Howard Schultz Illustration by João Fazenda

Dave Mahler hosts Seattle’s afternoon sports-talk-radio show “The Dave (Softy) Mahler Show,” on KJR 950 AM. One day in late January, the phone lines lit up. Howard Schultz, the Starbucks billionaire, had announced his interest in running for President in 2020. Mahler summarized the reaction: “Like, ‘Really? Howard Schultz? The guy that stabbed us in the back is gonna run the country?’ ” He went on, “When I think of Howard Schultz, the first words that come to my head are ‘Fuck him,’ and then ‘Fuck him’ again.”

Many candidates have constituencies they’re concerned about. For Kamala Harris, it’s criminal-justice-reform advocates. For Elizabeth Warren, it’s Native Americans. Schultz has to reckon with Seattle sports fans, who are still bitter about his tenure as the owner of the Seattle SuperSonics, from 2001 to 2006, when he sold the N.B.A. team to investors in Oklahoma City. “The only thing you have to do as an owner is not sell the team to someone who is gonna move it out of town,” Mike (the Gas Man) Gastineau said the other day. (Gastineau preceded Softy as the sports-talk host on KJR.) “That’s your only real job! But, with Schultz, when things got tough, he was a quitter.”

When Schultz bought the Sonics, the team had recently fired its coach and acquired a creaky Patrick Ewing from the Knicks. They finished tenth in the West in 2001, but the point guard Gary (the Glove) Payton made the All-Star team. Jeremy Repanich, a former guest-relations employee for the Sonics, recalled that, at first, Schultz was hailed as a potential savior. “He said the right things: ‘It’s a public trust!’ and ‘We’re going back to the green-and-gold uniforms!’ ” Gastineau remembered the new owner sitting in the front row, at half-court: “All eyes on him. He wore his emotions on his face. Cheering wildly or slumped in his seat. It didn’t look right.”

One night, in the middle of play, the game horn went off without stopping. Gastineau recalled, “Schultz gets up, walks across the court to the scoring table, where engineers are trying to fix it. I thought, What’s he think he’s going to do?” He went on, “He had this arrogant clunkiness about him. Eventually, he puts his palms up and walks off. Doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.”

In 2003, Schultz made his first big mistake, trading Payton to the Milwaukee Bucks. Mahler called the move “a Space Needle-size screwup.” It was the first of Schultz’s missteps with Sonics players, whom he once scolded for not smiling enough. There were exceptions, however. Vin Baker, who played for the Sonics during Schultz’s tenure, published a book called “God and Starbucks: An N.B.A. Superstar’s Journey Through Addiction and Recovery.” While sobering up, Baker met with Schultz. “We came up with a plan,” Baker later said. “And part of the plan was to make caramel macchiatos and serve coffee at Starbucks.” (Baker worked as a manager at a Starbucks. He is now an assistant coach for the Milwaukee Bucks.)

Desmond Mason, the winner of the 2001 N.B.A. Slam Dunk Contest, recalled, “We had some great talks, Howard and I. One time I said, ‘Howard, man, the cranberry triangle things aren’t very good. I love Starbucks coffee, but I don’t like this food.’ He sat there listening. I said, ‘You should put Krispy Kreme doughnuts in Starbucks.’ ” Mason later took credit when Starbucks started offering more pastries. Now an abstract-expressionist painter, he counts Schultz among his collectors.

But things went further south in 2005, when Schultz began increasing pressure on the city to pay for a new basketball arena. (The Seahawks and the Mariners had received public subsidies for their stadiums.) Repanich said that Schultz’s move reinforced his reputation for cheapness—according to lore, he’d once given Sonics employees “custom” Starbucks gift cards worth three dollars and fifty cents—and added, “Howard came in with an entitled attitude of ‘This is what we deserve.’ ” In 2006, four days before the Super Bowl, the first featuring the Seahawks, Schultz went on Gastineau’s show to demand that the city fund a new basketball arena. “It bombed,” Gastineau said. “It’s the Super Bowl, man! He was starting a fight at the Godfather’s wedding. He couldn’t read the situation.” Fed up, Schultz decided to sell the team.

Schultz has tried to defuse the controversy, publishing an apologetic memoir and sitting down for an interview with KING-TV, in Seattle. According to Mahler, it hasn’t worked: “Easy for Schultz to apologize now, because now he needs our votes. Well, fuck you, you know?” Repanich called him a “spineless mogul” and pointed out echoes of the Sonics years: “He’s unwilling to go through the messiness of even a primary campaign. He doesn’t want to coalition-build—he wants to direct. And he doesn’t have the charisma to rile up people, which Trump does.”

Mahler hasn’t warmed to any of the current 2020 candidates: “Bunch of nobodies, in my opinion.” He said that, if it came down to Trump versus Schultz, “I’m moving to Canada, if possible. If they won’t let me in, I’ll take the Donald.”

Gastineau mostly agreed. “I might get in my car and drive off a cliff,” he said. “I couldn’t trust Schultz in that job. What’s he gonna do when things get tough? Sell the Washington Monument?” ♦