Polis dodges on All-Star game move: ‘There’s no right answer in this’

Gov. Polis refused to directly address in an interview whether Major League Baseball erred by moving the All-Star game out of Georgia.

Neil Cavuto of Fox News asked Polis whether President Biden calling Georgia’s new law “Jim Crow 2.0” may have irresponsibly encouraged businesses to boycott the Peach State.

Polis told Cavuto he supported the league making their decision quickly, but would not say if he supported the move.

“Look, there’s no right answer in this, they have a lot of people they want to satisfy, sponsors, players,” Polis said.

“I certainly sympathize with people who are going to lose out in the business in Georgia, but all that business they’re losing out on we’re going to get here.”

Polis’s hesitation to weigh in on the MLB’s decision demonstrates the fraught political reality for the governor.

While the game will be a boon for the local economy in Denver, those benefits will come at the expense of Atlanta, a majority African-American city.

Just 9% of Denver’s population is Black, while Atlanta’s majority is African American and home to thousands of minority-owned small businesses.

Georgia Democrats and President Biden are furiously backtracking after fierce pushback from Atlanta small business owners and local officials in Cobb County.

Darrell Anderson, the black owner of a limousine business in Atlanta, told the Washington Free Beacon Manfred’s decision will hurt the community and worsen the economic damage from the pandemic.

 

“As the owner of a transportation service in Atlanta, I know firsthand how badly our community wanted the All-Star Game played here,” Anderson said. “The $100 million in revenue to this area was going to be the opportunity for all of us to recover some of the losses that we incurred during the pandemic. Now, not only is that revenue gone, we may lose even more because conventions that were planned for Atlanta are now up in the air thanks to this decision by the MLB.”

President of the Job Creators Network, a small-business advocacy group, Alfredo Ortiz sent the league’s Commissioner Rob Manfred slamming the move last week.

Ortiz called out the hypocrisy of Democrats’ feigned outrage over Georgia’s voter ID requirements, which are remarkably similar to Colorado’s.

“Voter ID laws are so popular that a majority of states utilize a form of the practice to safeguard their election process. Puzzlingly, Colorado—the newly picked location for the All Star game— is among this group,” Ortiz wrote.

“Colorado even has fewer days of early in-person voting compared to Georgia. The selective outrage from your office and others is backwards.”

Full interview: