The scene at a Kingman Park church Wednesday night produced the kind of absurd political theater fit for a television sitcom. Mayor Muriel Bowser, perhaps D.C.’s biggest booster of a new stadium at RFK, had to sit quietly on stage at St. Benedict the Moor Catholic Church while one argument after another against a stadium flashed on screen beside her.
As Herroner waited uncomfortably for the chance to take the microphone, leaders with the neighborhood’s civic association rattled off the results of a survey they recently commissioned about the prospect of bringing the Commanders back to RFK. They found that two-thirds of the roughly 2,500 participants opposed the idea, with a large majority ranking it dead last among other options for the massive RFK campus like green space, housing, and playgrounds.
It’s difficult to imagine a starker contrast with the sort of swanky downtown gatherings where Bowser has most often pitched this idea. She had to sit idly by as neighbors raised a whole host of concerns about NFL football’s return to the area: Traffic, drunk fans, crime, and rats all featured prominently. The potential use of taxpayer money to lure the team back or otherwise build a new stadium was, perhaps predictably, another top complaint.
“This is a tremendous opportunity,” one respondent wrote. “Please don’t blow it on a billionaire’s playground.” That line drew perhaps the loudest round of applause of the evening.
Bowser will have to endure a lot more of this before the stadium debate is done. After all, nobody will ever be more opposed to a stadium than the neighbors that will have to bear the brunt of its most negative externalities. (Though former Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander, decked out in a Washington Football Team hat, was in attendance to tell anyone who’d listen that her aunt once lived near RFK and never had a problem with the stadium.)
The real question is whether the rest of Bowser’s advocacy lands as flatly as her efforts Wednesday night. Without any real updates to share (the RFK land is still controlled by the feds, and a bill to let D.C. redevelop it has made only minimal progress), Bowser had to fall back on familiar talking points about the value of stadiums to the local economy and the city’s past successes managing such large redevelopments. She handled herself capably enough, but the number of big applause lines was still pretty sparse. (Loose Lips hears that Bowser’s team initially believed the civic association wanted to hear about a range of issues, including crime and trash pickup, and they only learned a bit belatedly that the meeting’s sole agenda item was RFK, so Bowser had to adjust on the fly.)
“A lot of people wondered during the debate over Nats Park: ‘Should we be building for billionaires when we have schools [to build]’?” Bowser noted during the question and answer portion of the evening. “We have to do both,” she continued, generating some loud grumbling from the otherwise restrained crowd. “I don’t know anyone that doesn’t want the Nationals in D.C. And we built a lot of schools since then, too.”
The good news for Bowser is that she mostly needs to play the inside game to win a new stadium at RFK, not appeal to the masses. And it’s much easier to schmooze in the halls of Congress and the Wilson Building than it is to win popular support. Some stadium opponents have even floated the prospect to LL of some sort of ballot initiative on RFK to disrupt this dynamic, but Wilson Building sources note that it would be difficult to craft such a proposal: Initiatives generally can’t meddle with executive functions, like land deals or zoning decisions.
The more troubling prospect for Bowser is that her RFK lobbying operation is not exactly firing on all cylinders at the moment. Things in the House of Representatives are even more of a mess than normal these days, so it’s probably unreasonable to expect much movement on the RFK development legislation in the near future. But she’ll need to work the phones around Capitol Hill whenever things calm down.
And who will take on that role? John Falcicchio was one of her most prominent representatives on this particular question before his resignation amid a sexual harassment scandal. There’s no natural replacement considering the recent exodus from her administration—notice that she sent Delano Hunter, the acting director of the Department of General Services, to a recent congressional hearing on the RFK bill, and he’s not exactly the most visible member of her cabinet.
Bowser’s pick for Falcicchio’s old job, Nina Albert, could be the new point person. The newly christened deputy mayor for planning and economic development has already named RFK among her top priorities, and she certainly has relationships in the White House and on Capitol Hill after her stint in the Biden administration. (She even made an appearance at the Kingman Park meeting, fresh off her going away party at the General Services Administration.) Bowser has relied on DMPED as a focal point for the issue by creating a new “sports team” to manage a study of stadium financing across the city, and Albert could lead additional efforts in the future. She undoubtedly has contacts among the big-name developers who would partner with the city on any future redevelopment of the campus alongside the Commanders.
But there’s another power center to consider. Events DC, the city’s quasi-governmental entity controlling its sports stadiums and convention center, has long handled RFK matters due to its management of the site. And Bowser pal Angie Gates took over as Events DC’s new president last year.
What’s more, LL hears that Gates recently hired a veteran of past D.C. stadium debates: Scott Burrell, longtime general counsel for former City Administrator Allen Lew as he managed the construction of Nats Park and other big public works projects around the city. Burrell’s LinkedIn lists him as Events DC’s new associate general counsel for real estate, as of last month. Is this a signal that the agency could be a player on this question as well? It can’t make too many moves just yet—the Council has included provisions in the budget for the past several years barring the agency from spending money on the matter, and that prohibition runs through at least 2024.
Bowser will have to sort all this out and ensure there are clear points of contact as she ramps up her RFK campaign. The Commanders themselves have yet to invest heavily in a local lobbying operation—city records show they last relied on high-profile lobbyist Janene Jackson to meet with lawmakers back in 2021—so the mayor’s behind-the-scenes efforts will have to suffice, for now.
It’s still unclear just how hard she’ll have to fight with the Council on this particular question. Outside of Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen and, to a lesser extent, Chair Phil Mendelson, few lawmakers are vocally opposed to the idea. A seven-member majority of the Council wrote a letter swearing off any interest in a RFK stadium in June 2022, but some of the opponents aren’t in office anymore. When the Washington Post surveyed the Council on the question in July, only three members expressed firm opposition and five showed “some level of openness” to the idea. If Bowser can build more public support among nostalgic football fans, it might be easier to get to seven votes.
“Do you think [Nats Park] was a home run of a debate, where all 13 councilmembers voted for it?” Bowser asked the crowd. “No, it was hotly contested. There were 7-6 votes all the way through.”
Progressives will certainly mount their own campaign to oppose the idea. The Fair Budget Coalition, DC Environmental Network, and other left-leaning groups announced their intentions to fight any stadium deal ahead of the Kingman Park meeting, and leading lefty organizers Ed Lazere and Kush Kharod were both on hand Wednesday collecting signatures to build their own movement countering Bowser.
Although they likely found some supporters among the skeptical crowd, a few ornery neighbors may not be much of a match for the powerful interests pushing for a stadium. The city’s influential business community largely wants to see the team back in D.C. And the Commanders’ new ownership group (which, for full disclosure, includes City Paper owner Mark Ein) has managed to erode at least of the roadblocks to an RFK deal that existed under the previous ownership.
Bowser, by all accounts, views the matter as a project that could define her legacy as mayor. It’s unlikely that she’ll let a rocky community meeting deter her from pushing forward.
“Everybody knows I love accountability,” Bowser said, to some guffaws, as she closed her remarks. “The reason why voters have sent me back three times is because I do what I say I’m going to do…I’ve seen a lot of projects go from start to finish.”