More Words About Sports and Mayors

My cousin twice removed (grandfather’s cousin) was an important person in Illinois politics. 

He served until the near dinosaur age of 73. He likely lost because his opponent was a runner. The link between activity and potential performance as a politician is high. 

What better way to show energy and stamina than sports. John Hickenlooper in 2019 participate on RAGBRAI- the famous bike ride across Iowa. He was not the first politician to do this but you likely know how successful he was if you think back to the “Hickenlooper 2024 Presidential Reelection Campaign” 

Marco Rubio routinely played football in backyards (literally almost my backyard) and we only know of one time that he accidentally hit a kid in the face.

Life comes at ya fast, kid

Bill Clinton famously jogged everywhere. 

Last election cycle, Andrew Yang went to Iowa State and had a fundraising Campaign basketball game. The 2024 cycle is not lacking. Axios reports there’s more than Biden biking and Trump golfing. 

Current Democratic contender, the seventy year old RFK Jr famously has done the push-up challenge.

If I have to look at this, so do you

Ron DeSantis was the captain of Yale baseball team which you would know if you have seen the ads from the Never Back Down PAC and if you are in Iowa then you have seen the ads from the Never Back Down PAC. 

Vivek Ramaswamy got a lot of attention for his shirtless tennis videos, to the point that Martina Navratilova made headlines for criticizing his technique Now this all sounds fun until you get hurt and might miss a debate. 

Seriously. 

That is what happened to Doug Burgum yesterday 

CNN reported Burgum, 67, suffered a high-grade tear of his Achilles tendon while playing a game of pick-up basketball with his staff Tuesday, 

Anyway, I have always said if you want analysis go elsewhere. I am here to collect the weird trivia specifically. on the road to the Iowa Caucus 

Which brings me to Francis Suarez 

You know Francis Suarez, right? 

Mayor Suarez?

Mayor of Miami Suarez who is running for the GOP nomination in 2024? 

Suarez spent July 4 in Iowa running a 5k in Cedar Rapids before attending the Freedom Festival Pancake Breakfast.

For a change, I am not quoting Politico or CNN, but Runners World 

On Tuesday, the 45-year-old presidential hopeful tweeted, “Name another presidential candidate who can place 6th in a 5K with a 24-and-a-half minute run time,” along with a photo of himself running in the race. 

But wait there's more...

However, that sixth-place finish was for his age group—out of 16 runners. That makes his overall finish 87th—not quite as impressive—but the 7:52 pace isn’t too shabby for a presidential candidate. Suarez made news this week in New Hampshire. 

WMUR reports Suarez pointed to the importance of using leadership to shape culture, citing two examples. One of his efforts is running a 5K after every homicide in his city. He said he’d start his runs exactly 24 hours down to the minute of when the death occurred and would begin them — and end them — at the precise location of the crime. “I wanted my police department to understand the gravity of what just occurred,” he said. “Sometimes we get desensitized to some of the things that are happening in our community. I wanted to a little bit of shock, right? This just happened. If the mayor would have been standing in this very spot just 24 hours to the minute, I would've been shot.” 

I can’t help but think that Suarez was inspired to run because of Pete Buttigieg, the then-mayor of South Bend Indiana who won the 2024 Iowa Caucus.

Mayors should be a logical choice for Presidential candidates.  They are administrators, of course, but they have a record of underperforming. 

If you could consider Giuliani and Bloomberg strong candidates (they certainly fell flat after an initial burst), you still have a list that includes Bill DeBlasio, John Lindsay, Sam Yorty and Julian Castro- footnotes that are only interesting to diehards like me. 

To be fair, Castro was also a Cabinet Member which is a higher office, and there’s plenty of mayors who ran that achieved higher offices and had more success- I am not talking about them so I didn’t mention the bigger list of Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker and Grover Cleveland among others. 

But Suarez remains a Long Shot just outside the reach of the media light. 

If anything he reminds me of another Florida mayor who ran in 2020 

Wayne Messam 

Roughly 47 Million Americans voted for one or both of these two men

Miramar is a suburb of Miami and the 14 th largest city in Florida and Messam was and is still the town mayor 

Wikipedia says this about his campaign: Messam's third quarter fundraising report initially declared that he had received only $5 in income, and had spent $0. 

Now, Messam is mentioned as saying the the low amounts were attributable to a "computer glitch." But I am kind of disappointed in that. 

You see, a politician that doesn’t fundraiser and doesn’t spend any money. 

That sounds like the best politician of all