Spin Control Files: A nomination for the worst campaign idea ever

Whenever anyone wants to bet they are witnessing the most inane political campaign in the history of the universe, pose this simple, one-question test: Does the campaign include some bozo in a wolf-like costume with a pun for a name?

If the answer is “No,” they lose.

Here’s why.

In the mid-1980s, Spokane business interests badly wanted a new sports palace. The Spokane Veterans Memorial Coliseum, which opened in 1954, was really showing its age. Declared a modern marvel by Life magazine when completed for $2.5 million, the Coliseum was a vacuum tube and analog clunker in a world quickly becoming silicon chip and digital, and had earned the nickname “Boone Street Barn.” There were lots of replacement ideas, from a wood-domed stadium to a privately built facility near Airway Heights.

City business and political leaders decided on a new coliseum near where the current one sat. But a replacement was expensive, and the only way to pay for it was with some kind of tax. The question was, what tax: The oft-cursed business and occupation tax? The property tax? The sales tax?

In 1985, they decided to ask voters to raise the local property tax to float a $29.8 million bond for a new indoor sports and entertainment facility that would have 14,000 seats and look like – well, no one quite knew what it would look like because they needed some of the bond money to hire an architect to come up with a design.

They had a slogan, “Wouldn’t It Be Great?,” which showed up on lapel buttons and on billboards. And they had a mascot.

Some genius came up with an idea: What if they got someone to dress up in a collie costume, and have a sign around its neck that said “I’m your new Collie See-um.” Get it? Coliseum, Collie See-um.

With less than a month to go before the election, the campaign went to the dog.

Some people who got the pun gave a polite chuckle; others a strained groan. Those who didn’t just said “Huh?” It probably didn’t help that the collie costume looked quite a bit like a wolf costume, and some folks in Washington state are predisposed to dislike wolves, whatever cutesy name they might go by.

Despite their slogan and mascot, or possibly because of them, Citizens for a New Coliseum got slightly over 50 percent of voters to mark their ballots with a “Yes” on the proposal. Unfortunately, bond issues that rely on property taxes require 60 percent, so it was a significant loss, not a narrow win.

In the wake of their defeat, campaign organizers asked supporters what went wrong. The criticisms were many and varied, including a slogan that made the facility sound like a luxury, not a necessity, and the lack of a design. And one critic was very frank: “Dump the Dog.”

Supporters would come back the following spring with a business and occupation tax proposal, which failed. In 1990, voters approved a hotel-motel tax but rejected another bond issue. In 1991 supporters hired an experienced campaigner, future Spokane County Commissioner Kate McCaslin, who came up with a plan that involved a slight increase in the sales tax, which needed only a simple majority, and unsurprisingly, had no mascot.

It passed. The result is the Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena, which opened in the fall of 1995. If you’ve been inside, you may recall it displays many trophies and other bits of local sports memorabilia. But no collie suit.