This is the first part of a three-part series about the Arizona Coyotes arena vote. Click here to read the introduction.

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With the development of a multibillion-dollar entertainment district and, possibly, the future of a professional sports team on the line, the Tempe Wins campaign was a full-fledged operation. Sponsored by Bluebird Development, they employed consultants and canvassers, election experts of all backgrounds. Their goal: to convince the Tempe community to vote yes on all three of the propositions associated with the Tempe Entertainment District.

But it wasn’t just paid professionals working for the campaign. Tempe Wins committee chairman Nick Bastian was a volunteer. While the Tempe resident didn’t consider himself a big hockey fan, Bastian became interested in the Tempe Entertainment District after hearing about the proposal.

He took the time to meet with all sorts of people who had a stake in the development, like developers and city officials.

“The more I looked at it, the more I thought it was the right thing for our city to do,” Bastian said. Soon after, he found himself getting involved with the Coyotes and its development affiliates. When it became apparent that the proposal was going to the ballot, Bastian was asked to chair the committee for Tempe Wins.

As chairman, Bastian helped file paperwork with the city on behalf of the campaign. Outside of that, his role wasn’t all too structured. “I was…somebody that was there to try to help support and let people in our community know my thoughts and beliefs on why [voting yes] was the right thing,” Bastian explained. And he was far from being the only volunteer involved with the campaign.

“We had a really well-rounded group of people that volunteered time and effort,” Bastian said. “There were definitely some hockey fans. There were community leaders or neighborhood organizations, from youth sports people to business owners, friends and neighbors. It was a lot of different types of people.”

Meisterheim was among this committed group of volunteers.

Despite not being a Tempe resident, he devoted himself to the campaign because he wanted to ensure that the Coyotes had a fighting chance at staying in his home state of Arizona. Meisterheim was pulled into the campaign at the same time as fellow Coyotes fan Melissa Brown. Brown and Meisterheim are both administrators for the biggest Arizona Coyotes fan page on Facebook, a group that boasts over 6,000 members.

After being approached by Arizona sports journalist Craig Morgan, they were put in contact with Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo and Coyotes president Xavier Gutierrez. 

“We got involved with them and said, ‘Hey, we’re on board. We want our team and we’ll do whatever it takes to keep our team here.’ We were basically at their use,” Brown said. The two also utilized the Facebook group as well, sharing information and requests from Tempe Wins on the page.

As a volunteer for Tempe Wins, Meisterheim ventured into the world of campaigning for the first time. He knocked doors and phone banked, working alongside other volunteers to spread the campaign’s message. Brown and Meisterheim also spoke at city council meetings in support of the entertainment district. Their dedication to the cause was boundless. 

“We went to every single event that they had,” Brown said, laughing a bit to herself.

Tempe Wins tried all sorts of ways to reach voters. They ran billboards and bought up ads in the local papers. On social media, supporters posted pictures of themselves holding lawn signs or heading to the polls. In February, the campaign even held an event at Tempe’s LoPiano Park, where volunteers helped pick up trash. Even Meruelo pitched in with canvassing, going door-to-door to speak with Tempeans. Unfortunately, they were far from being the only group capturing the attention of voters. For all the passion and community that fell behind the cause of the Coyotes, there was also a formidable crowd that vehemently opposed the entertainment district.

Both Worker Power and AZ AANHPI for Equity were no strangers to running a field campaign. In 2020, Worker Power knocked over a million doors in Arizona and Georgia. AZ AANHPI for Equity also regularly canvasses for elections as well. Using public voter file information obtained through the Secretary of State, the opposition coalition was able to identify all registered voters in Tempe. Through door-knocking and phone banking, AZ AANHPI for Equity was able to reach over 80,000 voters during the campaign cycle. Similarly, Walsh said that Worker Power knocked just over 60,000 doors, with around 30 people canvassing every day for seven weeks.

While Worker Power and AZ AANHPI for Equity showed up at the doors and on the phones, Tempe 1st focused its outreach efforts in a unique way through neighborhood house parties. Dozens of residents in different neighborhoods across the city volunteered to host house parties where the campaign had the opportunity to share their message. Marson estimated that thousands of voters were reached through this method of outreach. These house parties ensured that the opposition was speaking to voters face-to-face, which is often considered the most effective way to campaign.

The opposition coalition’s strong ground operation ultimately meant that their support base became extremely visible within neighborhoods, thanks to the distribution of lawn signs. 

“Every neighborhood was covered in ‘no’ signs,” Marson said. “You would see ‘no’ signs on every street, if not multiple.”

Still, in the days and weeks leading up to the election, it seemed uncertain which way the results would swing. “I would kind of go back and forth [on] different days,” Bastian said. “...I thought we would win but I knew [the opposition] had run a very aggressive campaign and that it would come down to that evening where we just really wouldn’t know,” Walsh noted that polling indicated that in the absence of education regarding the proposal, the propositions for the entertainment would likely pass. If the opposition coalition could get its message out to voters and educate them, he felt they had reason to think the vote would go in their favor. Even then, they were not entirely certain that it was going to go their way. Only the truth of the ballot box would tell which side was going to win out.

Continue reading Part II tomorrow, in which Hockey of Tomorrow speaks with campaign organizers and volunteers about the aftermath of the election—why the ‘no’ vote won out, and what that might mean for the future of Arizona hockey.