Athletes (Obama) vs. Owners (McCain)

Our political research at SportsAgentBlog.com reveals that many professional athletes support Barack Obama.  In fact, athletes are coming out in an unprecidented fashion, publicly announcing their support for the Democratic candidate.  The King endorses Obama, Greg Oden has shown his support for Barack, Tiger Woods is on the Obama bandwagon, and agent Leigh Steinberg started a project called Athletes for Obama.  In my interview with Mr. Steinberg, he also noted that,

Traditionally, most athletes have been conservatives or Republicans. People who pay heavy taxes, especially young athletes who are paying more taxes from their first taxes than they have ever made their entire life, have a good reason to be anti-tax. This has led them to be more traditional followers of the Republican party. Or they are apolitical because they are so involved in their athletic career.

It definitely makes sense, which is why I was not surprised to hear that a large portion of NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB owners support John McCain.  If athletes have an incentive to vote Republican based on lower taxes, then owners should be even more inclined to lean to the right, as they are in an even higher tax bracket.

The original story, which was eventually picked up by many media outlets, first appeared in Politico.  This statement wraps up the entire article:

Through the end of June, team owners in the four major sports and their families have given to or raised as much or more than $3.2 million for McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, compared with as much as $615,000 for his Democratic rival Obama.

But the sports industry is only one small sector of the general economy, and Obama has been destroying McCain in overall contributions.

Obama, in collecting $356 million in his personal and joint campaign accounts, has nearly doubled McCain’s overall fund raising, and has raised more money from most business and industrial sectors.

I can guarantee one thing: the American public will be more greatly influenced by who America’s high-profile athletes support than the political preferences of owners of the Arizona Diamondbacks and Chicago Cubs.