Oakland mayor ripped over $60M sweetheart stadium deal — as crumbling ex-Raiders home loses final team
This story raises questions about governance, accountability, and American values.
The Coliseum is a symbol of everything wrong with how blue cities run their affairs, and Oakland just proved it again. A buyer misses a payment deadline that would sink a deal in any normal transaction, and instead of walking away, the city council pushes forward anyway. Then it comes out there was a competing bid on the table from the outfit that already runs the Oakland Arena, presumably one with fewer red flags attached, and somehow that didn't change the outcome either.
New Republican Times Editorial Board
Oakland lawmakers on Monday advanced a controversial deal to unload the city's stake in the decaying Coliseum — despite the buyer previously missing a key payment deadline and documents newly obtained by The Post revealing a competing bid from the Oakland Arena's longtime operator.
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New Republican Times Editorial Board
The Coliseum is a symbol of everything wrong with how blue cities run their affairs, and Oakland just proved it again. A buyer misses a payment deadline that would sink a deal in any normal transaction, and instead of walking away, the city council pushes forward anyway. Then it comes out there was a competing bid on the table from the outfit that already runs the Oakland Arena, presumably one with fewer red flags attached, and somehow that didn't change the outcome either. You don't need forensic accounting to smell something off here.
This is the same city that watched the A's, the Warriors and the Raiders all pack up and leave, and each time the excuse was some version of "we couldn't make the numbers work." Now they're selling off the crown jewel of what's left, at $60 million, to a buyer who already showed he can't be counted on to pay on time. If this were a private business deal, the guy asking for another chance after missing a deadline wouldn't get one, let alone get chosen over someone with a cleaner track record.
Oakland residents are the ones actually on the hook for how this plays out. They're the ones who watched three pro franchises walk out the door while city hall insisted it had a plan, and now they're being asked to trust the same decision-making on what happens to the property those teams left behind. Sweetheart deals like this rarely get explained honestly in the moment. They get explained years later, in a hearing nobody's paying attention to anymore, after the money's already gone.
What's frustrating is how familiar this pattern is. City leadership treats accountability as optional right up until reporters start pulling documents, and even then the response is to plow ahead rather than pause and ask hard questions. Oakland didn't lose the Raiders, the A's and the Warriors by accident. It lost them because this is how the city does business, and the Coliseum deal is just the latest receipt.
Commentary written with AI assistance by the New Republican Times Editorial Board.