Riordan Trailing in Mayoral Returns

The mayor of Cleveland made such a ruckus the NFL kowtowed to his demands and delivered expansion football three years after the departure of the Browns.

The mayor of Nashville personally negotiated the deal to bring the Oilers to Tennessee, whereas the mayor of Oakland fell out of favor for being party to the losing financial deal to bring the Raiders back.

The mayor of Houston went to the NFL owners’ meeting, schmoozed the big guys at an ESPN party and two years after the Oilers’ departure, that city is now the favorite to land the NFL’s 32nd team.

Richard Riordan, the mayor of Los Angeles, well, who knows? The press spokesmen for the mayor of Los Angeles--and there are a lot of them--said the best they could do was present a statement, written by who knows whom.

At a time when the mayor of Los Angeles should be vigorously pumping up the horse he supposedly has been supporting for two years, the New Coliseum Partners, his political influence a response to all the basketball personnel being hired by Michael Ovitz, the mayor of Los Angeles remains mum.

So now the New Coliseum has its main money man, Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz, refusing to discuss his project with the people of Los Angeles and declining to attend any NFL function, and its primary political supporter, the mayor of Los Angeles, declining to discuss the project with the people of Los Angeles and declining to date to attend any NFL function.

How do you like their chances against Ovitz and the city of Houston? Why go to Kansas City if you can’t even deliver your own mayor?

Not surprisingly, the New Coliseum Partners are alarmed. Much of their credibility the last two years has ridden on, and will continue to ride on, the political support they thought they had and had better have when they go to Kansas City on Oct. 27 to meet with the NFL owners.

Ed Roski, the New Coliseum’s top cheerleader, assumed the mayor of Los Angeles would be accompanying him to Kansas City.

He was wrong.

The mayor still might go, but his aides, concerned that their boss might be hitching his support to a losing project coming out of the October meeting, are preaching caution behind the scenes.

“We’re looking at a fourth-quarter fire drill at the Coliseum,” a City Hall insider said. “Two years into this process and now they hired a new architect last week, and a finance team that just saw the financial numbers and assumptions for this deal last week. It’s chaos.”

The New Coliseum Partners--minus the main partner in Anschutz--will meet the mayor Wednesday and present their financial plan for a new stadium in the hopes of getting him to be more active. They will be unable to present a rendering of their new stadium, however, because they don’t know what it’s going to look like.

“The mayor is a businessman, something many mayors around the country are not,” another City Hall insider said. “This mayor will know if the Coliseum has a financing package that works.”

So we will know after Wednesday’s meeting that a mum mayor of Los Angeles who elects not to go to Kansas City will actually be screaming out: The new Coliseum plan doesn’t work and I don’t want my good name savaged by NFL laughter.

How soon we forget, but the mayor of Los Angeles began the football process by appointing a commission: “Football L.A.,” which never had a full meeting, did nothing and disappeared.

He called then-Dodger owner Peter O’Malley and asked him to look into building a football stadium next to Dodger Stadium. After O’Malley became enthusiastic and spent $1 million on a feasibility study, Riordan never asked for the results, but instead shifted his political influence to the Coliseum to buy Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas’ support for the Staples Center.

Ridley-Thomas began throwing the mayor’s name around and encouraged a long list of political types to put their support in writing--just as the mayor did on Oct. 21, 1996, in a letter to NFL stadium committee chairman Jerry Richardson:

“Dear Mr. Richardson,

“I am pleased to express my support for the plan to bring NFL football to the Los Angeles Coliseum as a key element of the ongoing Exposition Park renaissance. . . . The Coliseum is making tremendous progress in addressing the important issues that will make the venue competitive in the National Football League. . . .

“Sincerely,

“Richard J. Riordan, Mayor.”

It was good that he identified himself by name, because the NFL really couldn’t be blamed for not knowing the leadership in L.A.

In the two years since that letter was written, the mayor of Los Angeles has met once with Richardson--on Richardson’s visit to L.A. for a football symposium. The two met for breakfast, and Richardson was later asked in the symposium if the mayor of Los Angeles was being aggressive, as was Mayor Michael White in Cleveland.

Richardson, who might as well be a politician, as careful as he is in choosing his words, paused to ponder, then said, “Well, I would say no, he hasn’t been like Mayor White in Cleveland, but I’m not saying that he has to be. But no, he hasn’t been.”

Roger Goodell, the NFL executive charged with setting the groundwork for a 32nd franchise, said, “The mayor of Houston has been very supportive of their effort to provide a state-of-the-art facility and has been very effective.

“We’ve had contact with the mayor of Los Angeles and he’s been very supportive of bringing football back to L.A. But the mayor of Houston has been more actively involved in legislation, promoting a site and providing proper infrastructure.”

The mayor of Los Angeles, beyond having his staff write letters and statements for him, hasn’t done much at all, unless one credits him, as O’Malley does, in persuading O’Malley to sell his baseball team. If that’s his sports legacy, so be it.

If that’s his platform, there are any number of people who will agree, claiming it is unimportant whether L.A. has an NFL team. That can be a fine argument. Risky, but one that might even drive home a better bargain for L.A. However, the mayor of Los Angeles continues to provide no leadership or direction on just what argument should be made.

“I support the Coliseum campaign to win a team for the city of Los Angeles,” the mayor of Los Angeles said in a statement. “However, this effort must be led by private financing. When Los Angeles is faced with a decision to invest in building a stadium for the NFL, or investing in putting cops on the street, we are putting cops on the street.

“I compliment the hard work of Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas in gaining the NFL’s attention. I’m hopeful that Mr. Roski and his New Coliseum partners can produce a financing plan and commitment that will make the Coliseum a winner.”

That ought to persuade NFL owners to line up behind the New Coliseum. At best, it’s another mixed message, although it’s news to learn that it’s either football or more cops--more cops for sure if the Raiders come back.

When the press statement says it must be “led by private financing,” does that mean there can be no public financing? Will the mayor use his business skills to help make the deal work? Will he campaign for the Coliseum both at home and in Kansas City?

Requests to interview the mayor this week prompted an odd flurry of activity. Aides for the mayor spent the good part of the week tearing into the New Coliseum project--which the mayor of Los Angeles supposedly supports--in an effort to deflect anticipated criticism of the mayor for his inaction the last two years.

“The mayor asked for a plan six months ago from Ed Roski and he’s still waiting,” a City Hall insider said. “They had the floor for the past two years--did they take advantage of it?”

John Semcken, Roski’s point man, said, “All I can say is, there was a miscommunication. We thought we provided it . . . we’re responding to what’s being asked.”

Further criticism from within the city is now being heaped on Roski, with officials wanting to remind the media that two years ago, when Roski took on this project, he said he and his partner, Anschutz, would be willing to spend up to $500 million to bring football to L.A.

“If they are willing to spend the money, then what’s the problem?” a City Hall insider said. “They haven’t spent the money. It’s the owners’ job to pull everything together. You say, look at what the Houston mayor has done, and I say, look at what the Houston owner has done.”

Houston, which already has been given front-running status by the NFL over L.A., has united behind billionaire businessman Robert McNair and plans for a $315-million stadium to be built near the Astrodome.

“Ed Roski has spent $400,000 in the last couple of weeks and has been doing everything he can to make this work,” Semcken said. “He said he would lead the charge to make sure it would happen. I don’t think he ever said he and Phil would put up all the money; they are the ones responsible for making it happen.”

Semcken said the late-hour hiring of NBBJ, an L.A. architectural firm, and scrapping the HOK plan that has been presented to NFL committees four times over the last two years, was done to develop new interest in the project.

The recent hiring of Merrill Lynch to oversee their financial efforts, was done, he said, because there was no need to act until the NFL had completed its financial business in Cleveland.

“We’re anticipating the mayor will be there in Kansas City,” Semcken said. “We will present our financing model to the mayor on Wednesday, the one we will be giving to the NFL in Kansas City. It’s done right now; we’re just correcting typos.”

Those familiar with the financial plan, however, suggest more corrections are in order. The NFL apparently was not comfortable with the marketing and personal-seat license projections offered by the New Coliseum. The New Coliseum will be calling for some of the highest--in some cases the highest--priced tickets, club seats and luxury boxes in the NFL.

“Some of the assumptions are on the high end of the scale,” Semcken said. “But if someone had told us three years ago while working on the Staples Center that we would get $100 million for naming rights, we would have said it’s out of whack. So we’re not uncomfortable looking at the league average and making our L.A. deal the highest in some categories, considering the lack of team here and the facility that we will present.”

The NFL will have problems with those kinds of financial assumptions because of the disaster in Oakland. Ovitz will have a better chance of asking for higher-priced tickets and PSLs in a new showcase stadium in Carson, say some NFL observers, than the New Coliseum in a renovated facility on a site already familiar to customers.

The mayor will see all those assumptions and numbers Wednesday, and although no one still knows his philosophy on the return of football beyond crafted press statements, we will know this after that meeting: Continued silence and the New Coliseum is dead--unable to win its own mayor’s approval weeks before soliciting the same from NFL owners.