Southpaw #7: Five election plotlines where sports and politics mixed

It happened! Sort of.

Dear Southpaws,

It happened. Joe Biden is the president-elect and Chuck Schumer is out here partying with the youths. We knew it was over when we heard people yelling in the streets, and it felt only right to join. The celebrations were spontaneous, cathartic, and sustained. The warm feelings have continued into today.

But aside from a few scattered ballot initiatives, it was a on the whole a pretty bad election for the left. The Democrats likely blew their best shot this decade at reclaiming the Senate and handed over a half-dozen winnable House seats for good measure. Dreams of Biden as FDR Jr. were quickly replaced with the gloomy reality of four more years of partisan bickering and legislative inaction on climate, healthcare, and police reform. The election confirmed much of what we learned about the country in 2016, and four years of the Trump presidency did not change a significant percentage of Americans’ minds about him. The best sports analogy we can come up with is Jacob DeGrom winning a Cy Young and the Mets missing the playoffs. So, actually, we’re pretty used to it.

We’ll leave the rest of the prognosticating to the real politicos, but the election did feature a number of storylines where sports and politics met head on. Here are five sports-and-politics plotlines to keep an eye on as the news cycle rolls on.

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c/o Sarisha Kurup

1. Georgia run-off puts Atlanta Dream at center stage

Georgia’s special election between Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler and Democratic challenger Raphael Warnock is heading to a January run-off after neither candidate earned a majority of the vote on Tuesday. Loeffler, a minority owner of the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream, earned the ire of her players in June when she denounced the Black Lives Matter movement and criticized the WNBA for its shows of solidarity with the movement. Since then, the Dream have become vocal supporters of Warnock, and, as we wrote two weeks ago, their advocacy has set a new standard for electoral activism among athletes. With Warnock positioned to be half of the Democrats’ last real hope of gaining control of the Senate (along with fellow Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff), the Dream has the chance to play a historic role in the lead-up to the January run-off. 

2. Patrick Mahomes puts his money where his mouth is—and where the government won’t

Here’s the good news: Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes shelled out nearly $50,000 to convert the Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium into a polling place for Tuesday’s election. Mahomes’ charitable foundation and the Chiefs split the hefty $100,000 price tag of purchasing six new voting machines, installing 25 additional machines at the stadium, and paying 35 poll workers to man the site. Just imagine what could happen if all the Chiefs players were willing to put their money behind a worthy cause like, uh, changing their team’s name. 

But there’s a flip side to Mahomes’ charity. As the Nation’s Dave Zirin argued this week, we probably shouldn’t celebrate the fact that the country has to rely on millionaire celebrities to foot the bill for basic civic functions that should be paid for by the government. Mahomes deserves credit for his actions, but they nevertheless expose a glaring failure of our democratic institutions. As Zirin writes, “We should be grateful for athletes like Patrick Mahomes for paying for the machines . . . but we need to make sure that what comes to us as charity from progressive wealthy elites becomes concretized as rights. I would love Mahomes or [LeBron] James to say not only that they are lending a hand but also that they shouldn’t have to be helping in the first place.”

3. So help us, Tommy Fucking Tuberville is going to the Senate

Former Auburn football coach and Trump-sycophant Tommy Tuberville beat Democratic incumbent Doug Jones in Alabama’s hotly-contested Senate election. This is, in every conceivable sense, terrible news. Tuberville follows in a long line of sportspeople-turned-politicians, but he might be the worst yet: pro-life, pro-gun, pro-militarism, anti-immigrant, anti-welfare, anti-Black. The big difference between him and Jeff Sessions (whom he bested in the Republican primary) is that he still has the favor of the president.

It’s unclear how Trump minions like Tuberville will fare in Congress without Trump in the White House, but Tuberville’s election all but guarantees that Trump’s contorted vision of politics-as-sports will endure beyond the Trump presidency.

Tommy Tuberville @TTuberville

The election results are out of control. It’s like the whistle has blown, the game is over, and the players have gone home, but the referees are suddenly adding touchdowns to the other team’s side of the scoreboard.

If there is a better symbol than Tuberville for the parasitic exchange between Trumpism and football culture, we’re still looking for it. 

4. The NCAA gave athletes Election Day off, pissing off people like the aforementioned Tommy Tuberville

In a rare display of common sense, the NCAA paused all Division I athletic activities on Tuesday to encourage its athletes to vote. The league adopted the initiative after months of lobbying by players and coaches who correctly pointed out that mandatory team activities frequently interfered with players’ ability and willingness to go to the polls. Despite being the obviously right thing to do, the initiative drew criticism from a number of meathead coaches who’d rather suppress voter turnout than miss a single day of head-bashing. At midnight on November 4th, the league announced that all players had successfully returned to their normal status as the the unpaid serfs of the NCAA’s massive money-generating fiefdom. (Just kidding, sort of.) 

5. Some wacky stuff happened in Miami

As part of the NBA’s wildcat strike earlier this summer, the Milwaukee Bucks demanded that the league turn every NBA arena into a polling center for the election. Their effort was half successful, as 17 NBA stadiums were used for early voting, election day voting, or both. One of the most contentious fights over stadium usage was in Miami, where Miami-Dade Republican Mayor and Republican candidate for Florida’s 36th House district Carlos Gimenez allegedly interfered with a deal to turn American Airlines Arena into a polling place. The Heat subsequently released a statement expressing their strong disapproval, but voters didn’t seem to mind Gimenez’s obvious contempt for voting rights. He flipped the Florida 26th, defeating incumbent Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.

It’s not all bad news, though. Replacing Gimenez as Mayor of Miami-Dade will be progressive Democrat Daniella Levine Cava, who is set to become the first female mayor of Miami-Dade after triumphing over the Republican candidate in a hotly-contested race. Levine Cava will have a lot on her plate, but we hope the Heat players push her to make sure their arena becomes a permanent polling place.

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RODNEY’S ROUNDUP:

Do you want to read about. . .

. . . How college football’s COVID response lines up with the White House’s, in both substance and aesthetic? “There Is No Alternative” by David Roth in Defector (November 4, 2020).

. . . How sports owners spend their money? “How Politics Stick To Sports” (podcast) by Sara Ziegler, Neil Paine, and Geoff Foster in FiveThirtyEight (November 3, 2020).

. . . Toronto Raptors Head Coach Nick Nurse on Thelonious Monk and getting a philosophy Ph.D. while coaching a championship basketball team? “Nick Nurse Has a Thelonious Monk Album You're Going to Love” by Pete Croatto in GQ (October 23, 2020).

. . . The long and fascinating history of professional women’s basketball in America? “How The ABL Lost The Fight For The Soul Of Women's Basketball” by Maitreyi Anantharaman in Defector (November 5, 2020).