The recall petition drive failed--what do the numbers really mean?
The mayoral recall petition drive failed. Some pro-Fahey media have proclaimed it a miserable showing, and some people even think the numbers give the Mayor a mandate to continue like he has been--and even to run for re-election.
But the pro-recall people can take pride in the fact that their effort was, in the final analysis, the ONLY effort that actually provided anything even close to a statistical or objective measure of the public's opinion of this mayor's job performance.
- It was not just a referendum on public approval of the new stadium proposal.
- It WAS a measure of how the public feels about this mayor and his job performance to-date.
All other "polls" as to whether to build a new ball park (or not) have been worthless internet surveys. There are typically no steps taken to prevent people from "voting" multiple times, nor from voting if they do not live inside Omaha. Even the "petition" being touted by the Save Rosenblatt Committee is the same: nothing to prevent people from signing more then once, and they have signatures from all over eastern Nebraska and western Iowa. The only opinions that COUNT to the Mayor and the City Council are those of voting Omaha residents. The recall petition drive, in contrast, provided highly targeted, non-duplicated data about the Mayor's overall job performance.
Within the next few years, Omaha citizens will see jumps in the percentage of their incomes that will be paid in local taxes, as well as further decreases in services.
The 8,202 signatures that were gathered have been compared to the (approximately) 2000 names the Mayor took with him to Indianapolis (that had been gathered on the internet) in an attempt to show the NCAA that the people of Omaha "supported" his new stadium proposal, but is this really a fair comparison?
Names gathered on the internet are next to worthless in assessing how much true support (or opposition) there is to any particular issue. There are often no steps taken to assure an individual doesn't "sign" multiple times, and there's no way to know (with certainty) where a respondant on the internet actually lives.
We were told there were "about" 2000 names--but we weren't given the exact number. Is this because they knew those "signatures" were essentially useless the way they were trying to use them? Those 2000 "names" could have all been from just a few determined individuals, and they would not even have had to be Omaha residents--they could have lived almost anywhere. So it should be clear that using that list of "2000" names to try to prove a wide base of Omaha support for the stadium plan sold to the NCAA was not a valid use of the so-called "signaures." (Of course, whether that use of those names was dishonest or unethical is left entirely to the reader's judgement.)
The recall signatures were, on the other hand, purposely screened for both residence and one signature per person. If the 8,202 signatures would have been validated by the Douglas County Election Commissioner's office, only a very small percentage of them would have been disqualified solely on the basis of residency outside the city limits. And petition signers seemed to be well-aware of the need to only sign one petition--many of the circulators reported running into people who'd already signed. It's also mandated by State law that no individual sign a recall petition more than once.
But neither can all the recall signatures be necessarily used to refute the Mayor's claim that the people of Omaha support his new stadium proposal. People signed the recall petitions to voice their desire to have him removed from office: and there were a number of reasons people gave for wanting him out when they came to sign petitions. Many of them were opposed to the new stadium proposal, but some of them did specifically say they were not opposed to the ballpark--just to the way the Mayor manages the City's affairs. But it is safe to say that the majority of the 8,202 recall petition signers were opposed to the new stadium. While there's no way to know what the exact percentage was, there were easily several times more than the alleged "2000" the Mayor took to the NCAA.
So what do the numbers really say?
To understand these numbers, one has to understand more than to just simple-mindedly quote "8,202 signatures" and "failed" in the same sentence. The small number of signatures on the recall petitions does not necessarily mean that this mayor has a groundswell of popular support: many people told petition circulators that, while they would not sign a recall petition, neither would they vote for Fahey again. There were no numbers recorded on this, so there's no way to assess the magnitude of this feeling from the recall data.
All that needs to happen is for for one or more of the following to occur:
- stadium construction costs to significantly over-run current estimates
- the City's total debt to exceed $1 billion (increasing interest rates on its debt because of our loss of our current AAA credit rating)
- revenues from the new stadium to come in sufficiently under the Mayor's projections, or
- another large-enough project to become necessary, requiring the City to borrow money again within the next few years,
and Omaha citizens will see jumps in the percentage of their incomes that will be paid in local taxes, as well as further decreases in services. The odds are that several of those events will occur.
In hindsight, the $200-thousand-something cost of having a special election will be viewed as an incredible bargain that the people of Omaha passed-by because they didn't support the recall of mayor Fahey. And the vast majority of people of Omaha (e.g., everyone who doesn't personally profit from the College World Series, and won't personally profit from the new stadium's construction) will ultimately agree that the stadium project was, in fact, an unaffordable catering to a very small special-interest minority.
When all the financial birds that mayor Mike Fahey is turning loose finally do come home to roost, people will ultimately look back and wish they'd supported the Recall Fahey Committee--the true Omaha visionaries of 2008.
–Greg Lyons
05-11-2008
