Chiefs, Royals have spent $3 million on April 2 election

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Reports from the Missouri Ethics Commission show that on Friday, the Chiefs and the Royals each put in another $500,000 a piece to The Committee to Keep the Chiefs and Royals in Jackson County. That committee’s treasurer is Whitney Beaver, the chief financial officer of the Royals.

FOX4 called and texted a spokeswoman for that committee Tuesday. We have not heard back.

As of Thursday, that committee supporting a ‘yes vote’ still had more than $183,000 on hand. The opposition, the Committee Against New Royals Stadium Taxes had a little more than $11,000 on hand February 19.

So far, they’ve spent $9,300 of that, leaving a little more than $2,200 on hand for them.

Committee Against New Royals Stadium Taxes Campaign Manager Tim Smith says they’ve focused their efforts on their ground game and meeting people in person.

“We’ve sought to reach people everywhere across Jackson County,” he said in an interview with FOX4 Tuesday. “We’ve done a number of public events, forums, debates, campaign literature, yard signs, the whole gamut.”

Smith said his group has not supplied KC Tenants money, but that group has come out with a spot telling people to vote no on April 2 as well.

“We felt it was important to do a televised ad because we knew and as we’ve seen, the teams are able to spend millions of dollars to also do television advertising,” KC Tenants Organizer Magda Werkmeister said in an interview with FOX4 Tuesday. “So, we thought we should meet them on the same playing field.”

Polling done between March 16 and 17 by the Remington Research Group revealed that 47% of Jackson County residents would vote ‘yes’ if the election happened at that time. 46% said they’d vote no. 7% were undecided. The margin of error is +/-4.5%.

“Landslide,” Smith said when asked whether he thinks the ‘vote no’ side will win by more than two or four points. “People are tired of being lied to. They said it wasn’t a new tax. It is a new tax. They claim economic benefits. That’s been debunked by economists universally. They haven’t been transparent this whole time.”

Election day is Tuesday, April 2.

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