded her of dealing with Mass back in 1998. She didn't trust Maas from previous dealings with him when he was at Centre City Development
The rumor was he back stabbed her a few others during the Petco Park project. She said was deal off and walked away and soon the whole deal went to shit. She trusted Mark only. She has known him for years and although they may not see eye to eye. She says Mark is 100% honest. Mark was unavailable and this was the last we heard of the agreement that wasn't to be. Go figure, our luck.
Briggs did mention he was talking to Bill Evans and Steve Cushman about the boycott. Evans would laugh to Briggs, "What are some dumb fans going to achieve?" Yet in the same breath was very concerned about the impact we could be have. Most importantly, he was worried about what our next move was going to be. He hated the fact he had no control over us whatsoever. Briggs told him he had no idea he just had an ear to our doings. Briggs said, "But I were you I'd sleep with one eye open". This as we were all sitting in his office at 8 o'clock at night.We had nothing to lose in this fight and we owed no one any political favors. We could do whatever we wanted. (The unknown carries a lot of fear.) The fact we had even got into Bill Evans head was a mission accomplished. That is more than we ever imagined we achieve. It shows how spineless the hoteliers are.
Bill Evans
A DEATH BLOW TO THE CAMPAIGN
On June 29th, the California Appellate Supreme Court took all of what little momentum we had gained. The gut punch that took the air out of all of us. The ruling that a 67% vote would be required. We kept saying we were prepared for 67%. However, we were sure hoping it would be a 50.1% ruling. The measure had zero chance of 67%. Going forward we just have to keep our heads high. The public and especially our personal friends could not see us down, not now. They have seen us battle and fight for so long now. Any look of defeat would have diminished everyone hope. But inside I just wondered, "Damn, can we get a break?" Is all this for nothing?
On July 9th, the signatures were verified by the city clerk office. The initiative would be on the November ballot
Statement from Dean Spanos
"On behalf of the entire San Diego Chargers organization, we want to thank every registered San Diego City voter who signed the petition,” said Chargers Chairman Dean Spanos. “We also want to thank representatives of organized labor – and particularly the unions of the Building Trades Council – for their significant help and support during this process. And we are grateful for the volunteer signature gathering work coordinated by the fan groups, including Save Our Bolts and the San Diego Stadium Coalition. The fan groups did a great job, as did the hundreds of other people who contacted us and volunteered to gather signatures. ”Most signature-gathering efforts of this kind take six full months. We had just six weeks to complete our work,” Spanos continued. “The fact that we were able to collect more than 110,000 signatures in that short period of time demonstrates tremendous support in our community for a new, combined stadium-convention center expansion downtown.”
THE STRESS FROM THE CAMPAIGN TAKE A PERSONAL TOLL
In 2013, Dr's discovered that I had blood clots in my left leg. I couldn't even lift my leg to put pants on. I was rushed into surgery. Well, the stress from working 50 hours a week, the campaign and a shitload of bud lights was taking a serious toll on me. The clots had returned and emergency surgery was needed.
I'd be down for about 2 weeks. The team sent a plant as a gift to my hospital room wrapped in a chargers color bow. That was cool. The stress of the last 2 years and the intensity of months and months of work was taking its toll on me emotionally and physically. I had a granddaughter on the way but I wasn't about to slow down. People relied on us to fight the fight.
CHRIS CATE MEETING
I took this time laid up to reach out to Councilman Chris Cate. I wanted to try and see where we could find some common ground. I also wanted to get him on record with his stance on certain issues with the measure. The team started a smear campaign on social media against Chris Cate right before our conversation. They posted his office phone number on social media and he was getting hundreds of harassing calls a day.
I have no idea what the team wanted to accomplish with this strategy but it drew more negative reaction than positive from the public.
(Hey, a Spanos idea backfired? Who would have guessed that huh?)
Chris Cate and I agreed to meet. So I got the other members together from the other fan groups and Save Our Bolts. We mutually agreed to meet at a restaurant in Mira Mesa. It was supposed to be a private meeting between the fan groups and Chris Cate only.
(Notice a trend here? Why isn't the team meeting with these groups and people? What have they done since the campaign turned in the signatures to be verified? Actually, what have they done since the April 23rd rally in downtown? NOTHING. They gave up when they saw the negative reaction back in May. We are working our asses off in a dog and pony show. The team didn't leave because of a public vote. They left because they quit on their own measure before it even began!)
Dean Spanos voice..."If we would have gotten 50% or more we would have stayed."
(Maybe if you got off your elite ass, we would have hit over 50%. Shit, you could have least told us in February in our first meeting that you weren't going to do shit. I'd be happy with that. The fan groups could have quietly token over the project and at the very least we would just campaign and not have to overcome your incompetence in the process).
The meeting was leaked out to NBCSanDiego Gene Cubbison. I was told he was headed to the meet up spot one hour before the arranged meeting. This angered me greatly cause it violated my word to Cate that it would be a private meeting. I had to do what was right. I called Tony Manolatos who's Chris Cate public relations representative and not exactly on good terms with me. I wanted to inform him and discuss how he wanted this leak handled. Cubbison aggressively let us know he wanted to be in the meeting to report it on the 5 o'clock news.
Tony and I mutually agreed that it could hamper what could be an honest open discussion. Dan McLellan recorded the audio of the meeting. The audio is a good example of what a total cluster fuck this turned into between the city and the team. The bad blood and mistrust prevented any sort of agreement from happening. It's a lost cause. Everyone is cemented in their position.
No one at City Hall knew what the other person was doing. This whole thing between the city and the team was the definition of incompetence.
So we meet Chris Cate. He is a bright man. I can tell he wants to run for Mayor. He has the hoteliers, Tony M, April Boling and the Lincoln Club behind him. Most of the issues he raised were valid. In knowing the measure pretty good myself, they were mostly the unanswered questions in the measure the or ones that are silent in the writing of the measure.
He did say he had to resort to cold calling Dean to get some answers. All of his messages previosly went unanswered. Go figure. Finally, Fred Maas called him back. Maas and Cate couldn't even agree on the day they met together. URGGGGGG!!!!
Cate recollection is they met on April 15 and Maas asked if he wanted to meet with Goldman Sachs. He said yes and never heard back from the Chargers. I texted Mark Fabiani under the table on my phone. Maas was with him.
Maas recollection is the meeting was at Cate office April 13th at 4pm. In the end, he was supposed to call the team for more information about Goldman Sachs and received no response. These guys can't even agree on when they met We are so fucked!
We have a mayor who refuses to take a stand on anything unless it includes putting rocks under the heads of homeless people and their children.
A candidate running for Mayor (Lori) who admitted to being against a $1.2 billion dollar project she never read.
Scott Sherman just wants to suck off the developers in a get rich scheme for the land in his mission valley district.
Three bozos who run the city and would cut off their mothers' social security check if it meant a bigger profit margin for their bank accounts.
The most disheartening admittance is we keep electing these fools to run our city!!!
Here is the audio for you to form your own opinion https://drive.google.com/drive/my-drive?ogsrc=32
THE NINE PHONY CHARGER PROPOSALS
Article by Matthew Hall from the Union-Tribune about the 9 proposals https://storify.com/jenkuhney
60 days bto the election. Dan Fouts did one voiceover commercial. LT showed up one time to support the measure. Where is Stan Humpries, Paul Lowe, Kellen Winslow, Quentin Jammer, Donnie Edwards, Leslie O'Neal, Rolf Benirschke, Gill Byrd, Louie Kelcher, and Ed White? How come the legends didn't come out and support the measure? Roger Goodell showed up one time to support the measure. There a reason the NFL owners voted for Stan Kroenke and not Dean Spanos. No one trusted Dean Spanos to make a good business decision. Not the city, the voters, the fans nor the NFL. They did get Luis Castillo to do a commercial and an appearance with Wes Chandler and Charlie Joiner. A lame response to the opposition getting Tony Hawk to attack the measure sponsored by the hoteliers.
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DEBATING CHRIS CATE
The worst political campaign in history had just 60 days to go. The vast majority of volunteers who signed up were never contacted to help. I met with the campaign director Andy Demers. Andy was a very smart guy. He had no access to the Chargers logo nor access to the team complex. He did have a hole in the wall one man office in Claremont. It was located by the Arby's and Kaiser Hospital. He had a phone, a desk and a chair. It was sad and very apparent then that the team wasn't in it to win it. Much like the majority of the football teams in Dean Spanos fielded as his time as owner.
Politifest is a public affairs summit produced by the Voice of San Diego. It focuses on the local issues and candidates. It's a crash course in politics and policy. put on by the Voice of San Diego. I impressed on Andy Demers that the Chargers be there. I was told to call Maas directly and so I did. Maas said they would be out of town but he wanted representation there for the team. Maas recommended myself and another member to attend on the team behalf. I thought Jason Riggs would be perfect. Riggs is a big SDSU supporter and is well educated on the issue. We also got Marcela Escobar-Eck, Chargers adviser, land-use consultant.
The debate is moderated by Scott Lewis, CEO, Voice of San Diego.
Our opponents is Chris Cate, San Diego city councilman Rob Quigley, architect Julie Meier-Wright, former CEO, San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp.
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I have never studied so hard for anything in my life. Mark gave me the entire measure, all 119 pages to study. I was felt ready and went to meet with Mark near his house two days before the event. He was trying to get the mayor to endorse measure C and have Jason and I announce it at the event. The mayor endorsement (too little too late). The mayor announcement was sadly delayed by a week. After weeks of studying the measure details I asked Mark when they're leaving for Indy? He laughed, there is no trip. "Fred Maas just thinks Chris Cate is an asshole. You guys know the plan just as good as us."The team couldn't attend the biggest political debate in the city with 6 weeks before the election. The reasoning is because Cate is an asshole? Now it's official. They have given up on Measure C. Although, I don't think they even started to believe in the measure. It was underfunded and not campaigned for by the team. The budget Dean spent of 10 million the majority of that budgeted out to getting the initiative on the ballot.
This was the fans of the team trying to rescue a campaign that failed to start and then crawled it's way to November 8th. Instead of Measure C being a rehash of a previously failed proposal. We should have named it Measure Cluster Fuck.
Here is an article on the debate and the one hour video of the debate. Cate says the city had no input on the planing for the measure. In a citizen initiative it is illegal to consult with any city official before releasing the plan. I consulted my mentor on the stage in text messages before the debate. If you see me looking at my phone that what I'm doing. They said to stay calm, "you got this".
Yea, calm lasted about 15 minutes as you can see. I was emotional and got angry. It was a bad performance and I was really disappointed in myself. I came across as an angry charger fan. I lost my composure. Although, I did get into Cate head because in the end he didn't want to talk anymore on stage anymore. I talked to Cory Briggs the night before to verify my facts. Being called a Dean surrogate by the moderator rubbed me the wrong way. But I guess we were.
1 HOUR..THE STADIUM DEBATE
Here is a video of Dean Spanos from an interview done in January of 2016 with CBS Kyle Kraska. Listen to Dean words. Just don't expect to see any action beyond his words.
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DEAN SPANOS ON JANUARY 2016
OCTOBER 2016 THE ELECTION IS LOOMING
So the season starts and it's almost over. The team is poorly coached with Mike McCoy at the helm and Whiz is not living up to the hype as offensive coordinator. Funny, the Chargers started off games very good. They just couldn't close and get the win. Much like the election.
On October 3rd, the mayor finally endorsed the plan. Our mayor played it safe and it worked. He's a spineless coward.
THOMAS POWELL NEW RULE: "If you are going to take a position in opposing a proposed plan then you MUST have an alternative plan!!!" These do nothing and be against everything is killing our city.
On October 3rd, the mayor finally endorsed the plan. Our mayor played it safe and it worked. He's a spineless coward.
THOMAS POWELL NEW RULE: "If you are going to take a position in opposing a proposed plan then you MUST have an alternative plan!!!" These do nothing and be against everything is killing our city.
DEAN SPANOS OWNER SUITE
Because all I did for the campaign, Mark called to give me two tickets to the owners suite for the Saints game. There was an all you can eat and drink buffet. The food was perfectly catered and delicious. Mark tried to get me on the field for warmups but the elevator broke. (hahaha so funny). It was an amazing experience to watch the game with Maas, Fabiani, Dean and his son John. Jason Riggs and his wife went as well.
Two football fans that fought to keep their team is now watching the game from the owners' suite. The past two years were brutal emotionally and physically. The time I afforded to it, in the end, was worth the ride.
Two football fans that fought to keep their team is now watching the game from the owners' suite. The past two years were brutal emotionally and physically. The time I afforded to it, in the end, was worth the ride.
ANOTHER BLOOD CLOT SURGERY
Leaving the game against the Saints I felt some pain in my leg again. The clots had indeed returned inside my body. This is two surgeries in three months. I don't know if the effort was too much and the reason for my health going south was the campaign stress but this was bad. They removed them in a 13-hour surgery. It was supposed to be a 2-hour procedure.
ELECTION NIGHT
Election day started with Boltman calling me and we discussed all of us meeting that evening at Cali Comfort BBQ to watch the ass kicking we were about to receive. I predicted we would get about 43%. Dean was on TV spewing some bullshit about if we get 50% maybe they'll stay.
While I was talking to Boltman and receovering from surgery I noticed a missed call from the team. I thought this was unusual. It was Dean Spanos. He called me back to thank me for the time and effort that I put into the cause. He was grateful for the work from Save Our Bolts. It was a cool experience. There only 32 teams in the NFL. That is 32 team owners and one of them was calling me. This saga really gets surreal sometimes.
While I was talking to Boltman and receovering from surgery I noticed a missed call from the team. I thought this was unusual. It was Dean Spanos. He called me back to thank me for the time and effort that I put into the cause. He was grateful for the work from Save Our Bolts. It was a cool experience. There only 32 teams in the NFL. That is 32 team owners and one of them was calling me. This saga really gets surreal sometimes.
Women, Young voters, Blacks, Asians, non-football fans. The team never did anything. They hired professionals canvassers with a special smartphone application. The Union of the SD Building and Construction Trades that sent 150-250 workers to go door to door. They worked from 4-8pm on weekdays and all day Saturdays. We would not have won a local elementary school election with the way this campaign was mismanaged.
If they would have just at least half-assed this they would have gotten 50.1%. Turns out after some time a later court ruled the initiative would have been 50.1% for passage.
The Chargers didn't leave cause of a lack of support from the fans! I was at these meeting and that was never mentioned. Attendance in San Diego didn't go down until the Carson announcements and after years of threats from the Spanos camp.
The Chargers didn't leave cause of a lack of support from the fans! I was at these meeting and that was never mentioned. Attendance in San Diego didn't go down until the Carson announcements and after years of threats from the Spanos camp.
It was still a great time at Cali Comfort. After the first returns came in it was clear we were indeed dead in the water. I left early, I was just disgusted by everything. The team made no effort to win this. They wanted the approval to be laid at their feet. Measure C did NOT receive 43% of the vote. Don't be a fool believe that.
Dean Spanos got 43% of the vote.
This had nothing to do really with the city love for the Chargers. The hate for Dean Spanos by the citizens of San Diego was more than their love for the Chargers.
This had nothing to do really with the city love for the Chargers. The hate for Dean Spanos by the citizens of San Diego was more than their love for the Chargers.
To blame the team is to be ignorant of the lack of leadership and not having city officials who couldn't get out of their own way.
I met with some city officials after the vote. "We are totally focused on developing Mission Valley." This was the worst campaign in history of politics.
LA means money to the team. Mission Valley is the most valuable piece of land in Southern California. That means money to the city council and the mayor.It's all profit-loss to these people.
Mission Valley to us fans remains an almost sacred ground to our memories. Our childhood memories remain on that 166 acres of land. Our hearts and souls fill the aisles of the Murph. Most of you like us gave it your all. We left our sweat and pain on the field. Soon we will leave our tears on that ground. It's just so sad that the other players in this (city-team) never came out to play the game.
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