Conservatives may have a hard time supporting Caitlyn Jenner in California’s recall election. The Olympic gold medal-winning track star and former reality TV star, who is a transgender woman and Republican candidate for governor in California, supports giving illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship, among other issues with which conservatives may disagree.
However, even though Jenner isn’t a good candidate, there is something that people should take from the Jenner campaign: More famous athletes should run for office.
Star athletes, whether professionals or Olympic amateurs, can have some key advantages over the average candidate when running for office: name recognition, a positive public image that cuts across party lines, experience dealing with the media, enhanced media coverage, and financial advantages. People who have a lot of money can spend some of their own money on their respective races. Not to mention if that person had a scandal, the media probably would have reported on it already.
That said, it’s no surprise that there are three former NFL players in Congress: Rep. Burgess Owens, a Utah Republican; Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, an Ohio Republican; and Rep. Colin Allred, a Texas Democrat. Plus, former Auburn head football coach Tommy Tuberville is a Republican U.S. senator representing Alabama.
While Gonzalez represents a safe red seat, the other three flipped their respective districts. Owens flipped Utah’s 4th Congressional District from former Rep. Ben McAdams, a Democrat who defeated incumbent Republican Mia Love in 2018. Meanwhile, Allred took out incumbent Republican Pete Sessions in Texas’s 32nd Congressional District in 2018 and held on to the seat in 2020. Sessions had been in Congress since 1997 and had no Democratic challenger in 2016, but Allred won the 2018 and 2020 races by more than six points. Tuberville, by not being Roy Moore, beat incumbent Democratic Sen. Doug Jones by more than 20 points. In Alabama, that’s expected for a Republican, but it also shows how people took Tuberville seriously as a candidate.
There’s no shortage of even bigger names serving in Congress over the years, either. Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Bunning flipped a U.S. Senate seat for Kentucky in 1998 after years of serving as a U.S. representative. That same decade, Hall of Fame wide receiver Steve Largent was a Republican U.S. representative from Oklahoma, and former NBA All-Star Bill Bradley was a Democratic U.S. senator from New Jersey. When Bradley won his first U.S. Senate race in 1978, he flipped his seat from Democratic to Republican.
If a different Brady had run in my home district, Massachusetts’s 9th Congressional District, the results would have improved for Republicans. Had the nominee been Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady instead of Helen Brady, then the Republican candidate would have performed better. Instead, the nominee was a candidate who has never held elected office and an anti-vaxxer who thinks the government could put medical information into people’s skin. The candidate performed worse than Donald Trump — and people like me voted for the pro-life independent candidate Michael Manley. Democrats don’t love Tom Brady because they think he likes Trump, but at least he knows not to peddle conspiracy theories.
Republican pro athletes could develop a pro-life, strong on immigration, and innovative policy platform to help lure more voters to the Republican camp. The pro athlete appeal, however, works on either side of the aisle.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a political reporter for New Boston Post in Massachusetts. He is also a freelance writer who has been published in USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Federalist, and a number of other outlets.
