Populist uprising stuns Kansas City sports oligarchs
In the Soviet Union, they called it the "samizdat." That is an underground media network powered, at the high-tech end, by mimeograph machines and at the low-tech end by pen on paper.
In Kansas City these past months, Facebook powered the samizdat at the high-tech end, and handmade yard signs powered it at the low end.
Together, they proved sufficient to humiliate the city's political and sports oligarchs in their bid to add 40 years onto an existing 3/8-cent sales tax and – shhh! – move the baseball stadium downtown.
The outcome wasn't even close. Despite the YES side's $3 million ad campaign and the enthusiastic endorsement of Taylor Swift's all-pro boyfriend – what's his name? – the NOs prevailed by a 58-42 margin.
The election mimicked on a micro level what has been happening nationwide on a macro level. Fueled by social media, individuals on the right and left are rising up against elitist power grabs.
A few weeks before the election, my professorial wife decided to post a hand-crafted NO sign on our front yard to compete with all the manufactured YES signs littering our slightly upscale neighborhood.
I took a photo and posted it on my Facebook page. Although social media adverse, my wife couldn't help but inquire on a daily basis how many "likes" we had mustered.
When the figure crested 200, she made a series of Burma Shave-like signs to run down the street. I posted that too. Others were crafting their own signs, making their own memes, setting up opposition Facebook pages. Our side had no money but all the passion.
Used to getting their way, the YES people and their hired guns chose to bury the election's core issue: that is the movement of Royals Stadium from its central spot in the county that pays for it – Jackson County – to downtown Kansas City. Thanks to social media, people noticed.
Two months ago, I reposted on Facebook an article I had written a year earlier explaining why the elites wanted to move the ballpark downtown. The motives are never quite as simple as "follow the money."
As I explained in my 2023 book, "Untenable: The True Story of White Ethnic Flight from America's Cities," for at least a century dreamers and schemers have conspired, wittingly or otherwise, to ruin much of urban America.
In my native Newark, New Jersey, the dreamers were those deluded souls who actually thought it wise to replace functioning ethnic "slums" with shiny new public housing high rises. The schemers were the mobsters who formed demolition companies.
In Kansas City – as in just about all American cities – the dreamers are the skinny-jean activists who push for bike lanes, light rail and "15-minute" cities. Their ostensible goal is to stave off global warming. Their real goal is to make their city as hip and presentable as all other American cities.
The schemers are the guys who hope to make a buck, honestly or otherwise, off the dreams of the dreamers. There is a lot of money to be made from a new stadium, including the demolition money that comes with razing a perfectly functional commercial district on the edge of downtown.
As in most such urban elections, the YES people attempted to buy off the various interest groups able to send people to the polls. The day before the election, a local TV station captured one such effort in action.
"Freedom Inc. in Kansas City, Missouri, has carried decades and decades of political influence across the city, county, and state," the reporter observed. "On Monday, the group held a 'Vote Yes' rally in favor of a 3/8-cent sales tax to help fund the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals stadiums."
"'Vote Yes' means jobs in the Black community," Kansas City, Missouri, Mayor Quinton Lucas said at the rally. "'Vote Yes' means opportunities for the Black community; 'Vote Yes' means growth for our entire community." Lucas and his three predecessors, all Democrats, fronted for the YES side.
For a half century or more, Democrats have been using "civil rights" groups like Freedom Inc. to buy black votes. As Democrats learned on Tuesday, that vote may no longer be for sale.
KC Tenants, an emerging hard-left group, outworked and outmaneuvered Freedom Inc. On Tuesday, they had 60 volunteers at polling stations, especially in the inner city, urging citizens to vote NO.
A week earlier, these media darlings managed to unfurl a huge "VOTE NO" sign at a Royals game before being summarily ushered out of the stadium.
As expected, Jackson County's dwindling respectable right threw in with the elites. Huge "Save the Chiefs" yard signs – a transparently deceptive pitch – lined the city's most prestigious parkway, but the MAGA right was a hard and active NO.
Ever since 2016, the GOP establishment has understood that it no longer controls America's conservative base. As this election proved anew, establishment Democrats have lost control of their own base as well.
If the trend continues, the party's convention in Chicago may be even more fun than that famous one 50-something years ago.
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