If the Chargers really want to stay in San Diego, now is the time to say so.
What they are saying instead is implicitly the opposite.
"I'm going to put aside any discussion of our possible next steps until after the season, to allow everyone to focus on football and to give my family and me time to think carefully about what is best for the future of our franchise," Chargers chairman Dean Spanos said in a statement released by the team Wednesday. "Over the coming weeks you may hear news about steps that we must take to preserve all of our options. But please know that I don't intend to make any decisions until after the regular season ends and that, in the meantime, I hope to enjoy with you one great Chargers game after another."
This is the same tired, off-putting rubbish.
Yeah, the Chargers spent some $8 million on the campaign for Measure C and millions more on lawyers and bankers and architects. That says something. Maybe a lot.
But that effort was lost in the noise of the bleeping Los Angeles warning.
The threat was leaked strategically on a national level, said openly and repeatedly by Fred Maas locally and remains implied in Spanos' statement.
Nationally over the past 12 hours, there was a tone of reconciliation struck by leaders after a stunning Presidential election result that followed a bizarre and contentious campaign.
It was hopeful. It was something new.
But here, from the Chargers, it's the same old bunker mentality. The same if you're not with us you're against us crap.
No. Stop.
As a matter of fact, you know what, it seems pretty obvious, Chargers, that you are not with us.
They need time to consider their options? What? They knew Measure C wasn't going to pass. They hoped for a majority but knew, too, that was not likely. Of the nearly 300,000 votes counted so far, some 43 percent were "yes" votes. That was overwhelmingly short of the required two-thirds threshold and even pretty well below the hoped-for majority that might have sent a message.
So not only has there been the several months of lead-up to Tuesday's anticipated defeat, there was all of 2015 that led to February's last-ditch bargaining sessions. The breakdown of those meetings precipitated the Chargers' announcement they were pursuing what ended up being Measure C.
And that is the jumping-off point to which this process can immediately revert.
This shouldn't be that difficult.
Plenty of people who were involved back then say that if both sides had been willing to come up $100 million back then, we would have been voting on a Mission Valley proposal Tuesday.
It would have required a simple majority, as it was not asking for a tax increase. Most believe it would have passed.
Some _ if not the majority _ of the City Council would have joined Mayor Kevin Faulconer in his support. Labor and business would have gotten on board, as it did for Measure C. The tourism industry would have lent its considerable weight, or at least not have opposed it.
Other than the Chargers wanting to be downtown, there is simply no reason what was cobbled together last year can't serve as the platform for a new referendum.
The Chargers will have their doubts about the ability of the city and county to actually come through with the money. There will be the environmental concerns and dubiousness about the viability of more Mission Valley development.
They also need to keep playing the L.A. game with the league. That's not something we should take personally. It's business.
Such due diligence is the team's prerogative, even its duty.
Fine.
But tell San Diego you want to stay. Show it.
The Chargers added $100 million to their commitment in the process of pushing Measure C.
If the problem now is their suspicion of local government, the Chargers should make San Diego's leaders come through on vague promises and prove they can follow through on specifics.
Virtually every voice in the opposition to Measure C spoke Tuesday with willingness and optimism about moving forward and finding a way to keep the Chargers in San Diego.
As of now, after years of legitimate squawking that nothing gets done in this town of naysaying power brokers, the Chargers are the only ones saying no.
