Poll: Loss of Sonics won't bother most people in Seattle

While talk radio and online forums are aflame with the grief of angry Sonics fans, Carla Tobis may reflect more accurately the feelings of the majority.

"I'm thrilled they are leaving," said Tobis, a 52-year-old Mercer Island resident leaving the downtown REI with a pair of water bottles.

"It's a ridiculous waste of taxpayer dollars. I don't think we should be spending that money on pro-sports stadiums."

A pair of public polls and a 2006 election show that the percentage of Seattleites who adamantly wanted — and were willing to pay for — the Sonics to stay was roughly equal to the approval rating of George W. Bush.

How did Seattle become so apathetic about a 41-year-old institution?

Longtime Seattle journalist David Brewster said the lack of groundswell for the Sonics reflects Seattle's civil transformation into a destination city. Seattle is more concerned about the effects of growth — housing costs and traffic — than it is eager to gain the status that comes with an NBA franchise, he said.

"The city has arrived," said Brewster, publisher of the online news site Crosscut.com. "The quest to have major-league status is really intense when you don't have it, or just got it."

A city like Seattle, Brewster said, doesn't have an inferiority complex, or the need to prove that it's big time — "because it is."

Asked in June 2006 by nonpartisan Elway Research if taxes should be used to renovate KeyArena, 78 percent of those surveyed said they'd rather let the Sonics leave Seattle.

A second poll, commissioned by the team late last year and used during the recent trial against the city of Seattle, found two-thirds of Seattleites were indifferent or glad to be rid of the team. In contrast, roughly half of the poll's respondents said they would grieve the Seahawks' or Mariners' departure.

And in the November 2006 ballot, Seattle voters approved an initiative limiting public financing for stadiums by a 3-to-1 ratio.

Chris Van Dyk, who led the campaign for that initiative, said it was the public subsidies — not the teams themselves — that are reflected in those numbers.

"These big-time pro sports should not be on welfare," said Van Dyk. "There are people who will pay any price for professional sports. The city has a balancing act about meeting the needs of those people, and all the other people whose No. 1 priorities are cops, libraries and everything else."

Steve Leahy, CEO of the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce, points to Sonics owner Clay Bennett's argument that a 1994 remodel of KeyArena was now inadequate, as well as the recession earlier this decade that drained corporate sales of luxury suites. And the Sonics' on-the-floor struggles hardly generated excitement.

"It's a very sad convergence of the larger economic forces," he said.

Stuart Elway of Elway Research said he doesn't really believe that 78 percent of Seattleites wanted the Sonics to leave. That number was probably boosted by the public's Safeco Field hangover, when the Legislature approved funding for the stadium after voters had rejected the idea, he said.

But the numbers are telling, he said.

"Count up all the deluge of fan comments, and the people who stood outside the courtroom [for a rally], and the people who bought Sonics tickets, and it's a small percentage of 1.5 million people who live in King County," said Elway.

Jonathan Martin: 206-464-2605 or jmartin@seattletimes.com