Why not Jerry West for the Senate?
In olden days, when college football was confined to four New Year’s Day bowl games and the NCAA Final Four was played far from the glare of national TV (hard to believe, right?), two presidential wannabes roamed the Mountain State in search of votes … and Jerry West.
Jerry West, basketball All American at West Virginia University, was the political jewel being eyed in the spring of 1960 by the two Dems plugging away in that year’s West Virginia presidential primary.
The two – Jack Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey – would have given just about anything to have West’s endorsement.
“Zeke from Cabin Creek” was the “most famous West Virginian of them all, ” according to newspaper accounts in 1960. An endorsement by the 22-year-old NBA-legend-of-the-future might have clinched the primary balloting, then and there.
This came back to me this past week, after learning that West, Alabama football coach and West Virginia native Nick Saban, and three other sports figures had written a letter to Sen. Joe Manchin, urging the West Virginia senator to back voting rights legislation.
Intentional or not, the letter carried the suggestion that Manchin ought to help make sure the legislation became law by supporting a change to Senate filibuster rules, which clearly he was in a position to do.
The letter – from West, Saban, former WVU quarterback Oliver Luck, former WVU linebacker Darryl Tulley, and former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue – came to light just as Senate Democrats were about to vote to establish a talking filibuster (like the one in place in 1960), a move that could have allowed them to pass voting rights legislation with a Senate majority 51 votes.
Manchin was clearly hesitant to peel the filibuster onion, however. (Boy, does that make your eyes water!)
True to his word, Manchin on Wednesday of last week sided with the anti-filibuster reform crowd, namely, all Senate Republicans plus one other Democratic senator, Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, to effectively kill the voting rights bill by turning down filibuster reform.
The voting rights bill was the Democratic counter to Republican efforts to throttle voting rights, state legislature by state legislature, in the wake of the 2020 election.
So the West-Saban letter came to nothing. But did it? I say: Run, Jerry, run. I’m talking for Manchin’s Senate seat in 2024.
Pie-eyed progressives fantasize about challenging Manchin. Bernie Sanders, for one, has floated the idea of recruiting a fellow-progressive to run a primary campaign against Manchin. As if that’s going to work. A progressive winning in West Virginia? Come on. West Virginia is the Trumpiest of all the states.
But West could be the real thing. He remains, these many years later, “the most famous West Virginian of them all.”
West even has a thumbs up from the man himself. In September 2019, President Trump presented West with the Presidential Medal of Freedom during an Oval Office ceremony. (Manchin was on hand for the ceremony, and later thanked Trump in a tweet for “honoring … Jerry my friend” )
Would West do it? Age would be a factor. Jerry West will be 86 years old in 2024. He’s never involved himself in politics. (West stayed on the sidelines of the Kennedy-Humphrey race) He lives in California. He likes to play golf, which he can now do with his daughter-in-law, the LPGA’s Michelle Wie.
On the other hand, age no longer seems a barrier to high elective office. Hello, Joe. As for golf, that’s not a problem either. Hello, Donald. And West may have a West Virginia home. At one time, he did.
If not West, how about Saban? He’s coming off a season in which Alabama failed to win the national championship. As a result, he may want to try something different. At 70, Saban is younger than West and, for that matter, he’s younger than Manchin, who’s 74. Besides, these days Nick Saban has a higher media profile than West.
Most national headline writers preferred “Saban, West…” to “West, Saban….” in introducing the letter story.
Sure, some of this is tongue in cheek. I doubt Jerry West would leave retirement in California in order to run for or to serve in the Senate. And Saban doesn’t look like a guy who’s ready to give up his pursuit of an eighth national collegiate football championship.
Besides, Joe Manchin is a professional politician. He’d probably trounce either of his erstwhile friends West or Saban. Do you remember what happened when the Steelers’ Lynn Swann ran against professional politician Ed Rendell for governor? Let’s just say it wasn’t exactly Super Bowl-like for Swannie.
Then again, this is exactly the kind of heat Manchin should be feeling right now. He needs the political shock of his life. Mary Lou Retton, where are you?
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.