This month saw a major turning point in a return to normalcy as some form of sports looks to return in the near future. As Joshua Linsenberg discussed in his recent article for The Hofstra Chronicle, Vince McMahon and World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) announced the taping of an event without fans in Orlando shortly after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis deemed live sports to be “essential.”
While the return to sports may be the headline in this situation, the underlying role of politics must not be overlooked. While Vince McMahon runs WWE, his wife, Linda McMahon, heads the super political action committee (PAC) America First Action, which subsequently donated $18.5 million to the state of Florida. Political action committees hold incredible power in lobbying legislation and public officials.
“Political action committees and other interest groups seek to influence members of a legislature to support or oppose legislation based on the perceived benefits to the members of the group,” said Adam Gentili, a former Legislative Aide for the Joint Committee on Public Health at the Massachusetts State House. “These PACs and interest groups are not inherently immoral or corrupting – the value of the group is in the eye of the beholder. That being said, there are legitimate debates to have over conflicts between the public good versus the good of a small contingent of people or industries.”
In this particular case, the relationships formed through political action committees can truly make things happen. The Republican unity between the McMahons, President Donald Trump and DeSantis is the centerpiece of this development in the ongoing return to sports.
“I cannot discern whether the McMahons’ donation was done altruistically or to grease the political wheels for WWE’s benefit,” Gentili said. “I suspect, given their relationship to the governor and the president, that the McMahons were motivated by the latter.”
There is no hiding the connections of the parties involved. Trump is a WWE Hall of Famer who maintains a long-standing friendship with the McMahons, and never squanders a chance to help the country’s Republican governors.
The donation raises some serious financial and ethical questions. Just days after Linda McMahon’s donation through the super PAC, WWE fired multiple wrestlers due to COVID-19 budget cuts. If there is money for Florida, where is the money for the performers who draw the income and television ratings that WWE depends on?
The return of professional wrestling may only be the tip of the iceberg in terms of rebooting professional sports. Fans continue to contemplate how to live their lives without sports, but public health remains a priority. If players, executives, workers and fans cannot safely be grouped together without the danger of the virus, there seems to be no logical reason to bring back sports before it is deemed safe.
The safety of a constituency is the number one concern when anyone takes power in public office. For example, when a president places their hand on the Bible and recites the oath of office during their inauguration, they promise to prioritize the safety of the American people. This notion is essential in occurrences such as pandemics.
As Gentili said, not all political action committees enact negative change. Sports are an incredible agent of socialization to re-inspire the nation to push forward, and there will be a time and place for such a return. In the meantime, public health and safety must remain priority number one.
“The push to return to normalcy, at least in the sports and entertainment world, is understandable,” Gentili said. “There is a substantial economic impact when a baseball team isn’t playing – from the club staff, to sports writers, to hotdog and beer vendors, to Ticketmaster call center employees, to Uber drivers and bars around the park and so on. That being said, a premature or poorly planned resumption of activities will create more economic ruin and irreversibly, cost more lives. Any net gain reaped from a return would be lost with a reemergence … of the pandemic and could further shutter society for a longer period than had we waited to resume normalcy at the appropriate time.”
Political action committees possess the ability to create incredible change, hopefully for the better, and serve an important role in American politics. As the country moves forward through this pandemic, however, the government must let the nation’s top medical professionals, not super PACs, determine the future operations of the country in the interest of keeping Americans safe.
Photo courtesy of Bleacher Report
