A blast from San Francisco’s political past could help shoot down the Oakland A’s proposed move to Las Vegas, as former SF supervisor Chris Daly is now the political director for a Nevada ballot measure and lawsuit that could be Oakland fans’ ace in the hole to keep the team.

You’re aware that the Oakland A’s ownership is desperately trying to move the team to Las Vegas, despite the objections of A’s fans. But there’s still plenty that can go wrong that could blow up the A’s proposed relocation.

The latest of these these things that could go wrong was reported on Monday by the sports and business site Front Office Sports — the same site that broke the bombshell news of Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman saying the A’s have “got to figure out a way to stay in Oakland”  — which noted that the Nevada State Education Association (NSEA) was preparing a legal injunction to halt the $380 million in Nevada state taxpayer money going to the A’s proposed stadium at the Tropicana Casino site.

“The injunction would be us asking the court to physically stop the [stadium] project from moving forward,” NSEA deputy executive director of government relations Chris Daly told Front Office Sports.

Wait a minute… Chris Daly? That Chris Daly? Former lightning-rod, profanity-spewing District 6 San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly, who combatively declared “It’s on like Donkey Kong” when Ed Lee was appointed mayor in 2011? The Chris Daly who vowed to use the word “fuck” at every Board of Supervisors meeting? The Chris Daly who insinuated in 2007 that Gavin Newsom was doing cocaine? (Note: Back in 2007, lots of people assumed Gavin was doing a little blow here and there.)

Yes, this is the same Chris Daly, who at 28 was the youngest person ever elected to the SF Board of Supervisors. He represented District 6 from 2001-2011. And SFist mentioned in 2016 after Daly left town that he’d taken a position as the political director of the Nevada State Education Association.

Above we see Daly this past August, acting in that capacity. And these days, that capacity has him as an officer with Schools Over Stadiums (who are organizing a voter referendum against the Las Vegas stadium) and also with Strong Public Schools Nevada (who’ve filed legal claims against the stadium’s taxpayer funding). Both hope to cancel that $380 million in public funding at a time when Nevada schools are suffering.

“Nevada schools have been chronically underfunded,” Daly tells SFist. “We rank 48th in the nation in per-pupil school funding. Nevada has the largest class sizes in the country, and also currently is experiencing the highest vacancy rate in terms of teacher vacancies. That means tens of thousands of kids in Nevada are without a licensed teacher in front of them. Many with long-term [substitutes], many with classes doubled up.”

That’s why Daly is fighting for better school funding instead of big-money stadium funding. “Nevada doesn’t have an income tax,” Daly explains. “That’s oftentimes sold as something positive about Nevada, but that’s directly related to school funding issues.”

And his endgame? “We think this deal is a house of cards,” he tells us. “And if you pull out the $380 million in public dollars, we think the whole house of cards will crumble.”

One thing Daly did not anticipate was Oakland baseball fans’ generosity toward Nevada school teachers. There’s a GoFundMe-for-teachers style site called DonorsChoose where teachers effectively beg for money for classroom supplies. And some teachers who testified against the $380 million for the A’s found that Oakland fans had cleared out all of their requested items, and bought them everything they’d asked for.  

“A teacher told me ‘My DonorsChoose list was cleared. It was someone from Oakland. I have no idea who they are,’" Daly says. "And that kept happening. I’ve never seen anything quite like what Oakland fans are doing.”

Daly was also running a table, as seen above, at this past weekend’s Fans Fest, a rogue event organized by fans. “We were slammed,” he recalls. “I’ve tabled many events, never before have I had a line of people just waiting to talk to me. For three hours, were were just slammed at our table. We got a lot of donations, average donation $60. Fans were saying ‘This is what I would have spent on my Opening Day ticket.’”

You too can contribute to School Over Stadiums online.

Daly says his groups have a three-pronged approach to defeating the Las Vegas stadium. One of them is a ballot referendum challenging the $380 million handout, though attorneys for A’s owner John Fisher sued on technical grounds, and won in a lower court. The fate of that ballot measure is now in the hands of the Nevada state Supreme Court.

But Daly projects they may be collecting signatures again by “March, April at the latest.” If so, yes, you can volunteer to collect petition signatures, which many A’s fans have already done in Reno. Out-of-state residents can collect signatures (though you have to be a US citizen, and 18 or older), you just can’t sign the petition unless you’re a Nevada resident.

Strong Public Schools Nevada is also suing over the constitutionality of the $380 in taxpayer funding, approved in a bill called SB-1. “We feel that each of our challenges is relatively strong,” Daly says. “And we really only need one, or two [objections] to pass to basically wipe out SB-1.”

And there is the injunction mentioned at the introduction of this post, which could stop the stadium project from moving forward. “Our lawyers are currently preparing this injunction,” according to Daly.

This being former SF supervisor Chris Daly, we of course tried to goad him into some inflammatory remarks about current San Francisco politics. He did not take the bait.

“I don’t think it’s the case that the Chris Daly running Schools Over Stadiums is the same Chris Daly who served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors,” he diplomatically told us.

But there still seem to be old scores to settle, namely with A’s owner John Fisher, whose father was The Gap co-founder Don Fisher.

“Don Fisher likely was the largest donor against me politically, during my political career in San Francisco,” Daly points out. “He probably spent seven figures against me. So that actually does seem relevant.” Daly also notes that the Fishers are big charter school donors,  which of course puts them at odds with a teachers’ union official.

So because of this odd coincidence over the A’s attempt to move to Las Vegas, and Chris Daly being the political director for a teacher’s union that opposes the stadium deal they want, Chris Daly is back in Bay Area news whether you like it or not. And he had some words for SFist about how he’d like to be covered.

“Are you going to bring back the ‘Everybody Hates Chris’ thing?,” he asked, citing SFist’s old trope where our articles about Daly often started with the phrase Everybody Hates Chris. “I don’t think you can have something with me in SFist without ‘Everybody Hates Chris’ as the headline.”

Related: Oakland A’s Fans Teaming Up With Nevada Schoolteachers to Block Team's Move in ‘Schools Over Stadiums’ Campaign [SFist]

Image: (Left) Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, (Right), SF Board of Supervisors