Mark Warner campaigning at a NASCAR race in 2001 (Steve Helber/Associated Press)
It's been said in recent weeks that Barack Obama is making a mad dash for the political center. Now at least he can ride there in style.
According to SportsIllustrated.com, the Democratic presidential candidate is currently in talks to sponsor a car--or, more specifically, BAM Racing's No. 49 Sprint Cup car--at a NASCAR race on Aug. 3 in the Poconos region of Pennsylvania. Of course, NASCAR politics is nothing new--although, with the stock-car stereotype skewing male, Southern, rural, blue collar and Republican, it's traditionally considered GOP terrain. In 1971, Richard Nixon became the first president to invite a driver, Richard Petty, to the White House. A dozen years later, Ronald Reagan became the first to actually attend a NASCAR event. Since 2003, George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Bill Frist and Arnold Schwarzenegger have all made appearances at NEXTEL Cup races, and in January Rudy Giuliani requested a ride in a pace car at Daytona International Speedway.
That's not to say the Democrats haven't attempted any outreach--just that it hasn't been particularly successful. During the 1992 campaign, for example, fans booed Bill Clinton when he delivered a speech at the Darlington (S.C.) Raceway. Overhead, planes trailed "Clinton is a Draft Dodger" banners. Last election cycle, two Democratic contenders--Bob Graham and Howard Dean--decided sponsor vehicles, but neither survived the primaries. And Hillary Clinton's cringeworthy May appearance alongside legendary driver Junior Johnson in Mooresville, N.C.--"It's an exciting race," she said of the Democratic contest. "You know,
it's kind of like a big NASCAR... event"--did nothing to prevent her from losing the state by 17 points. By emerging as the first major presidential candidate to sponsor a car in NASCAR's premier series, Obama is clearly hoping to follow the lead of former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, who in 2001 used his own stock-car sponsorship to become the first statewide Democratic contender to carry rural Virginia in a generation--and still ranks as the only prominent Dem ever to practice NASCAR politics successfully. As Warner adviser Dave "Mudcat" Saunders has said, "If you're not the right messenger with the right message, it will come off as disingenuous."
Predictably, critics on both the right and left are already saying the plan could backfire (rimshot, please). "Talk about pandering," wrote a conservative commenter at Politico.com. "I wonder if Obama will ask if they serve a nice '72 Cabernet at the race along with an arugula salad?" Meanwhile, liberals worry that "if his car losses, and the odds are fairly great that it will, there will be all kinds of meaning read into it"--a pretty fair assessment, unfortunately, of how the MSM will cover the Pocono race. (And "you can count on a thousand hack political writers running the ol' 'turning left' metaphor straight into the wall," writes Jay Busbee at Yahoo.) That said, I'm not sure either concern outweighs the basic upside of Obama's NASCAR partnership--i.e., that it's nothing more than a really effective advertising opportunity. Despite the silly "redneck" stereotypes, NASCAR claims 75 million fans. It's big in Boston, Chicago and Los
Angeles—not just Darlington. A 2003 poll found that 19 percent of voters identify themselves as NASCAR fans. Forty
percent of those fans are women, 20 percent are minorities, 60 percent
live outside the Southeast and 75 percent have college degrees. Overall, they're more affluent than average Americans, with
42 percent earning between $40,000 and $100,000 a year. In other words, sponsoring a NASCAR isn't some weird, niche maneuver meant only for working-class whites wary of an Ivy League African-American. It's like advertising on Monday Night Football--a move aimed squarely at middle America. Combined with all the fascinated earned media coverage--including a fair amount on ESPN--it's actually a pretty penetrating (and harmless) way for Obama to say "I want your votes" to people who may not be paying a ton of attention to politics.
Team McCain, at least, thinks its Democratic rival is on to something with the whole motorsports thing. Less than an hour after the Obama-NASCAR story hit the wires, McCain's press shop sent out an email announcing that "Mrs. Cindy McCain will ride in a pace car in the Firestone 200 Indycar Race on Saturday, July 12th in Lebanon, Tennessee."
Gentlemen, start your engines.
