Stadium signature drive falls short in ballot effort

Las Vegas voters won’t get a chance to weigh in on using public money to build a controversial downtown soccer stadium, at least not yet.

A petition to put the stadium on the June 2 municipal election ballot fell nearly 1,300 signatures short of the 8,258 needed , according to a Clark County-verified signature count completed Thursday night.

The anti-stadium subsidy crowd, including three sitting city council members who helped orchestrate the drive for signatures, plans to keep up the fight in district court. Judge Jerry Wiese is set to hear a lawsuit filed by opponents of the $200 million stadium’s financing plan on Feb. 4.

That suit, filed by councilman and staunch foe of the stadium subsidy Bob Beers on Friday, seeks to knock some 6,000 signatures off the number City Hall says is needed to win a spot on the ballot.

An apparent error in the city clerk’s office saw subsidy opponents scramble to come up with around four times the roughly 2,300 signatures city officials first thought would be needed to put the issue to voters.

That change, along with an eleventh-hour shift in the deadline to turn in the signatures, were both announced within the past two weeks.

Both moves figure to play prominently in upcoming legal wrangling over the issue.

Subsidy opponents have now collected a confirmed total roughly three times the original signature collection target first announced by city officials.

So far as Beers is concerned, that’s the only number that matters.

He remains certain the stadium issue will wind up on the June ballot, despite what he sees as city efforts to foil that plan, including a Thursday move to assign a new judge to hear the case.

“It was actually what I expected,” Beers said of the final tally.

“This thing happened in such a tight time frame. … There were bound to be signatures thrown out.”

Beers, who last week accused City Hall of deploying “egregious unfair play,” said he expects subsidy supporters to appeal should they lose their upcoming court battle on the ballot push.

Nevada law provides for a city council review of the county’s signature tally, though neither Beers nor Mayor Pro Tem and fellow stadium subsidy foe Stavros Anthony expressed much interest in that option.

Anthony, the most recognizable of several Republican candidates for municipal offices looking to capitalize on the stadium controversy, said he, too, is banking on winning in court.

The former Metro police officer, who announced his bid for Mayor Carolyn Goodman’s seat last week, figures the failure of the ballot petition could actually prove to be good news for his campaign.

“I think at this point the voters are going to see that if they can’t vote for the stadium they ought to vote for me,” Anthony said. “And I believe they will, because they know I’ll stop it.”

First-term Mayor Goodman, long recognized as the stadium’s fiercest supporter, did not immediately return requests for comment.

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

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

The city council narrowly approved the deal over loud objections from conservatives Beers and Anthony.

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

Stadium subsidy foes kicked off their whirlwind signature-gathering campaign three days later.

It remains unclear how much it might cost to bring that effort to court. Beers has said the move will be paid for by the Parks Protection Committee, an anti-stadium subsidy political advocacy group co-founded by himself, Anthony and Councilwoman Lois Tarkanian.

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

Giunchigliani lost her bid for Goodman’s seat in a 2011 rout. 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 donations from private donors went toward last 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.