No need for dramatic football metaphors.

By all appearances, the Chargers have almost no chance in November of convincing enough San Diego voters to raise taxes for nearly $1.2 billion in public debt to help the team build a downtown stadium and convention center.

It’s equally evident that Dean Spanos, the team’s chief executive, seems determined to prevail, judging from his expenditure of treasure and professional effort.

Spano adviser Fred Maas said the team has spent well north of $5 million on its initiative, which qualified last week for the ballot. And, with the hiring of a nationally prominent crew of campaign consultants, the spending is just beginning.


× Chargers special adviser Fred Maas on the team’s stadium plan.

Still, the obstacles seem extreme.

Consider this tidbit. I asked April Boling, the veteran political activist leading the campaign to defeat the team, how her fundraising was going.

“I can’t say it’s going smashingly,” Boling said Friday. “There’s a certain sense of complacency among people who oppose the measure, because they don’t think it can win.”


Or this: “It sounds like a Quentin Tarantino movie,” said Dan Schnur, a political scientist at University of Southern California and former Republican strategist.

After disclaiming that he’s no expert on San Diego politics, this expert on statewide ballot initiatives noted that tax-hiking measures rarely gain support over time.

“The overall rule of ballot initiative campaigns is that they are never more popular than the day they are announced,” Schnur said.

This brings us to the latest polls, which show the Chargers starting from behind, to put it mildly:


Two initiatives on the city of San Diego’s November ballot would raise taxes in relation to a possible new Chargers stadium downtown. A Union-Tribune/10News poll shows both have an uphill climb to achieve even a simple majority. It is currently unclear whether one or both would need a two-thirds majority to pass.

Automated poll conducted Jun 29-30 by SurveyUSA by phone (using landline and cellphone numbers) with a sample of 687 city of San Diego likely voters (questions 1-4) and 800 adults (questions 5-10). The samples have a margin of error of +/-3.8 and +/-3.5 percentage points respectively. Because of rounding, some totals do not equal 100.

Expect stadium ads

A remarkable 40 percent of likely voters said they were certain of voting against the Chargers initiative, with just 30 percent sure they’d vote in favor, according to polling done last week by SurveyUSA for the San Diego Union-Tribune and KGTV 10News. The poll had a 4 percent margin of error.

Crucially, 30 percent said they weren’t certain. This suggests that the Chargers must charm all of San Diego’s undecided voters — as well as convert opponents — to surpass the threshold of 66.7 percent, the dreaded two-thirds majority required for most tax-hiking, special-purpose ballot measures in California under current law.

Not incidentally, voters seemed similarly unenthused by the Citizens’ Plan initiative though decidedly less negative; with 28 percent polling against, 31 percent in favor, and 41 percent uncertain.


The Citizens’ Plan would raise taxes by a lesser amount (to 15.5 percent on hotel stays versus the team’s 16.5 percent) and require the Chargers contribute more money if they build a downtown stadium. And its author, attorney Cory Briggs, says the general fund destination for those tax dollars ensures that his measure needs the easier, simple majority to pass.

Polls aren’t destiny, of course. So let’s consider some relevant history.

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In 1998, about 60 percent of city voters approved Proposition C, the Padres’ measure on whether the city should borrow $225 million without raising taxes to build what became Petco Park.


That’s about $333 million in today’s dollars, no tax increase was sought, and the measure was advisory only — yet it still fell short of the two-thirds threshold the Chargers are trying to reach.

Early in the campaign, the Padres touted the stadium’s economic potential to revitalize San Diego’s blighted East Village. But electoral success depended more on a late pivot to focus on the brand power of the baseball team itself, says former state senator and campaign consultant Steve Peace. A winning season helped.

The Chargers certainly plan to exploit the power of the National Football League, the biggest brand in professional sports.

Schnur, the political science professor, notes that political television advertising is far more effective during live sporting events, when viewers with digital video recorders are less likely to skip commercials.


Expect Chargers stadium ads — along with plenty of other political spots under equal-time rules — to edge out beer commercials this fall. Endorsements by popular former and active players are influential, too.

“The guy sitting in front of the TV in his Philip Rivers jersey screaming plays is probably a ‘yes’ vote,” Schnur said. “But others in the room may be swayed.”

Another relative advantage: This is a presidential election year. Clinton versus Trump is bound to lift turnout.

“In other elections, you tend to get older, economically conservative voters who are suspicious of taxes and spending,” Schnur said. “Generally speaking, large turnouts tend to help revenue measures.”


Maas, the team adviser, says their research shows particular potential among San Diego’s “low-propensity voters” who typically show up only for presidential elections.

“Our research tells me they are huge Chargers supporters,” Maas said. “It blew me away.”

The team is betting heavily on technology. Using data mining and other techniques, political consultants have “coded” about 600,000 voters in San Diego, enabling field workers to reach them using everything from knocking on doors to obscure social media channels.

Traditional methods still work. Mailers about a month before an election can influence people, as do phone calls designed to remind people to vote.


“We’re trying to be very smart and very targeted,” Maas said. The goal is to ignore hard-core opponents and focus on the undecided.

On the other hand, the Chargers are worried about ballot fatigue. Maas counts 16 city initiatives and 17 statewide.

Without getting into specifics, he said the campaign won’t begin in a highly visible way until after the summer political conventions. The air war begins with football season, I’m guessing.

Expect to hear reminders that the Chargers’ initiative would tax tourists, primarily, and leave locals alone. So does the Citizens’ Plan.


The Chargers could even decide to help the Citizens’ Plan, or at least not undermine its campaign, which will surely have less funding. After all, the Citizens’ Plan encourages the city to create a park and university expansion in Mission Valley, priorities that poll well with the public.

If the Chargers lose and CP wins, the team and NFL would have the option of funding the entire stadium portion itself or seeking public funds in a special election. Both alternatives would involve yet more money from the Spanos family.

Thus the effort to stay in San Diego is revealed as sincere, and not the cynical ploy of a team making ready to move to Inglewood, as the NFL has permitted.

Maybe the Spanos sons who run the team, John and A.G., love San Diego, as they’ve said.


Just as likely, the NFL would love to keep Los Angeles Rams alone for years, so that every time a team gets tired of its stadium it can plausibly threaten to join them, for the purpose of extracting another round of subsidies. Meanwhile, the Oakland Raiders are talking about abandoning their L.A. option (if the Chargers stay) in favor of public subsidies in Las Vegas.

Back in San Diego, the odds still favor a Chargers defeat. The NFL has given the team a tough schedule. My handicappers tell me a mere 5-4 winning record by Election Day seems optimistic.

Besides, the team has hired an expensive group of Eastern Republican political consultants to manage a tough campaign in a West Coast city that’s increasingly Democratic.

The best hope for Chargers fans is that the California Supreme Court, which has taken up the question of whether citizens initiatives shall require just a simple majority, makes a speedy decision, as City Attorney Jan Goldsmith plans to request.


If the high court ignores Goldsmith, the NFL may be inclined to wait.

Even if the Chargers fail in November, as the polls suggest at this point, there’s still a chance San Diego’s long stadium saga could continue.

dan.mcswain@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-1280 Twitter: @McSwainUT