DropCropp.com--GRE
Helps Save Baseball for DC

When the Nationals play their home opener on April 14 at RFK stadium against Phoenix it will mark the return of major league baseball to the nation’s capital, an astounding three decades after the 1971 departure for Texas by the Washington Senators.

But the deal to bring America’s pastime back nearly fell through when DC city council chair Linda Cropp pitched a late inning curve ball, demanding new, last minute financial commitments.

After 33 years of trying, Washington DC was on the verge of getting a baseball team until Cropp switched and voted against the deal.

The impact was devastating.

"I believe the deal is broken. The dream is now close to dying," said Mayor Anthony Williams. "We're in great jeopardy here, and I think I'm being optimistic," he said in a Reuters report on December 15, 2004.

Major League Baseball canceled all publicity events with Washington, and even closed down the one store selling Washington Nationals gear.

With less than two weeks left before the December 31 deadline to seal a deal, time was short and momentum was shifting.

According to a Washington Post poll, nearly 60 opposed the deal. And Chairman Cropp said there had been almost no support from DC residents for the stadium deal. "My constituents want baseball to come . . . but they feel that this is a lousy deal," said Cropp in a Post article.

Changing the tide

On December 16, the GRE team met to strategize a DC-based response that would persaude Cropp to reverse her position. There would have to be a massive outpouring of support and it would have to come in days, not weeks.

• First, the GRE team decided that something bold was necessary to break through the din, and make an impact. A simple petition wouldn’t do. Thus was born, "DropCropp.com – a campaign to RECALL Linda Cropp.


At its heart was a simple online "letter to Cropp” form, in which site visitors could send letters to Cropp telling her that unless she supported the deal, they would work to recall her.

Casting it as a "Recall" effort was a very deliberate strategy. Given all the attention the California recall campaign had generated, this was likely to turn some heads and generate some attention of its own.

Additionally, it significantly raised the stakes for Chairman Cropp. And this was critical – while the GRE staff wanted no part of the unfair, personal attacks that others leveled at Chairman Cropp, the team did want to make the point about how serious it was about saving baseball.

A recall effort would not be easy – but it was possible. And perhaps most importantly of all, it was a bold strike that could get attention from DC voters.

• Second, the GRE team made a deliberate effort to reach out to high-traffic Blogs ("Mega Blogs”) as opposed to mainstream media. Why? With time as short as it was, Blogs provided an opportunity to get instant "buzz."


And since they were online, they were just a click away from the form.

The impact was fast and furious. Almost immediately, the effort was covered by two of the most prominent and high-trafficked blogs in existence – Wonkette.com, and Talking Points Memo. By December 19th, just 24 hours after DropCropp.com launched, Chairman Cropp had received over 1,000 letters from DC residents – demanding that she reverse her vote, or face the wrath of recall.

To put this in perspective -- the population of DC is less than 600,000. Adjusting for population, if this had been targeted at the nation as a whole, the equivalent response would've been half a million letters in that same 24 hours.

In fact, by the end of the day, both Cropp’s email and voice mail accounts were completely full and no longer taking messages.

On the morning of December 20th, Chairman Cropp announced that the City Council would revisit the issue the next day.

But the GRE team kept up the pressure. All that day, it worked fast and furiously to turn out supporters for a "Town Hall" meeting that night with the Mayor, to support baseball. By the time the Town Hall happened, it was not only overfilled, it was without the Mayor. Williams had opted to skip it, because he was busy actually meeting with Cropp – who wanted to work with him to strike a deal before the City Council meeting.

The next day, December 21st, Chairman Cropp reversed herself, threw her support behind the stadium deal, and it passed – by a single vote. Baseball was saved.

And in spite of the fact that it had launched just over 100 hours earlier – DropCropp.com had made the difference.

DropCropp.com then switched to a "Thank Cropp" effort, urging its supporters to contact Cropp and thank her for switching back.

Again, the impact was clear:

Cropp spokesman Mark F. Johnson said the public feedback her office is hearing is practically all positive — a drastic change. "Suddenly, as of yesterday, the e-mails we get in this office went from naughty to nice," said Johnson in a Washington Times article.