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Three sports figures running for Congress captured Republican nominations in the midterms—two for House races, and one for the Senate. Former NFL kicker and broadcaster Jay Feely is running in Arizona’s 1st Congressional District; former Rangers and Yankees first baseman Mark Teixeira is running in Texas’s 21st Congressional District; and former NBC and ESPN sideline reporter Michele Tafoya is running for Senate in Minnesota. Their former colleagues in the sports world are injecting money into their races. More than a dozen active team owners donated to one of the three. Other high-profile names include: * NFL commissioner Roger Goodell: $7,000 to Feely * CBS broadcaster Jim Nantz: $3,500 to Feely * Cardinals owner Michael Bidwill: $7,000 to Tafoya and an additional $10,000 to associated PACs * 10-time NBA All-Star John Stockton: $3,500 to Tafoya * Texas Rangers owner Ray Davis: $7,500 to Teixeira
Adelson, a Nevada physician who immigrated to the U.S. from Israel, has a net worth of around $50 billion thanks to the casino business owned by her late husband Sheldon Adelson. She has solidified herself as a major figure in Republican politics. During the midterm cycle, she gave almost exclusively to PACs, as well as a six-figure check for the Republican National Committee. She donated $25 million to MAGA Inc, the super PAC supporting Donald Trump, as well as $30 million to Republicans’ Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), and $10 million to another right-leaning super PAC called the Conservative Leadership Fund (CLF), FEC filings show. Through PACs including the NRSC Victory Fund, her donations ended up in the hands of campaigns including those for Sen. Pete Ricketts (R., Neb.) and Tim Scott (R., S.C.).
Knicks owner James Dolan is calling out leaders of the city’s most influential business group for sitting out the governor’s race instead of backing Republican Bruce Blakeman – or at least advocating for a lower tax, pro-growth agenda. Dolan, who also owns Madison Square Garden, is bankrolling a pro-Blakeman political action committee over Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul in this year’s race and he claims other business leaders are giving the incumbent a free pass.
New York Knicks owner James Dolan is set to host a fundraiser for Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman at Madison Square Garden, the New York Post reported. The fundraiser will take place ahead of the Knicks' preseason game against the Toronto Raptors on Oct. 15, according to the Post. An invitation published by the Post shows that tickets to attend the event start at $10,000.
Sports and entertainment mogul James Dolan has emerged as the largest GOP donor in the Empire State this election cycle after backing Gov. Kathy Hochul’s last campaign. Dolan, his company and family members donated $1.4 million this year to committees supporting Hochul’s GOP foe, Bruce Blakeman, and have put millions more into super PACs that have started to support the Republican. The money represents crucial support after one of the party’s biggest rainmakers stopped giving.
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Knicks owner James Dolan is hosting a fundraiser for GOP gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman on Thursday at New York City’s famed Madison Square Garden, The Post has learned. The gala hosted by Dolan — along with the president and CEO of Witkoff Group, Scott Alper and chairman of EnTrust Global, Gregg Hymowitz — will take place ahead of the reigning NBA champions’ preseason showdown with the Toronto Raptors.
Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., accused former special counsel Jack Smith on Tuesday of committing perjury when he denied having attended a specific Atlanta Hawks basketball game in 2024 — to Smith’s apparent confusion. The attempted trick play happened during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Smith’s now-scuttled investigations into President Donald Trump. But it soon emerged that Schmitt had the wrong team.
After previously calling Rivers a friend, Steele says any recent interactions have been limited to the now-former NBA head coach sending her DMs to complain about her pivot to being an openly conservative talker. “I’m going to show you later, the DMs from this man,” Steele continued. “Pages and pages of why I’m such an idiot to be a Republican or conservative and support Donald Trump. Out of the blue, he would send me clips, and I’m like, ‘I just want to talk basketball with you’ or ‘How are your kids…?’ “Instead, it’s, ‘I’m so disappointed’ and the sellout thing with a coach. That’s what turns people off with sports. It doesn’t mean you can’t have that opinion. I did too. I just happened to not do it when I was working in sports.”
New York Knicks legend Earl “The Pearl” Monroe visited Long Island on Wednesday ahead of Game 1 of the NBA Finals to rally suburban fans behind the hometown team. Monroe, a Hall of Famer and member of the Knicks team to win a championship in 1973, appeared at the Nassau County municipal building in Mineola, talking politics and reminiscing with County Executive Bruce Blakeman, who is also the GOP-nominee in this year’s governor’s race.
The Bartlett regulars include local business owners, season ticket holders, guys you might find on a boat in nearby Cuba Lake. In a county that voted for Donald Trump over Kamala Harris by a 2-to-1 margin in 2024, the Bartlett crowd is politically mixed but leans to the center-right. Some of the club’s regulars said Wojnarowski gave them the cold shoulder, perhaps because of differing political views. That perception stems in part from a 2020 incident, when Wojnarowski apologized and served a two-week suspension at ESPN for sending Republican Sen. Josh Hawley a two-word email that read, “F— you.” “All the locals get the sense that he doesn’t want to be associated with them if he doesn’t have the same political bent as them,” said Firkel, one of the Bartlett regulars. “Fair or not, that is a general feeling through the community, that maybe you look down on people for being a bunch of MAGA Republicans.”
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It’s not nearly as one-sided as the WNBA, but the NBA player base is undoubtedly Democrat-leaning. In a sample of 170 players in the 2024-25 season out of approximately 430 voting-eligible, there are 73 Democrats, 76 independents, 17 Republicans, and four affiliating with other political parties. The 32.9 percentage-point margin between the two major parties is smaller than in the other leagues examined thus far, but the political leanings of independents would need to be strongly Republican to eliminate this gap. Again, demography explains the partisan leaning of the player base here. The vast majority of the NBA is black, and young black men have historically been a strong constituency for the Democratic Party despite recent slippage. This also meant the league was a natural home for Black Lives Matter activism, including a strike during the playoffs after the killing of Jacob Blake. In Trump’s first term the champion Warriors (twice) and Raptors both did not visit the White House, effectively the first time players and the President collectively refused to participate in the tradition. Although the league saw the Big Four player to come out as gay in Jason Collins, the reigning champion Oklahoma City Thunder did not hold a Pride Night last season, and the league has had its fair share of controversies over gay slurs.
Chris Dudley is getting back into the political game. The former Portland Trail Blazer announced on Monday that he’s entering the GOP primary and hopes to be the next governor of Oregon. The news comes sixteen years after the former basketball center came within one percentage point of beating Democrat John Kitzhaber for governor in 2010.
Question: There is now a second congressional committee demanding answers from the NBA? Answer: Yes. On Monday, the Senate’s committee on commerce, science, and transportation, chaired by Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, with Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington as the committee’s ranking member, wrote to Silver with a more pointed purpose than their House counterparts’ Oct. 24 letter. Cruz and Cantwell want to know “why Rozier was cleared” by NBA investigators to continue playing when federal investigators eventually charged him with crimes.
His frustration extends to the Democratic establishment — especially President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. “They won’t step up to the plate and say that this dude is incompetent from Day 1,” Hodges said of Biden. “We can’t say that because it’s ‘politically incorrect.’ And then you wanna give me Kamala Harris? Nah, man.” He doesn’t blame the system for being what it is. He blames us — for still expecting it to save us. “We didn’t say Democrats and Republicans we want y’all to sit down and listen to what we need over here… but we ain’t unified like that.” Unity, for Hodges, is the missing piece. It’s not about waiting for another Barack or denouncing another Trump. It’s about organization, ownership, and truth-telling. Even when it’s uncomfortable. Especially when it is. “It’s a game, man,” Hodges said one more time, with a sigh. “And I hope we can see where we sit — because it’s getting ready to get REALLY hectic.”