[Politics] In Georgia, how sports explain a political battleground

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SMYRNA, Ga. (AP) — The reception area of a metro Atlanta office suite is a veritable museum of Herschel Walker’s football success for the University of Georgia Bulldogs and the NFL. The office is part of the Atlanta Braves’ real estate development in the Major League Baseball franchise’s new suburban home.

This headquarters for Georgia’s Republican U.S. Senate nominee isn’t officially about athletics, of course. Yet the location and décor help show much professional sports and college loyalties explain political divides in this battleground state, where Walker is trying to unseat Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in a Tuesday runoff.

“Sports are a cultural identifier, and in the South, college fandom is a big part of that,” said David Mowery, a University of Georgia alumnus, avid Bulldogs supporter and now an Alabama-based political consultant who works with Republicans and Democrats. “Now our politics and campaigns are so much about identity,” Mowery said. “We see all these overlaps.”

Sports and politics have long intersected in America. But the flashpoints — racial segregation of college campuses and professional leagues, the use of Native American mascots and imagery, athletes protesting over civil rights, power struggles over taxpayer-funding for stadiums — are ever-present in Georgia.

 

For Republicans, whose coalition trends older, whiter and less urban than the general po[CENSORED]tion, that means an open embrace of the Bulldogs and baseball’s Braves, each with fan bases that trend whiter and more suburban and rural. And it’s not just Walker, who carried the Bulldogs to the national championship in 1980 and won the Heisman Trophy two years later.

“Great politics, great place to campaign,” said Gov. Brian Kemp, a UGA alumnus, as he tailgated with supporters in Athens ahead of a Georgia game earlier this season.

The governor grew up in Athens and is close to the family of the late Bulldog Coach Vince Dooley. His wife, Marty, was a Georgia cheerleader in her student days, he reminded reporters as he previewed the Bulldogs’ 2022 prospects. The defending national champions, he said, “have got the players” but “got to stay humble.” (They won the Southeastern Conference Championship on Saturday.)

 

Kemp and Lt. Gov.-elect. Burt Jones, who also played for Georgia, join Walker in using red and black as their campaign colors. Attorney General Chris Carr, who won a second term in November, sometimes calls himself a “Double Dawg” — the honorific for someone with two UGA degrees.

Democrats’ coalition, meanwhile, is anchored by metropolitan areas and nonwhites, who now account for about 4 out of 10 Georgia voters. So, when politicians like Warnock bring sports into their campaigns, it’s to drop by an Atlanta sports bar during the recent World Cup soccer match between the U.S. and Iran.

https://apnews.com/article/herschel-walker-mlb-college-football-sports-soccer-b167dfa6b1eb7a1cba0cca4b5e518e37