Giants’ principal owner owes fans an explanation
Charles Johnson, the principal owner of the San Francisco Giants, owes fans an explanation for his contributions to a senator from Mississippi who has come under fire for her racist remarks.
Transparency is the price of doing business in the world of major league sports, especially here in the Bay Area where residents care deeply that they don’t lend financial support to bigotry.
Johnson and his wife, Ann, each donated the maximum $2,700 to the campaign of U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. In response, the NAACP, civil rights activist Dr. Harry Edwards and an increasing number of Giants fans are calling for a boycott of the team.
Johnson’s response Monday was a huge swing and a miss.
The 85-year-old Johnson, who resides in Florida, has a history of not granting interviews. So he sent out his attorney, Joe Cotchett, to offer an explanation that would be laughable if the topic wasn’t so serious.
Cotchett said Johnson doesn’t keep up with the news. “I’m not so sure that Charlie reads the paper every day the way you and I read the paper,” said Cotchett. “He reads the sports section.”
Johnson is hardly a political neophyte. The former CEO of Franklin Templeton has been using his wealth — Forbes puts his net worth at $5.4 billion — to back conservative candidates and causes for years. The New York Times reported that in 2016 he donated more than $1 million to back Jeb Bush’s run for president. In 2012, he poured money into Mitt Romney’s campaign and held a lavish fundraiser for him at his Atherton residence. The Hoover Institution lists Johnson as a member of its Board of Overseers.
Nor is he a stranger to controversial donations. In October, Johnson made a $1,000 contribution to the super PAC Black Americans for the President’s (Trump) Agenda. He asked that the donation be returned after the group created racist ads in support of U.S. Rep. French Hill of Arkansas, saying he strongly condemned “any form of racism.”
The incident should have caused Johnson to be more circumspect with his donations. But Hyde-Smith received the contribution from Johnson on Nov. 20, several days after she said she would “be on the front row” if invited to a public hanging, which detractors said alluded to public support of lynching.
A simple Google search would have outlined the extent of Hyde-Smith’s political history. As a state senator, she proposed renaming a stretch of highway in Mississippi the “Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway.” The Washington Post reported that in 2014 she donned a Confederate hat and posed with a rifle, writing on her Facebook page that Jefferson Davis’ Biloxi homestead was a “must see” and “Mississippi history at its best.”
The runoff in Hyde-Smith’s U.S. Senate race against Democrat Mike Espy, who is African-American, was Tuesday.
Johnson is entitled to his political views and to spend his resources as he sees fit. But his actions come with consequences.
The value of the Giants’ franchise has soared from an estimated $563 million in 2011, when Johnson became the principal owner with an estimated 25 percent ownership stake of the team, to an estimated $2.85 billion today. The windfall is largely due to the revenues generated by Bay Area fans filling AT&T Park for home games and splurging on Giants gear to support their team.
That support entitles fans to an explanation of why they should continue backing a team whose principal owner contributes to candidates and causes many find abhorrent.