March Madness means basketball, brackets, bets and awkward situations for some lawmakers.
Take Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., for example. She’s a Duke graduate who also cheers for the West Virginia Mountaineers because she lives in and represents the state.
Now the two teams are playing one another in Saturday’s NCAA basketball championship semifinal.
Choosing constituents over classmates, Capito will cheer for West Virginia.
“I think everybody wondered. They were thinking it would be a tough call for her, but it wasn’t a tough call for her,” spokeswoman AshLee Strong told Yeas & Nays.
Capito issued a release Wednesday stating her alliance after receiving calls from concerned West Virginians. She and her husband, Charlie Capito, will go to Indianapolis to watch the game.
Another Duke grad is in a similar dilemma. Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., will also root for WVU.
Life is a little easier for other members of Congress who aren’t torn between their constituents and their alma maters.
Rep. David Price, D-N.C., may have gone to the University of North Carolina, a Duke rival, but he taught political science at Duke.
“Rep. Price will be watching the game with his grandchildren, teaching them about the fine basketball tradition in North Carolina’s 4th Congressional District,” spokesman Andrew High said.
Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., who represents the district where Michigan State is located, definitely is cheering on the Spartans. If he didn’t, his six staffers who went to the school might have something to say about it.
And while Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and Rep. Andre Carson, D-Ind., are cheering on Butler, neither is putting his money where his mouth is.
Lugar’s spokesman said, “We don’t do game wagers,” while Carson’s spokesman Justin Ohlemiller said they decided not to make bets after another wager left a bad taste in their mouths.
“We went down that road with the Super Bowl, and the Colts lost, so we didn’t want to jinx the Bulldogs so we stayed away from that,” Ohlemiller said.
