Who’s behind competing poll, ad campaign about Royals stadium in NKC? A mystery

A mysterious poll leaked to the news media late last month prompted the launch of an equally mysterious ad campaign in support of building a new Royals stadium in North Kansas City.

“To think that there wouldn’t be some sort of response, I think, would have been naive,” said Clay County Commissioner Scott Wagner, who says the poll was clearly the main motivation for the “Let’s Go Royals … to North Kansas City!” campaign.

Neither the pollster nor the political operative behind the ad campaign will say who’s paying the bills, and Wagner doesn’t know, either.

The telephone poll of 300 Clay County registered voters purportedly found that 70% of them would not support a new sales tax to pay for a “multi-billion-dollar stadium and mixed use development” in North Kansas City.

Who paid for the poll? The head of the polling outfit that did the survey wouldn’t say and still won’t.

And why was that question worded in a misleading way? The Royals have not proposed a “multi-billion-dollar” stadium project, but one valued at $2 billion, with more than half of that coming from private investment.

The answer, according to Clay County boosters: The poll was designed to get a preconceived result that would undermine Clay County’s chances of becoming the Royals’ new home over the only other finalist, the East Village in downtown Kansas City.

In response, a TV, radio and mail advertising campaign was launched last week aimed at convincing Clay County residents that the ballpark and surrounding development would be good for them and that they are deserving of those benefits.

But like the people behind the poll, the ones paying for the ad campaign are also staying in the shadows.

“We are a Major League county, and this is our opportunity to get our fair share,” says the home page of tonorthkansascity.com, where you can see the 30-second commercial.

The website was created Aug. 29, but it was registered anonymously, records at godaddy.com show. Also unknown are the names of the individuals or groups who are funding the ad campaign, which is attributed to a limited liability company called To NKC LLC.

Some clues

According to records at the Missouri Secretary of State’s office, the organizer of the LLC was Nicholas B. Schulte, who is the chief financial officer of Jeff Roe’s political consulting firm Axiom Strategies. The principal mailing address is a building in Excelsior Springs that is owned by Titus Bond, president of Roe’s polling subsidiary, Remington Research.

Schulte did not respond to requests for comment. Bond said he granted permission for To NKC LLC to use his mailing address because, as a property owner in Clay County, “I fully support these positive ads that show that Clay County is Major League.”

Remington Research has been doing stadium-related work for the Merriman family, which controls much of the land in North Kansas where a new stadium and ballpark district might be built. But according to a source within Roe’s organization, the Merrimans are not behind the North Kansas City advertising campaign. The source doubted that those who did pay for the campaign would be willing to come forward.

“They’re not going to publicize members of the group,” that person said in an email, “... you gotta understand, all these people regularly do biz in KCMO. They won’t even tell me who’s in the group.”

Prior to the poll’s release, Wagner said, competition between Clay County and downtown Kansas City interests for a new Royals stadium had been friendly. But after the poll results were leaked to more than one reporter and the Kansas City Business Journal published them, that changed.

The article was posted online a few hours before the Royals unveiled renderings of what their proposed stadium and adjoining commercial districts would look like in the East Village and North Kansas City.

At that media event, Royals executive vice president Sarah Tourville disputed the results.

“We aren’t sure who commissioned that poll,” she said. “What I can tell you is that we’ve assembled a team of local and national experts with sophisticated polling experience, that polling data has been very constructive and we see a path to victory in both (Jackson and Clay) counties.”

The ad campaign began shortly after Northland interests tried to convince reporters that the poll had been commissioned by someone with ties to Kansas City government.

While the evidence was circumstantial, Wagner still has his suspicions. Top officials at City Hall say they had nothing to do with the poll.

As for the North Kansas City ad campaign, Wagner said it would be foolish to think that Roe’s organization was working for free.

“Axiom can’t get free mailers and free TV time,” he said. “Someone’s got to buy. I think that demonstrates that there is certainly a business community that would like to see (the Royals) come to North Kansas City.”

The Royals have said they will make an announcement later this month on whether they prefer the East Village or North Kansas City site.

Whichever decision they make, construction of a new stadium will depend on support from political leaders and, ultimately, the voters.

Moving from the Truman Sports Complex to North Kansas City would likely depend on passage of a 1% sales tax for stadium construction. The team has said it will cover part of the cost of a billion-dollar stadium and private investment would fund surrounding development.

Moving to the East Village would require an early renewal of the three-eights-of-a-cent stadium tax in Jackson County.

Royals owner John Sherman is scheduled to meet next week with Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas and Jackson County Executive Frank White to discuss a possible move to that site. City officials have been meeting with the Royals weekly for the past several weeks, according to Lucas’ chief of staff, Morgan Said.

In a related development, the city and the lobbying firm KBS Group have ended their decade-long relationship due to a conflict of interest involving the new ballpark. Kansas City was one of KBS founder Kit Bond‘s clients when he left the U.S. Senate and became a lobbyist on federal issues.

KBS has also represented the Merriman family since that time, records show, and will continue to do so.