LA 2024 Bid Waits for U.S. Election Day

(ATR) Federal government support for a Los Angeles Olympic bid won’t be certain until the Nov. 8 general election.

Although considered the favorite for 2024 in some ways, the LA bid lacks a key ingredient found in the first files submitted to the IOC in February by Budapest, Paris and Rome, the three other 2024 candidate cities. Each of those files comes with a statement of support from the national government.

In the case of Paris and Budapest, the heads of state in France and Hungary have both put their names in the bid file while Rome refers to the pledges of support from both the president and prime minister of Italy.

For now the Los Angeles bid file obliquely references the involvement of the federal government while stressing the lead that local government would play in staging the Olympics.

"Historically, the governmental structure of the United States hasproven effective in hosting successful Olympic and Paralympic Games.

"All levels of government are aligned behind the LA 2024 candidature,and binding agreements assure the effective coordination ofgovernmental authorities. The City of Los Angeles will be the primarypublic authority responsible for the Games. The City will coordinate and act in partnership with the IOC, the USOC, the LA 2024Organizing Committee, the United States, the State of California andother regional authorities," says the bid file.

Obama press secretary Josh Earnest described the President as "enthusiastic" about the LA bid last September.

"The City of Los Angeles knows what an undertaking hosting these games would be. They’ve got substantial infrastructure already in place. Andlet’s face it, there’s a lot that the City of Los Angeles can uniquely deliver to host a successful and truly memorable Olympic Games, featuring the best athletes in the world," Earnest told reporters on Air Force One.

Vice president Joe Biden spoke to the Association of National Olympic Committees general assembly in Washington, DC.His appearance was due in large part to the political influence wielded by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. The mayor is the most energetic government supporter of the LA bid and is expected to be a king pin for the campaign, no matter who is elected US president.

But the nitty-gritty of federal involvement in a Los Angeles Olympics apparently will wait until after the November 8 election when a new president and U.S. Congress are elected.

With a nearly non-existent need for venue construction or Olympic-specific infrastructure, Los Angeles will still need aid from the federal government for the substantial security overlay that drapes the Olympics. Now running in the range of $1 billion, likely more by 2024, the security costs for all recent Olympics have largely been borne by national governments, including the last two U.S. Olympics in Atlanta and Salt Lake City.

Although there is perhaps little reason to doubt that support would continue for a Los Angeles Olympics, the bid finds itself in the position of not being able to unequivocally state that the U.S. federal government backs the 2024 Games.

Understandably, Mr. Obama may have reasons for his muted backing of the LA bid. These are the final months of his presidency, not a time to launch new projects. Then there is the snub the IOC delivered to Chicago in 2009 when it eliminated the city first in the race for 2016, despite personal appeals at the IOC Session in Copenhagen from the President and First Lady Michelle Obama.

Maybe the successor to Obama will climb aboard the Los Angeles Olympic bandwagon without much hesitation next year when that endorsement will becrucial to the bid. The vote by the IOC will take place Sept. 2017, nine months into the new presidency – just as was the case with Obama and the Chicago 2016 bid.

Donald Trump, the leading Republican candidate for the presidency lambasted the Copenhagen debacle in a 2010 interview with CNN.

"Our President flies over [to Copenhagen] to see if he can get the bid" Trump said. "Now, he then comes back. We don’t end up not only in first place. We don’t end up in second place or third place. We were in fourth place.


"That shouldn’t be happening to this country. People are not respecting us. They are not respecting this country. And I hate to see it."

Whether a President Trump can be a more successful advocate for a Los Angeles bid will be a subject of debate. He offered his support to the New York campaign for 2012 and in 2004 ran with the Olympic torch when the relay stopped in New York City.

So far, Trump has yet to make any policy pronouncement on the White House role in the LA bid.

Neither has Hillary Clinton, who is expected to win the Democratic Party nomination for president. Nonetheless she has a deeper vein of experience with the Olympics than Mr. Trump.

In 1994 she traveled to Norway as First Lady to lead the U.S. delegation to Lillehammer. She went to Olympia in 1996 for the flame lighting for the Atlanta Olympics and later went to the Games. Mrs. Clinton and the President hosted receptions at the White House for four U.S. Olympic teams. And in 2005, as a U.S. Senator from New York, she came to the IOC Session in Singapore to support the New York City 2012 bid.

Wisely the Los Angeles bid has steered clear of expressing any preference for a candidate among the half-dozen remaining in the race for their party nomination.

Given the delicate sensitivities of the Olympic world, the bombast of Trump would seem to be off-putting to some IOC members when he mentions building a wall on the border with Mexico or blocking Muslims from entering the U.S.

Hillary Clinton, with a range of experiences at the top of the U.S. government and her own scrapbook from the Olympics, might be more welcomed from the IOC and offer a bit more gravitas.

Some counsel for LA 2024 from the doyen of the IOC, Richard Pound, who says take care of business at home.

"If I were advising LA, I would urge them to focus on the things they can control and not to waste time and energy on things they can't," said Pound in an email to Around the Rings.

His colleague from Great Britain, Craig Reedie, expresses confidence in the way the U.S. handles its politics and that the presidential race is not an issue for 2024.

"At the moment there is no discernible discussion of the US political scene," Reedie tells ATR.

"The IOC know very well that you are "a union of states" and have a different relationship with Federal Government than many other countries," he says.

By the way, both Republican and Democratic nominees will be selected at conventions in July prior to the Rio Olympics. The scheduling of the two conclaves was deliberate to avoid a clash with the Olympics in the first three weeks of August.

"After the party conventions, we will brief both nominee campaigns and look forward to working with the next administration on our LA 2024 project, just as we have enjoyed working with President Obama's administration," LA2024 spokesman Jeff Millman tells ATR.

Written by Ed Hula.

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