NFL in DC is the ultimate lefty YIMBY-NIMBY showdown

A pair of announcements by the National Football League in collaboration with Washington, DC has local citizens more excited than ever about football’s future in the capital city – but it’s also attracting opposition that stands to create a YIMBY versus NIMBY showdown on the left on the biggest national stage. 

For YIMBY futurists on the left, whether you’re talking about Ezra Klein’s and Derek Thompson’s abundance agenda or Matt Yglesias’s dreams of a billion Americans, the possibility on offer by the NFL and the Washington Commanders seems ideal to achieve great things for the city. The return of the Washington franchise to the legendary RFK Stadium site brings investment, housing, new hotels and parks and the attendant potential for addressing the persistent problems of violent crime in a neighborhood that’s more than 300 percent above the national average. The fact that this move is funded by a significant percentage of private dollars compared to other recent NFL stadium deals makes it all the more appealing. And the tourist attraction of the World’s Fair-style NFL draft, which NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell believes could bring a million people (and their tourist dollars) to the Washington Mall in 2027, is icing on the cake. National sports media hosts such as ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt and Barstool’s PFTCommenter are overjoyed.

But already, the voices of the Bernie Sanders/Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez progressive left are taking a stance in opposition – particularly from the DC council, which thanks in part to purported rampant corruption and to its lack of power as an institution, was left out of the process for the stadium deal and resents the insult. The reason the 13-seat council has only 12 members right now is that Ward 8 remains vacant for the usual reason – problems with envelopes stuffed with cash – and of those 12, a majority aren’t from the city or even the area. It’s a political climber job for Democrats who move from big blue cities to work for Democrats in Congress and leftist NGOs. And those are the same NIMBYs who are already out putting up signs near the National Press Club directing people to a website defending the decrepit RFK site’s “popular skate park,” otherwise known as the kind of concrete park cities build when you don’t want to pay to maintain a real park. 

The groups backing this anti-RFK rebuilding effort include a roster of everyone you might expect: Chesapeake Climate Action, DC Action, DC Environmental Network, DC for Democracy, DC Justice Lab, Fair Budget Coalition, Pathways to Housing and Ward 3 Housing Justice – as well as longtime leftist failed council candidates such as John Capozzi, Jayme Epstein of the Fair Budget Coalition, Ed Lazere of the DC Justice Lab and activist Adam Eidinger, whose economically idiotic Initiative 82 effort is the primary reason behind a rash of restaurant closures in the city.

What’s going to be interesting about this clash is how it plays out in the context of a Democratic mayor who wants it, a Republican president who wants it, passionate DC fans and residents who want it, locally born national sports media figures who want it and a bunch of anti-development leftists who think they know best. And always there remains the possibility that President Trump will step in to force the deal despite council opposition. And if the prize for ending DC’s embattled home rule comes in the form of a massive new stadium for its most beloved franchise, the NIMBYs may not want to put that possibility to the test.