Know Your Enemy: The Failed Kansas City Stadium Moneygrab

Billionaires won’t ever go to the poorhouse, but every humiliation they suffer makes us all richer in spirit

[Note: this year’s “Know Your Enemy” will take a few different paths. We’re not always going to examine the pitching matchups, unless notable. However, we’ll be sure to look at notable scoundrels, oddities, histories, and other aspects that make our enemies interesting.]

On Tuesday in Jackson County, Mo., something happened. Voters were asked to weigh in a referendum, which, in the language of a ballot, would allow for:

Renewing the 0.375% sales tax to provide funding for park improvements to Arrowhead Stadium as well as a new baseball stadium, and refinancing debt obligations previously incurred to finance or refinance improvements to the Harry S Truman Sports Complex.

In everyday language, it meant that the taxpayers were asked if they’d be cool paying for the Hunts to put more luxury boxes in Arrowhead and for John Sherman, the owner of the Royals, to get a whole new ballpark because Kauffman Stadium is, well, designed for fans and not other rich people.

The idea of billionaires submitting to a plebiscite is generally anethema to billionaires, who would rather not deal with plebes other than to hoover up money and gratitude for the empty wallets. After all, the greatest benefit of being wealthy is that you only have to talk to people who are paid to listen to you and tell you that yes, that’s a great idea, sir, you absolutely should charge for blue checks, another stroke of genius.

Putting new stadium funding up for a vote has been uncomfortable for politicians, as well. Most city pols love kissing up to billionaires, and love even more when billionaires have to ask them for something. There are a small handful of people who go into politics to tell rich people to go pound sand (at their private beach), but most city politicians are the type of people who feel a thrill run up their pants when a third-generation imbecile says, “I think we can do business, sir.”

Even for politicians who are wary of using tax funds to give a much-needed break to someone who has never once had to operate a toaster on their own — because they have people for that, and because if they tried to do so headlines would lead with “Dozens Incinerated” — the stadium grab is hard to resist.

After all, no one wants to be the politician who loses the beloved local team. And, in a vacuum, it isn’t actually the worst use of taxpayer money to develop land that could attract tourists, open new shops, become the focal point of public transportation and the city as a whole. That’s why I don’t think The 78 is a bad idea.

What is a bad idea is subsidizing the stadiums so that rich people can get whatever they want — more luxury boxes, more tax breaks, more everything. That isn’t weighing options and making hard decisions. That’s acting as a courtier for the rentier class.

But putting it to a vote? That was a certain genius. You could read it as either a stake in the ground for popular rule or a washing of hands.

Either way: The people spoke.

And they said, with what passes as an overwhelming mandate in a country-on-the-brink: get the fuck out of here with that.

With nearly 60% of the vote, the people of Jackson County rejected the scheme. This did not come as a shock — polls had been trending that way — but it is still a seismic shift in the way that billionaires are treated.

For months, Hunt (a rich kid who treats Kansas City as his birthright) and Sherman (who, to be fair, was not a rich kid), treated getting what they want as a fait accompli, the referendum a mere formality. They never really had a solid plan (a little more solid than John Fisher’s Vegas doodlings, but not much), and their sales pitch was “nice unshakeable bond to your teams here, would be a shame if we didn’t get what we want and shipped it wholesale to Nashville.”

When that didn’t work, they got even more desperate and ugly. The city’s tenant union opposed the stadium, and the “Yes” campaign sent out a mailer reading RADICAL LIBERALS ARE HELLBENT ON TAKING THE CHIEFS AWAY FROM US. DON’T LET THEM.

Now, a few issues here. One is that “tenant rights” are only considered radical liberalism if you think that landlords are an oppressed class. Uglier still are the pictures chosen — Black people protesting. That these pictures came from a completely different protest, one that fought evictions during a pandemic, doesn’t matter. Look, it says, at these Radicals. These…others.

The message is less immediately inflammatory, but designed to make one sputter with flustered rage. You might say, I am going to vote Yes, so that these radical liberals don’t take away the Chiefs! But that would be missing a somewhat complicating nuance, which is that the only people threatening to take away the Chiefs are the grotesque idiots who inherited them.

The billionaires played to racial hatred. They played to the left-right culture war. They played toward sheer nostalgia and love, saying that it was up to the taxpayers to protect their beloved teams, no matter how much it cost them and how much it benefited the rich owners.

And it backfired: resoundingly, humiliatingly, conclusively. Now, this doesn’t mean that the Chiefs and Royals are leaving. Deals will be made, some money will be found. The power of the powerful didn’t suddenly disappear.

I don’t know how this will play out with the White Sox. Jerry Reinsdorf might decide it isn’t worth it and pull up stakes. The city and state might decide that developing The 78 is too important to be left to an emotional vote which, at the end of the day, would be a referendum on Reinsdorf.

That might be the most exciting part of this. There’s no illusion that this can snowball into some kind of populist moment, but on this issue — silver spoon brats tearfully pleading that the only thing they want is everything — there is a surging opposition. God willing, we’ll have more votes where billionaires are putting their likability on the ballot. They won’t ever go to the poorhouse, but every humiliation they suffer makes us all richer in spirit.