Among other election-related items, respondents to a recent poll commissioned by the Merc were asked how they felt about the city spending public money to bring MLB to San Jose. The results were negative in a landslide: 53.6% were against the idea, while 32.1% were for it.

The San Jose effort has been marred by three specific issues:

• The Gonzales stench. The decidedly unpopular mayor (26.7% approval) publicly campaigned on behalf of the city over a year ago at spring training (the misspelling incident). He tried to have a ballot measure for a ballpark scheduled for November’s general election (bad move, quickly dismissed). He now believes that his successor should figure out a way to avoid a public vote. That won’t happen even if City Hall were scandal-free.
• Dissent in the ranks. Baseball San Jose is made up of numerous civic and business leaders. Sometime after the Selig visit in September, the group became somewhat fractured as there was no consensus built about how to further pursue the A’s. Some wanted to keep a low profile in keeping with Bud Selig’s typical M.O. Some wanted to directly challenge the Giants and MLB. Others wanted to retreat and regroup – waiting for an opportunity to arise when efforts in Alameda County failed. BBSJ’s website went dark and so went the best outreach arm the effort had. Few BBSJ members showed up at the publich outreach meetings. Any chance they had to shape the dialogue with the public was lost. On the political side, there are two mayoral candidates (Michael Mulcahy and Dave Cortese) who happen to be BBSJ leaders that are campaigning against each other. They may be splitting the pro-baseball vote, with Cindy Chavez getting a small portion as well.
• No sizzle, no steak either. The city has been hamstrung by its inability to engage directly in a dialogue with the A’s. Sure, San Jose leaders see and talk to Wolff frequently (because he is one of them after all), but the territorial rights issue has effectively put up a soundproof glass wall between them and the A’s. As long as there is no dialogue, no substantive ballpark plan – with ancillary development – can be debated. It’s unknown what the public’s share would be beyond the land acquisition. It may very well be that if the poll respondents were answering a question more along the lines of, “Would you support the acquisition of land for a baseball team as long as there were no other public expenditures to get a ballpark built?” it might be a completely different result. The city has its hands tied because it can’t explain the economic side of a ballpark concept.

Does this mean that the San Jose ballpark plan is dead? No, because things can change rapidly. San Jose is stuck being “Plan C” (if Oakland were “Plan A” and Fremont “Plan B”) and there’s very little it can do about it. Should the Fremont plan move forward and result in a ballpark, the San Jose effort (at least the $700K spent on the EIR) would be rendered moot. At least they’ll be able to recoup redevelopment’s land grab by selling off the property for housing. Should Fremont collapse and if Oakland and the A’s aren’t able to put a workable proposal together, San Jose could move to the forefront. Some would argue that was Wolff’s plan all along. Considering the bullet points above, I have to respectfully disagree.