KJ mayor of Sacramento, Barkley mayor of Phoenix?
Former Phoenix Suns point guard Kevin Johnson finds himself in the first overtime battle of his new career.
Johnson forced a runoff election versus incumbent Sacramento mayor Heather Fargo. Johnson captured 47 percent of the vote to Fargo’s 40 percent, which on the basketball court would have meant Johnson was the winner but apparently Tim Donaghy is officiating the election. According to election laws in Sacramento the winner is required to earn more than 50 percent of the vote.
Johnson battled sexual misconduct allegations and extreme opposition on the internet on a site called NoWayKJ.com (from all the allegations I read it actually made KJ sound like he’d fit right in in politics).
The news got me thinking if KJ can be mayor of Sacramento what former athlete could possibly be mayor of Phoenix?
Charles Barkley has talked about running for office in the past and why not bring him back to Phoenix to start his career? If the people of Sacramento can look past a sexual misconduct claim than the people here can look past the fact that Chuck has a gambling problem, although they may not forgive him for never winning a championship for the Suns. His slogan could be “Odds are I’m the best guy for the job” or “If you don’t vote for me I’ll throw you through a window”.
How about Buddy Ryan? When he came to the valley he sounded like a politician making promises he knew he never could keep (I even bought into the fact the Cardinals might be good…oh wait that’s every year). I can see the campaign posters now “Buddy Ryan, You’ve got a winner in town”. The campaign would probably look pretty strong in the beginning and completely fall apart in the end. Let’s just hope he wouldn’t punch any of his advisers during the campaign.
Another candidate could be Luis Gonzalez. He was the “all-American boy” in his time with the Diamondbacks. His campaign slogan would be quite easy “Hey you loved me with the D-Backs”. He could even use the purple and teal that people seemed to miss (why I’m not sure). His deputy mayor could be Craig Counsell. Just don’t ask him to help groom any young political up and comers.
Denny Green would run an entertaining campaign. “Who takes the 3rd debate of the season as bulls@$@”. His campaign posters could be “Denny Green, if you want to crown my ass than crown it”. The state would have to budget for the ability to make more pie charts, or actual pie for that matter.
Jerry Colangelo would be a logical choice to make the transition from the sports world to being mayor. He has helped build Phoenix into a sports mecca city. His name alone is all he’d need to campaign. The one down fall is he’d probably find a way to convince the state to pay for his campaign by creating a tax.
All these obviously are pipe dreams but for KJ his dream is one election away from reality.
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Posted by Greg Esposito
Co-founder of AzSportsHub.com. Greg provides the sometimes serious, sometimes sarcastic and always interesting takes on Arizona sports (at least we hope). Whether it’s on In The Zona with Matt or in his column Greg reports, rants and raves about whatever is in the news for Arizona Sports.
http://www.azsportshub.com/author/espo
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