Is Beers’ stadium fight over? It might be

Las Vegas Councilman Bob Beers’ crusade to put a controversial downtown soccer stadium up for a public vote came to an apparent end Friday night, in more or less the way he’d hoped.

Beers, a fierce opponent of using millions in taxpayer dollars to pay for the $200 million stadium project, spent two weeks collecting an estimated 8,300 signatures in support of an initiative to put a stadium funding question on the June 2 municipal election ballot, some 50 more than needed to put the issue to voters.

City Clerk Luann Holmes’ official count of those signatures won’t be completed until sometime next week.

But petition supporters — some of whom had spent the past 18 hours knocking on doors in an effort to put the initiative over the top — didn’t exactly take a victory lap following the unofficial tally.

Beers, who earlier this week accused City Hall of deploying “egregious unfair play” in alleged efforts to stymie the stadium ballot initiative, said he’d need about 3,000 more signatures to feel 100 percent confident in the initiative’s success, given the number of signatures he expects Holmes to throw out next week.

A writ of mandamus filed by Beers’ attorneys against the city Friday night has him feeling 90 percent confident the issue will go before voters this summer. Beers said the legal filing requires Holmes to acknowledge his success in picking up the much smaller number of signatures originally thought needed to put the stadium on the ballot.

City Attorney Brad Jerbic last week announced that an apparent error in the city clerk’s office would force Beers to collect some 8,200 signatures to put the stadium funding question to voters, nearly four times the number originally calculated by outgoing City Clerk Beverly Bridges.

Beers, Jerbic and Holmes have been locked in a heated war of words ever since.

“It says (Holmes) has to follow the law or show up in court within three days,” the Ward 2 councilman said of the legal filing. “We anticipated that we might fall a little bit short. …We anticipate the writ will force the city not to reject the (signature) count.”

Whether he’s 6,000 over the required tally or just a few autographs short, Beers and his supporters have rolled over more than a few speed bumps in their quest for a place on the June ballot.

One of the biggest came on Wednesday, when Beers — who was under the impression that he had until Saturday night to collect signatures — was told that he would have until midnight Friday to complete his ballot question push.

Petition supporters — including fellow city leaders Stavros Anthony and Lois Tarkanian — never seemed to lose faith in the effort.

A half-dozen set up camp outside City Hall at 6:30 a.m. Friday and didn’t leave until Holmes signed off on their signatures.

They collected dozens of signatures from passersby headed back from a lunch break or on their way home from work, and reluctantly turned away dozens more potential signers because they lived in unincorporated Clark County and other areas south of Sahara Avenue.

A few of the thousands of names that appear on the stadium petition rolls are more familiar than others. Retired Clark County Judge Don Mosley threw his support behind the ballot question, as did former mayoral candidate and Clark County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani. Former Las Vegas councilman and Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson stopped in to show his support on the last signing day.

Former City Council candidate Suzette LaGrange, one of the petition’s five original signers, live-tweeted some of Friday’s proceedings, taking special care to publicize more than 1,000 petitions dropped off by Culinary Local 226 volunteers just after 2 p.m.

Things looked good for the anti-stadium subsidy crowd in the run-up to the ballot question filing deadline. As late as 2:30 p.m., Beers could be overheard telling reporters “we’re gonna get close” to the mandated signature tally.

More than a few signers derided the stadium as Mayor Carolyn Goodman’s “legacy project.” At least one referred to the politics surrounding the deal, which took months to put to a final vote, as a “nauseating display.”

A deal approved by city leaders on Dec. 17 requires Las Vegas leaders to chip in $56.5 million toward construction of the much-ballyhooed 24,000-seat downtown stadium project opposed by ballot petition backers.

That figure does not include the value of the 13-acre stadium parcel that would be given to stadium developers, land the city says could be worth up to $48 million.

The city plans to use $90 million in hotel room tax fees to hold up its end of the agreement — dollars that are currently set aside for city parks.

City leaders narrowly approved the deal over loud objections from City Council conservatives Beers and Anthony, who has since announced his candidacy for mayor.

Four city leaders — Bob Coffin, Steve Ross, Ricki Barlow and Mayor Goodman, the same four who supported the publicly subsidized stadium plan — passed on a chance to put their own ballot question to voters earlier this month.

Beers kicked off his whirlwind signature gathering campaign three days later.

He has “no idea” how much it might cost to bring the effort to court. Beers has confirmed such a move would be paid for by the Parks Protection Committee, an anti-stadium subsidy political advocacy group co-founded by himself, Anthony and Councilwoman Tarkanian.

Beers, Anthony and County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani count as the group’s three top donors.

Giunchigliani lost her bid for Goodman’s office in 2011. Beers is challenging U.S. Sen. Minority Leader Harry Reid in 2016.

More than $20,000 pooled by the trio of elected leaders and a smattering of private donors went toward this week’s hiring of Organized Karma LLC, a political consulting firm that sent out dozens of door-knockers to collect signatures in support of the stadium ballot initiative.

Contact James DeHaven at jdehaven@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3839. Follow him on Twitter: @JamesDeHaven.