Vice President Kamala Harris called Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz a “coach” when she introduced him as her new running mate at her first joint rally.
One of the first stops on the campaign’s pre-convention bus tour was in Pennsylvania, where Walz spoke to his high school football team.
And then, at a convention in Chicago last month, Walz got his own good vibes when a parade of former players took the stage wearing their old jerseys.
Walz’s football ties are part of the Democrats’ effort to recast themselves as the “normal” party this fall, with Walz’s love of hunting and Harris’ job at McDonald’s.
Mastering football is an amazing game because it is a change for a party that is growing more and more. critical of the game – especially about player safety.
“The uniforms somehow winning the football in the culture wars, I don’t think it’s going to be on my bingo card, but I’m pretty excited about it,” said a Harris campaign official. “Democrats just win normal things.”
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The Democratic football messaging of this era also goes far beyond Walz. Former NFL linebacker Colin Allred, D-Texas, who is running for Senate against Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, has touted his football connections extensively on the campaign trail, including a speech before the Democratic convention. Maryland Governor Wes MooreRising star of the party playing football at Johns Hopkins University, suitable up to The University of Maryland holds an internship in July. And prominent Democrats like it Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro regularly include football metaphors and references in interviews and on the stump.
“Football opens doors that are completely non-political and every Texan understands,” Allred said of the role the game played in his campaign, adding, “It’s a language we speak pretty fluently here in Texas.”
“It makes them look more moderate”
With Election Day just two months away, Democrats say their pigskin playbook will see more action in battleground states as football season begins, including with the NFL opening Thursday.
On Saturday, for example, Allred he tweeted A campaign ad slamming his opponent for the “Ted Cruz curse” pointed to a series of losses by Texas teams when Cruz was in attendance or posted in support of them on social media.
“Ted’s curse crushed the dreams of Texas teams,” he said. “Do you want to win? Lose Cruz.”
Republicans say the Democrats’ focus on football is impossible. With Walz, they say it presents another opportunity to call out what they see as an inflated resume. After Walz’s speech at the convention, Trump placed to the Truth Social platform, where the governor, who served as the defensive coordinator at Mankato West High School in Minnesota, said he was “an ASSISTANT COACH, not a COACH.”
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., a college football head coach for 21 seasons, criticized Walz. allegedly exaggerating his length of service in the National Guard and for retiring from his unit to run for Congress before deploying to Iraq.
“Walz willfully lied about both his military rank and his coaching position,” Tuberville said in a statement, adding that Walz “never became a head coach.”
“In fact, the lack of character he showed when he left his unit before he was deployed to Iraq was the exact opposite of what any coach I know would instill in student-athletes,” Tuberville said. “I wouldn’t let him near my closet. It’s a room, and we definitely don’t want him anywhere near the White House.”
Valz did not list himself as the head coach. But Tim Murtaugh, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, said the self-described coach is misleading enough, adding that the way Walz and Harris discuss his role will convince voters he’s in the top spot. Murtaugh said he expects the lack of distinction here will lead voters to take a closer look at other parts of Walz’s story that Republicans have zeroed in on.
“They think it’s good for them to call him a coach, but what it really does is highlight his dishonesty on his resume,” Murtaugh said. “They think it attracts people. It really exposes his lies.”
Not all Republicans see football messaging as wrong. One Trump ally told NBC News they thought the effort was “smart” and “subtle,” part of a broader effort by the party to portray itself as more moderate and more patriotic than its GOP rivals — the theme of Harris’ speech at the convention.
“It makes them look more moderate – I would associate that with the highest level of patriotism,” he said.
A Walz ally laughed when presented with Republican criticism of how the governor built his coaching career.
“If you’re attacking your opponent for a position where they won a high school state championship, you’re losing,” this person said.
Football has helped Walz connect with voters in the middle in past campaigns, the person said, adding that he has regularly appeared at football programs, practices and games. They added that it’s safe to expect Walz to lean on his football background on sports-related shows this fall or in settings like the Aliquippa High School football practice in Pennsylvania he spoke about last month.
“Who will look more comfortable at a football game?” the person said of Walz, comparing him to Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio. “The old-school idea that Republicans are more comfortable at the football game, I don’t know. I don’t buy it – not with these kids. I think they are behind now.”
On a trip to Aliquippa football practice in July, Walz, along with Harris and NFL Hall of Fame running back Jerome Bettis, praised “Men of character” from the school’s football program recounted his time as a defensive-minded coach and tied football to politics, saying the latter was “not much different.”
Aliquippa Mayor Dwan Walker, who shouted to the high school’s three NFL farmhands as he introduced the Pennsylvania delegation at the Democratic convention, called the visit “special.”
“You can definitely tell he’s a coach,” he said.
The offensive line is moving
The playing field has changed in recent years. Ten years ago, then-President Barack Obama told the reporter that if he had a son, he “wouldn’t have let” him play professional football – a comment that sent shockwaves through the football world as attention was raised to brain injuries in footballers. That same year, Donald Trump, who briefly owned a football team in the USFL, has repeatedly written about how “soft” the sport has become as a result of efforts to reduce hard hitting.
“I’m not going to watch any more NFL football,” he said he tweeted In October 2014. “Too time consuming, too boring, too many flags and too bland.”
A lifelong, almost devout, fan of the sport, Moore called it “the perfect game,” in part because of the high level of teamwork required. And he doesn’t have the same reservations, noting that Obama’s son took up the sport years ago.
“For those who don’t want their kids to play, I don’t judge them,” the Maryland governor said. “But what I’m saying is, it’s not me. I want my son to play football … and I want us to be there every weekend.”
Moore, who believes it will be a successful season for the Baltimore Ravens, added that sports should not be viewed through a political lens.
“I’m not a football executive because I said, ‘Oh, this is going to make me famous at Maryland,'” he said. “I am the head coach of football because I enjoy the game, I love the game.”
Years of voting has shown About the same percentage of Democrats and Republicans consider themselves football fans. But football has long played a larger role in Republican electoral politics. President Gerald Ford played football at the University of Michigan, while Rep. Jack Kemp, R-N.Y., the running mate of GOP nominee Bob Dole in 1996, played quarterback for the Buffalo Bills.
A number of NFL players, including former representatives Anthony Gonzalez, John Runyan and Steve Largent, and current representative Burgess Owens, have been elected Republicans. Coaches, including Tuberville and former University of Nebraska head Tom Osborne, have also been elected to Congress as Republicans. Others, like former NFL stars Herschel Walker and Lynn Swann, lost statewide bids atop the GOP ticket.
Meanwhile, Allred and former North Carolina Rep. Heath Shuler were the only former NFL players elected to Congress as Democrats in recent history. Senator Cory Booker, DN.J., played college football at Stanford.
But the political conversation around football began to change after former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick chose to kneel during the national anthem in 2016 to protest injustice and police brutality — prompting a backlash from conservatives who saw his actions as disrespectful. The following season, as the protests grew, so did Trump is calling suggested that fans boycott the NFL and league owners fire any player who kneels: “Get that son—- off the field right now.” Within weeks, then-Vice President Mike Pence he walked When several 49ers took a knee from the Indianapolis Colts game.
The episode helped color the political discourse around professional football for yearsas if pitting him against conservative interests. Right-wing assassinations earlier this year gained traction In the lead-up to the team’s Super Bowl run around pop star Taylor Swift’s close relationship with the Kansas City Chiefs’ Travis Kelce, conservative influencers have claimed the relationship is a ploy to energize Democrats in the fall.
JJ Abbott, a Democratic strategist in Pennsylvania, said the party’s embrace of football “coincides with conservatives repeatedly turning to football.”
“Sports and cultural relevance weren’t always our strongest suit,” he said. “But now it’s actually weird, it’s just turned on its head a little bit.”
trump, WHO there is for years it sounded his connections with the sports world and he did appearances hour football gamesRecently, he has also used football to promote his image. Trump last month posed For a photo with multiple members of the Las Vegas Raiders during the Nevada campaign stoppage. And more recently after Brittany Mahomes, wife of Chiefs star quarterback Patrick Mahomes I liked the instagram post Former president revealing parts of Trump’s agenda praised him on the Truth Social platform on Wednesday.
Still, Democrats feel they’ve gained some ground.
“Republicans can’t claim football any more than they can claim patriotism,” Moore said. “These are not things [owned] by everyone.”