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Was Trump Behind 2014 Effort to Foil Jon Bon Jovi's NFL Bid?
Jon Bon Jovi performs at the Samsung Charity Gala at Skylight Clarkson Square on Nov. 2, 2017 in New York
Was Donald Trump the secret force behind the seemingly grassroots 2014 campaign to block Jon Bon Jovi from buying the Buffalo Bills?
That’s
what those involved are saying now, three years after the billionaire
and the rocker were competing to buy the Bills. At the heart of the
effort was the creation of a fan group called 12th Man Thunder that
pushed to keep the team in Buffalo and exploited already rampant
speculation Bon Jovi planned to move the franchise to Canada.
Among
the group’s antics in the spring of 2014 were the collection of
thousands of petition signatures and distribution of “Bon Jovi Free
Zone” posters calling for a boycott of his music in bars, shops, and on
radio stations. All of it received widespread media coverage, including
from The Associated Press.
“At the time I wish I could have told people,” said Charles Pellien,
one of the group’s leaders. “I just wanted to blurt out, ‘Donald Trump
is behind this!'”
Neither the White House nor the Trump
organization responded to requests for comment on the claim, which was
first mentioned on a Buffalo-area radio show in March and reported last
month by GQ magazine.
But according to Michael Caputo, a Buffalo
public relations consultant who would go on to work on Trump’s
presidential campaign, Trump himself came up with the idea for the group
at a Trump Tower meeting in early 2014 as a way to tap into widespread
fan anxiety at the time over a potential Bills move to Canada.
“Mr.
Trump was convinced that the community wouldn’t stand for a move,”
Caputo told the AP. “So he sent me off to try to organize something with
local fans to get that rolling.”
Once back in Buffalo, Caputo
enlisted Pellien, a truck driver who lives near the Bills’ stadium in
Orchard Park, and others to form the volunteer group, which quickly
amassed an email database of 15,000 fans.
Speculation that Bon
Jovi’s group intended to move the team was fueled by the fact that it
included two Canadian heavyweights, Larry Tanenbaum, chairman of Maple
Leaf Sports and Entertainment, and the Rogers family, which controls
Toronto-based Rogers Communications.
And with the Bon Jovi group expected to bid more than Trump was
willing to pay, Caputo said, Trump believed tapping the fan emotion
would improve his position.
“He wanted to be the hometown favorite
because he would keep the Bills in Buffalo,” Caputo said. “It was
always his intention to come in here on a white horse and save the
team.”
The group’s first move was the petition drive that had
people vowing to wash their hands of the Bills — no buying tickets or
jerseys or watching games on TV — if the team moved.
Organizers
said Trump stepped away from even behind-the-scenes involvement after
signing a nondisclosure agreement attached to the bidding process that
barred him from doing public outreach around it.
Bon Jovi, whose
representatives declined to comment for this story, responded to the
2014 campaign with a letter to The Buffalo News that said his ownership
group’s objective was “to make the Bills successful in Buffalo.” The
letter came a little more than a week after the AP reported that the
singer’s ownership group conducted a feasibility study into building a
stadium in Toronto.
In the end, 12th Man Thunder’s efforts were for naught because
Buffalo Sabres owners Terry and Kim Pegula submitted a bid no one could
top — $1.4 billion — and became the new owners.
After the sale,
the fan group, now known as Bills Fan Thunder and still led by Pellien,
transformed into a charitable group that brings underprivileged children
to their first Bills game.
As for Pellien’s feelings about Bon
Jovi today, “Some people forgave and forgot and other people will never
forgive. I’m kind of one of them.
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