Keller @ Large: Mayor Walsh Says 'Unanswered Questions' Surround Boston Olympic Bid
BOSTON (CBS) - Would Boston Mayor Marty Walsh sign off on the city's bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympic Games if it landed on his desk today?
"No," said Walsh during an interview Friday with WBZ. "I think there's still a lot of unanswered questions around what the cost of the Olympics will be, what's the responsibility for the city, what's the responsibility for the state, what's the responsibility for the federal government?
"I think those questions still need to be answered."
And that speaks to a mounting problem for Boston 2024, the private group that is trying to bring the games here.
As a new WBUR/MassINC poll shows, their months-old campaign to galvanize public and political support for the bid instead appears to be repelling citizens, and alarming early boosters like Mayor Walsh. More than half of respondents supported bringing the 2024 games here in a similar poll in January; today, that's down to 36 percent, and opposition has jumped to 52 percent.
Even worse, a core argument of the boosters – that outside of security (paid for by the federal government) and local infrastructure improvements that would likely have been done anyway, the cost of hosting the games will be borne by the private sector, not the taxpayers – is not seen as credible by a whopping 65 percent of poll respondents.
And today Walsh told WBZ a recent slew of stories about the fat paychecks being earned by consultants to Boston 2024 – including an eye-popping $7,500-a-day fee for the lobbying services of Gov. Deval Patrick, which he has since eschewed – have poisoned the public discussion.
"I support the Olympic movement not for the consultants on the payroll, [but] because of the benefits it can bring to the city of Boston," says Walsh.
"I think the people of the city are hearing and listening to and getting one side of the story and we have to do a lot better job and [Boston] 2024 has to do a lot better job changing the narrative."
Walsh said he believes they will get their act together and turn around those sagging poll numbers, but for now the trend is ominous – even, potentially, for Walsh himself.
The WBUR poll show Walsh's own favorability ratings, while still healthy, have slipped by ten points since January. That might be snow-related, but it could also be in part a negative referendum on the sight of a populist mayor siding with a corporate campaign that so far seems to be repelling voters, not persuading them.