HOLDEN CONTINUES HIS NFL CAMPAIGN.

Byline: BILLY WITZ

When it comes to chutzpah, few local politicians carried it in bigger supply than longtime former Los Angeles City Councilman Nate Holden.

Several-thousand-dollar-a-month consulting jobs for termed-out-colleagues? He's trying to help out a few unemployed friends.

Tooling around in a new Lincoln Navigator, the most expensive of 170 taxpayer-paid-for cars in the city's fleet? Hey, he's saving the city money by not trading it in every year.

Holden was known for his once-frequent pronouncements - often made in front of the Coliseum - that the Raiders were ready to come back to Los Angeles.

All they wanted was a new stadium with luxury boxes, Holden would proclaim while wearing a Raiders hat, sweatshirt and a straight face.

This not only threw Oakland officials into a frenzy, it left many in Los Angeles ready to run to the Grapevine and throw their bodies across both lanes of I-5. NFL officials had a more reasoned reaction: ``Ridiculous.''

All of which brings us to Pasadena, where Councilman Chris Holden, Nate's son, concluded that just because after months of very public discourse there weren't enough votes on the council back in June to continue the city's pursuit of a NFL team, well, it's time to take the game to a new arena.

So this week, the younger Holden filed notice with the city clerk that he intends to put the same proposal the City Council considered, mulled over, debated and then considered some more on the ballot in a special election.

``We've got to get this to the people,'' Holden said. ``They're entitled to make a decision.''

Audacity, apparently, is not a recessive gene.

Now, to be fair, this isn't exactly like father, like son. When Chris Holden talks, he is more measured than his flamboyant father and appears more earnest. As firm as he is in his belief that the economic benefits of a stadium deal outweigh the costs, there's the sense that - misguided or not - he's acting less in his interest than in the city's.

While he's carried the ball on this virtually alone - keeping in touch with the NFL and helping craft the initiative - it's hard to see where this will go in the end.

Forget, for a moment, the headaches Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is having getting his initiatives on the November ballot. Forget, too, about all the opposition that will be mobilized, from Mayor Bill Bogaard to the residents' associations and preservationists that threatened Councilman Steve Madison this spring with a recall - political blackmail, as Holden called it then.

When the city attorney returns a ballot title and summary to Holden by Aug. 26, he must publish a notice of intent to hold a special election for the measure. Then he has 180 days to collect signatures from 15 percent of the city's registered voters (an estimated 11,000, according to city clerk Jane Rodriguez). The county then has 30 days to verify the signatures, after which the City Council would order the election.

Then there is the cost to the city of a special election: about $200,000, according to Rodriguez.

Holden says if all goes well, the election could be held by next February. The problem is the NFL plans to make a decision on a stadium site at its late October meeting.

``If (NFL owners) select one this fall, then Pasadena would be out,'' league spokesman Brian McCarthy said. ``However, if no decision is made, and the Pasadena referendum is successful, then the city would be considered as a possible site.''

What's holding up the NFL are unresolved labor issues. How the revenue-sharing plan is tweaked - despite Cowboys owner Jerry Jones' foot-stamping that changes could kill the NFL's return here - and what the new collective-bargaining numbers look like will shape the formulas the league is negotiating with the Coliseum and Anaheim. Progress on revenue sharing reportedly was made at a owners' meeting in Chicago this week, but there are so many revenue-sharing models being bounced around that even the NFL doesn't know what the numbers will look like.

For those wondering why the NFL is not discouraging Holden, it's all about options - or as much leverage as they can squeeze. The NFL knows the Coliseum's biggest threat in the stadium game is the Rose Bowl, and the league was clearly taken aback last month when the Coliseum Commission - not ready to give in on several issues - didn't ratify an agreement the NFL thought it had on terms.

So, when Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa says in a radio interview that the NFL best not dawdle and then follows it up the next day with a call to commissioner Paul Tagliabue in the same week Holden begins the initiative process and shortly after his top aides have been briefed on the Coliseum's negotiations with the NFL, draw your own conclusions.

None of this means the NFL is any closer to coming to the Rose Bowl. There seems to be but one person who believes it can happen. And, used or not, he intends to keep pushing forward, against the political winds, the odds and, seemingly, windmills.

``There's still a lot of hurdles,'' Holden said. ``But I wouldn't be wasting my time if I didn't think we could win.''

--Futbol in L.A.: There wasn't much English-language media attention lavished on the Guadalajara-Club America soccer match Wednesday at the Coliseum. (Oh, right, the Galaxy and Chivas USA also played). But when 88,816 people show up for the Yankees-Red Sox of Mexican soccer, it vividly illustrated the possibilities for the NFL.

If a NFL team comes to the Coliseum, a sublease would allow the new owner to control revenues on soccer matches, concerts and other large-scale events, providing revenue streams they don't have in Jacksonville.

``It has to be timed right; you couldn't put one of these on every week, but those are big, big numbers,'' Coliseum general manager Pat Lynch said. ``Those numbers are every bit as good as any U2 or Metallica concert.''

While USC's booming ticket sales helped show that football fans will come to Exposition Park, Guadalajara-America showed what kind of numbers are out there in Los Angeles' Latino market, an attractive possibility considering the league's nationwide research shows 72 percent of Latinos, ages 12 and up, are NFL fans.

--Sound off: This being the entertainment capital of the world, and for all the hoopla the NFL plans to generate around its kickoff concert on Sept. 8 at the Coliseum, the best they could do for a headliner is Maroon 5?

If getting an L.A. band was a necessity, how about X or the Red Hot Chili Peppers instead of an act whose work ranges from treacle to vacant? Then again, it's not about the music, but the demographics.

The show in New England, prior to the Raiders at Patriots, features Green Day, which might get a chilly reception not for its music, but for its hometown: Oakland.

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Pasadena City Councilman Chris Holden, son of former L.A. City Councilman Nate Holden, pictured, is determined to bring the NFL to the Rose Bowl.

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