Politics has long featured former athletes
Politics is known to be a sport and this year is no exception.
Three former professional athletes, Steve Garvey, Royce White, and Austin Theriault have thrown their hat into the ring to run for Congress in the Nov. 5 election.
Steve Garvey is the Republican nominee in California for Senate, facing Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). Polls show the latter, who has been in the House since 2001, up by double digits.
Garvey, 75, played for the Los Angeles Dodgers between 1969 and 1982 and the San Diego Padres between 1983 and 1987. He was a 10-time All-Star and won the World Series in 1981. He was the National League MVP in 1974, the National League Championship Series MVP in 1978 and 1984, and won the Gold Glove Award in four consecutive years.
An Emerson College poll this month shows Schiff leading Garvey, 56 percent to 33 percent, with 11 percent undecided. A poll late last month showed Schiff up with 63 percent of the vote.
A detailed platform page on his campaign website shows Garvey focusing on issues including securing the border, implementing fiscal discipline, standing with law enforcement, and reforming the education system.
Schiff, on the other hand, is running on ending gerrymandering, abolishing the filibuster, abolishing the electoral college, implementing judicial reform such as expanding the Supreme Court, taking on price gouging, and passing the Green New Deal.
Former President Donald Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, has said that Garvey, whom he said he doesn’t know, has “no chance” of winning if he doesn’t “reach out to MAGA,” Trump’s Make America Great Again movement.
Garvey has gone after Schiff for being a “career politician.”
“This man hasn’t done anything over the last 24 years on any of these things that have given us any consistency in life,” said Garvey during an Oct. 8 debate.
His opponent has gone after him for having no political experience.
“While Mr. Garvey was signing baseballs for the last 37 years, I was seeing presidents of both parties and governors of both parties sign my bills into law,” Schiff said.
