Strained Relationship

Levi's Stadium: not much revenue these days (NBC photo)

In this unusual political season the locals are talking about a single $3 million contribution to a campaign, not for a House seat or State Proposition or a seat in the State Assembly but to replace the Santa Clara City Council: [bold added]

This week’s decision by Santa Clara County not to allow fans at 49ers games, despite getting the OK for limited ticket sales from California’s health department, is the latest blow in a strained relationship between the football team and its hand-selected locale...

Team owner Jed York has poured an astounding and unprecedented $3 million into the upcoming city-council election, backing four candidates and opposing four other candidates — including two female incumbents who have stood up to the 49ers on several issues. It’s a mind-blowing amount of money to infuse into a local race in a city of 130,000 people, and has some worrying that the 49ers are trying to turn the city into “Yorkville.”

(Note: the City of Santa Clara shouldn't be confused with Santa Clara County, which btw is home to prominent cities like Palo Alto, San Jose, and Mountain View.)

California's COVID-19 policies have been among the strictest in the nation, yet Santa Clara is saying that these are not strict enough. The 49ers attendance issue was initially about the tradeoff between health risk and business, but in California it quickly devolved into interest-group and identity politics:

[Mayor Lisa] Gillmor and the council, which is majority female (four council members) want to maintain oversight over the stadium. York’s influx of campaign funds, both for and against candidates of his choosing and which dwarfs the backing of any other funds coming into the race, appears to be an effort to change the dynamic.

The 49ers want to make the race an argument about diversity and describe York’s preferred candidates as an effort toward better representing the makeup of the city (40% of Santa Clara residents identify as white). Three of York’s preferred candidates are Asian American.

Rahul Chandhok, the 49ers’ vice president of public affairs and strategic communications, said in an email that York’s support was a “swift, open and transparent” response to seeing Gillmor “orchestrate her developer allies to funnel money through the Police Union PAC” and to “the outcry from civic institutions like the NAACP and the Asian Law Alliance.” Chandhok charges that Gillmor is “supporting a slate of all white candidates” and has worked to “upend voting rights to dilute minority representation.”

The 49ers are bringing out the big guns by stressing the female majority of the City Council (subtext: women don't care about a sport that men love) coupled with the Council's all-white make-up (bunch of Karens!).

Introduce the sex and race angle, now add in a dollop of negative-association words ("developer", "PAC", "union"), and so it goes in California politics.

For the record your humble blogger is in favor of the 49ers position, but c'mon, man, don't trash city council candidates.