When It Comes To Politics, Final Four Is Just The Ticket N.J. Governor’s Control Of Ncaa Final Four Tickets Makes Her Popular
The sheer breadth of Gov. Christie Whitman’s power has become immensely clear in recent days, through a matter that has nothing to do with tax cuts, presidential politics or the state budget.
While few people can get their palms around a single ticket for the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Final Four basketball games at the Meadowlands complex in East Rutherford, N.J., Whitman has control over more of the tickets than practically any one person, and it is causing quite a stir. Of the 18,500 seats available for the games, only 1,000 tickets were sold to the public.
A small group of politicians and business leaders has called on the governor to relinquish her tickets and let them be used by the general public. Most others, however, have just called on the governor - hoping she can help them secure one of the coveted passports to attend the final three games of college basketball’s preeminent annual event, which will be played March 30 and April 1.
“To the extent that we can accommodate them, we will,” Whitman said Friday. Among those who have asked the governor for tickets, according to a top aide in her office, are House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Sen. Bob Dole and Gov. William Weld of Massachusetts.
The general public was given the chance to purchase only 1,000 of the two-day tickets at a price of $70 each, and brokers have subsequently inflated the price to an average of more than $2,500. But the approximately 25 luxury suite passes and 25 general seating tickets that the governor will personally dole out, in addition to 80 tickets that will go to state legislators, have added up to become the ultimate political perk.
“Are these tickets going to the people or just to the players of the inside game?” asked John A. Lynch, New Jersey Senate minority leader, in a recent statement.
Lynch, W. Reed Gusciora, an Assembly Democrat, and George Zoffinger, former state commerce commissioner and chairman of Core States-New Jersey National Bank, recently joined forces to request that Whitman issue a full accounting of how she planned to distribute her tickets. The group also called on state legislators who receive tickets to turn them over for a public raffle. So far the altruistic suggestion has been virtually ignored, by both the governor and Democratic and Republican legislators.
Instead, New Jersey state legislators have lined up for an opportunity to get some of the tickets, for which they are expected to pay the $70 face value, according to Robert E. Mulcahy III, the president and chief executive officer of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, the state agency in charge of organizing the event. The legislators will not know for another week who will obtain the 80 tickets set aside for them, and there are far more requests than tickets, Mulcahy said.
“We’ll hand them out on a first-come, first-served basis,” he said.