Although Williams has been the biggest loser, Cropp was only slightly more popular with residents: Only 4 in 10 approved of the way she handled efforts to bring baseball here, according to the poll.
But whatever the outcome, the survey suggested that Cropp's aggressive stand against baseball owners may not have helped her politically with working-class blacks and hurt her among whites. About half of blacks polled applauded her handling of the baseball situation; only 1 in 4 whites were similarly enthusiastic, while a majority were critical.
Employees at the Washington Nationals store at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium packed up souvenirs last week.
(Pablo Martinez Monsivais -- The AP)
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"I think she is honest. She is doing what needs to be done," said Evelyn Satour, 66, a retired cleaning woman who lives in Southeast. "The rest of them should be doing that. That was a bad deal that Williams accepted from the baseball people. Even rich people don't want to waste their money."
The stadium deal has hurt Williams among both whites and blacks, according to the poll. More whites disapproved of the way Williams handled the baseball issue (46 percent) than approved (41 percent). He fared significantly worse among blacks: 2 in 3 disapproved.
Although blacks and whites held somewhat different views of the two principals in the stadium standoff, there was little overall difference by race on the question of who should pay for the new stadium: 58 percent of all whites and 53 percent of blacks favored the Cropp amendment.
Who will D.C. residents hold responsible if the deal to bring Major League Baseball to D.C. falls through? The survey suggested that there is blame to go around: Nearly half -- 47 percent -- would blame Williams for negotiating a deal unacceptable to the council, while 37 percent would blame the council for changing an agreement that already had been negotiated. Others would blame baseball owners or everyone involved.
"All the local parties are responsible for the impasse," said Joseph Sternleib, 44, a city planner from Northwest who works for a local nonprofit group.
"But the owners whose greed knows no bounds are the ones who are most guilty for the blowup," he added. "MLB's insistence that the public sector tax and spend 100 percent of the funds needed to build the stadium and take all of the political, financing and timing risk while keeping for themselves all profits, use and naming rights was a gross overreach. By refusing to share any risk or any upside, MLB proved itself the real villain in this 'deal.' "
A total of 601 randomly selected adult D.C. residents were interviewed yesterday. The margin of sampling error for the overall results was plus or minus 4 percentage points.
