Leiweke on Anschutz: Not much of a football guy

More pointedly, the ex-CEO of Anschutz Entertainment Group told New Yorker writer Connie Bruck last year that the Denver billionaire "is not a man who has dreamed all his life of owning a football team." Anschutz, in fact, had to be dragged into the deal for a downtown stadium. That makes his comments last week about wanting to work with the NFL a little suspect. Not that it won't happen - I just wouldn't want to make any big wagers. Actually, the Bruck piece, which ran in January 2012, is worth a second look, if only to be reminded about Anschutz and his leanings. Some snippets:

Anschutz has been a frequent contributor to the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which provides legal aid to employees opposing "compulsory unionism," and he has been a major supporter of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, in his fight against a recall, after his efforts, last February, to eliminate many collective-bargaining rights. Anschutz has been a guest at the twice-a-year political gatherings of David and Charles Koch, the secretive anti-government oil billionaires. He has contributed to Americans for Prosperity, backed by the Koch brothers, which lobbies against global-warming science and for reducing regulation of the oil and gas industry.

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I asked Leiweke how Anschutz felt about A.E.G.'s affiliation with the Clinton Global Initiative. "Phil thinks I'm essentially nuts," he said. "Phil says to me, 'You know, Tim' "--he imitated Anschutz's sonorous way of speaking--"and I'm like, 'Stop! The governor's Democratic, speaker's Democratic, senate pro tem leader's Democratic, treasurer's Democratic, lieutenant governor's Democratic, mayor's Democratic, one person on the City Council is a Republican. Phil, has it occurred to you yet that . . . California is the bluest state in the Union?' I get along well with Democrats, I get along equally well with Republicans," he said, adding that he has a good relationship with House Speaker John Boehner. (They share a propensity for tearing up during speeches.) But Leiweke is careful not to antagonize local Democrats.

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Leiweke explained how he had persuaded his football-averse boss to come this far: "You'll have a seventy-thousand-seat football stadium, a twenty-thousand-seat arena, a seven-thousand-seat theatre, a two-thousand-three-hundred-seat music club, a fourteen-screen cinema. You'll probably have five thousand hotel rooms right next to the campus by the time we're done here, twenty-four restaurants, night clubs, bars, and bowling alleys, the Grammy Museum, and public space for festivals and parties. And then you'll have a convention center next door. If you're the Super Bowl, if you're the N.B.A. or N.H.L. All-Star game, if you are ultimately anyone that wants to be big and important, it will be a hundred-acre campus and the only one of its kind." He paused for breath. "There's nothing like it in the world."