Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! - Jesse Ventura [78]
So, at the end of 2001, I went to Washington to testify before Congress to oppose what I saw as an extortion scheme surrounding the Twins. Selig was there, and we sat right next to each other. He was claiming that the poor baseball owners were suffering economic losses of close to $600 million. My response was, these owners were also getting huge tax write-offs. I testified: “That’s why I have a hard time believing it, Mr. Selig, that they’re losing that kind of money and still paying the salaries they’re paying [averaging about $2.5 million a player]. It’s asinine. These people did not get the wealth they have being stupid!”
From the public response I got, I think I might have been speaking for baseball fans everywhere. Especially with the budget deficit Minnesota was then facing, I still wasn’t about to back public financing for a new stadium. Well, the minute the new Republican governor came in, House Speaker Sviggum—who’d also been opposing it—suddenly carried a bill to raise sales taxes in Hennepin County in order to pay for one. That’s because it’s all about legacy. If the pro teams left on my watch, the rogue independent governor Jesse Ventura would have taken the blame. Now, with a Republican governor, all stadiums will get built.
The Minnesota Vikings’ owner, a billionaire from San Antonio named Red McCombs who started out selling cars, was another who wanted a new stadium. Skip Humphrey, who everybody had assumed would be the next governor, canceled a gubernatorial debate that had been planned for months, to be held in front of students from all the high schools in the state—because he was being wined and dined in Red’s private box at a football game. I pointed that out at the next debate, and Skip didn’t know what to say. Of course, Red called in his congratulations the day after I won the election.
After the Vikings came within an overtime period of making the Super Bowl in January of ’99, Red asked if we could have a meeting. I enjoyed it immensely, although I can unequivocally say that, from a business standpoint, it was the worst meeting I had in my four years as governor. That’s because Red came in with no preparation, no plan whatsoever. He simply plopped down in a chair in my office and said, in his Texas accent, “I need a new stadium, governor.”
Chuckling inside, playing naïve and dumb, I said, “Well, Red, build one. I’m certain there’s someone out there you could buy the land from. What do you need to see me for?”
Red cleared his throat a few times and said, “Well, I can’t do that without some participation of state money.”
I said, “But Red, you’re private enterprise. Why would you require state money?” Maybe, having only bought the team the previous summer, Red was a rookie at the fund-raising game. Or maybe he was just used to getting what he wanted, with his holdings in oil, and TV and radio stations. I then explained to Red that our Metrodome, where both the Vikings and Twins played, was younger than my son, who was twenty-one at the time. I felt very strongly that, when government or the public participate in building something, they should expect they’ll get more than twenty to twenty-five years of life from it. I went on to tell him that my Roosevelt High School had been built way back in the 1920s, and kids were still being educated there.
“Red, outside the stadium the trees aren’t even mature yet,” I added. “They were planted when the dome was built, and they’ve only grown twenty feet, and these are big beautiful trees that reach as high as fifty feet.”
Red then got to the gist of the matter. Which was keeping up with the Joneses. He explained to me that the average NFL owner made somewhere between $8 and $12 million a year, but he was