POLITICO NIGHTLY: Are we really ready for some football?

 

BY RENUKA RAYASAM With help from Myah Ward 12TH MAN GETS BENCHED — The NFL season begins tonight with 17,000 fans in the seats in (the soon to be formerly known as?) Arrowhead Stadium, where the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs host the Houston Texans. That’s only 22 percent of the stadium’s capacity, but the Chiefs are one of only a handful of NFL teams allowing fans to attend games in the season’s first few weeks. Among them: The Miami Dolphins will allow up to 13,000 fans, and the Jacksonville Jaguars are hoping to lure 17,000. The Dallas Cowboys have yet to announce a limit, although Texas currently limits stadiums to 50 percent capacity. Some teams have announced that they will go fanless for the season, while others, like the New England Patriots, have announced merely that they’ll play in empty stadiums for the month of September. The team known only as the Washington Football Team is in wait-and-see mode. Jason Wright started his job as president just weeks after the franchise dropped the name Redskins and days before the NFL announced it was taking over an independent investigation into the organization’s workplace culture. Wright is 38, a former NFL running back and former partner at consulting firm McKinsey & Company. He’s the league’s youngest team president and its first Black president. Your host talked with Wright about what Covid means for the 2020 NFL season, what it’s like to work with Dan Snyder, and how the team plans to help Marylanders vote in November. This conversation has been edited. How do you plan to keep your players safe? We saw Covid cases interrupt the MLB’s season. A physical bubble would be ideal, but it hasn’t been feasible for lots of reasons for the NFL. The fact that we have been able to create a virtual bubble that is mostly focused on managing the behavior of individuals is really good. It’s a combination of technology that allows us to have data and insights into who is behaviorally following what we expect versus those who aren’t. I think the results from the NFL’s Covid protocols are exceptional to date. Of 32 rosters with 80 men on the roster, the number of points of vulnerability in that structure, including the coaching staff — to only have one confirmed case across all players from the time period from training camp to now, that is remarkable. What will it be like to play games without fans? We made the decision, based on data and similar teams in cities of similar demography, combined with the health and safety guidance coming from the state and the county, not to have fans. And I think that’s the right decision. While it would be great to have an extra boost to our guys on the field, it’s not worth the lives and the health of anybody in the D.C./Metro Virginia area. If it proves that we were too cautious, we can always revisit, according to guidelines from officials at the state and local level. It’s just not worth it right now. Is your team going to let players support Black Lives Matter and other social justice movements? Coach Ron Rivera set the tone for this well before I came in, and I could not be more aligned with how he did it. He effectively said, I learned a lot over the years from players on my team. He is making space on the team — Dan and Tanya Snyder are supportive of this as well — for players to express their support of social justice, criminal justice reform, whatever it is, by any means they want, from demonstrative kneeling to activism in the community to nothing. But that wasn’t the case just a few months ago. That’s right. It has shifted. There is a cynical lens you can take on it: All this has forced sports people to do something they didn’t want to deal with. That’s probably true to an extent. But there’s also a positive lens: People have evolved in their thinking over time. Commissioner Goodell is a great example of this, when he did the Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man show. We have to give space for people to evolve because while systemic racism is part and parcel of the experience of this country, whether we like it or not, everyone is at fault. But no one’s to blame. The NBA is taking steps to turn stadiums into poll locations. Are you considering something similar? We’re well down the road to doing the same. In the final leg, working with Prince George’s County to get it done. So I expect we will have the polling place there, at FedEx Field. Why do you call yourself a huge dork on your Twitter bio? I am not a cool person. I know more words in Elvish than I care to admit. I'm wearing comic-book socks today. And if it’s not comic books, it’s Star Wars. Dan Snyder is not the most beloved figure in sports. Can you change the team’s culture with him as the owner? Maybe I’m naive. The partnership that Dan, Tanya and I talked about, in the way that they would delegate the authority to lead the organization to myself and Coach Rivera, was one of the most important things in the interview process. And that’s proven true. The steps that I’ve taken over the last week to start in earnest our culture change — to make some actual, fairly large capital improvements that are going to improve health and safety for our players — they greenlighted all of that. That has made me confident that we can move the needle. But what if the problem is at the top? You can’t censure the team owner, right? No, that is definitely not my job, for sure. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly: Coronavirus Special Edition. Nightly editor Chris Suellentrop can neither confirm nor deny that he is wearing a Patrick Mahomes jersey right now. Reach out rrayasam@politico.com or on Twitter at @renurayasam. FIRST IN NIGHTLY DEMS STAKE FIRST QUARTER LEAD — Democrats are amassing an enormous lead in early voting, alarming Republicans who worry they’ll need to orchestrate a huge Election Day turnout to answer the surge, Alex Isenstadt reports. The Democratic dominance spreads across an array of battleground states, according to absentee ballot request data compiled by state election authorities and analyzed by Democratic and Republican data experts. In North Carolina and Pennsylvania, Democrats have a roughly three-to-one advantage over Republicans in absentee ballot requests. In Florida — a must-win for President Donald Trump — the Democratic lead stands at more than 700,000 ballot requests, while the party also leads in New Hampshire, Ohio, and Iowa. Even more concerning for Republicans, Democrats who didn't vote in 2016 are requesting 2020 ballots at higher rates than their GOP counterparts. The most striking example is Pennsylvania, where nearly 175,000 Democrats who sat out the last race have requested ballots, more than double the number of Republicans, according to an analysis of voter rolls by the Democratic firm TargetSmart. Though the figures are preliminary, they provide a window into Democratic enthusiasm ahead of the election and offer a warning for Republicans. “A ballot in is a ballot in, and no late-campaign message or event takes it out of the count,” said Chris Wilson, a GOP pollster who specializes in data and analytics. “Bottom line is that means that Biden is banking a lead in the mail and more of the risk of something going wrong late is born by Republicans, because our voters haven’t voted yet.” Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris prepares to leave after the Florida Memorial University marching band played during a campaign stop in Miami Gardens, Fla. | Getty Images FROM THE HEALTH DESK SHOT, CHASER — Public health is supposed to be separate from politics. But the pandemic — and this election — have turned that idea on its head. In the latest POLITICO Dispatch, health care reporters Dan Diamond and Sarah Owermohle discuss how politics is seeping into the vaccine race, on both sides of the aisle. Listen to the latest POLITICO Dispatch podcast ASK THE AUDIENCE Is your child heading back to school? If so, Nightly wants to hear from them. Parents and students can send us a short, 1-3 minute voice memo recording to audio@politico.com by Friday, Sept. 11. Please include (1) names, (2) hometown, and (3) the answer to this prompt: Describe the first day of school this year, whether it was remote or in-person. (Anecdotes are encouraged!) Please try to record in a quiet area and hold the phone as if you were talking to someone, but about 1-2 inches from your face. We're accepting submissions from students (and parents of students) from kindergarten through 12th grade. If your student is a minor, parents/guardians, please acknowledge somewhere in the email that you are giving POLITICO permission to use the audio for our podcasts or audio production if we choose to do so. (We can also use the student’s first name only if privacy is a concern.) We’ll use select submissions next week in Nightly. THE BACKSTORY SPLITTING HAIRS — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to the salon wasn’t the first time a politician got in trouble for a haircut. In the latest edition of The Backstory, deputy magazine editor Elizabeth Ralph explores how feminism has changed the way female politicians talk about their appearances, turning hair and skincare routines from taboos into political tools. THE GLOBAL FIGHT DIE ANGST — Germans are more worried about the consequences of Trump's politics than they are of getting Covid-19, according to a survey published today. According to a poll conducted by R+V Insurance Group in June and July, 53 percent of Germans said they are concerned by the prospect of a “more dangerous world due to the politics of Trump,” putting the president at the top of the list of their fears. The survey found that 32 percent of Germans fear getting a serious illness, compared to 35 percent last year, before coronavirus began to spread, Laurenz Gehrke writes. Germans are, however, worried about the economic fallout from the pandemic. The fear of rising living costs is now among Germans’ seven biggest fears for the first time in six years, ranking second behind Trump at 51 percent. At 49 and 48 percent respectively, fear of taxpayers having to carry the burden of an EU debt crisis and a generally worse economic situation are Germans’ third and fourth biggest concerns this year. NIGHTLY NUMBER 500 The number of individuals whom federal law enforcement officials have identified as suspected of committing coronavirus-related loan fraud, the Justice Department said today. One such case, involving defendants in Florida and Ohio, centers on applications for $24 million in loans. Among those charged was Joshua Bellamy, a former wide receiver for the New York Jets football team. (h/t financial services reporter Kellie Mejdrich) PARTING WORDS THE WOODWARDIAN EPITHET — Scholars of Greek literature, or at least high school English students, call them Homeric epithets: “rosy-fingered Dawn,” “swift-footed Achilles,” “crafty Odysseus,” and so on. In modern form, they’re a common feature of the Washington parlor-intrigue books written by Bob Woodward. You can learn a lot about who made a favorable impression on the legendary Watergate reporter — and who might have given him the best stuff — through his florid descriptions of sources. Here, from speed-reading editorial director Blake Hounshell , is a rundown of some of the Woodwardian epithets in his latest book, Rage: Matthew Pottinger, deputy national security adviser: “A China scholar, he spoke fluent Mandarin … Affable, profane and a workaholic” James Mattis, Defense secretary: “had a stoic Marine exterior and attention-getting ramrod posture, but his bright, open and inviting smile softened his presence” Rex Tillerson, secretary of State: “A Texan with a smooth voice and easy laugh … a highly disciplined rider and breeder of horses” Dan Coats, director of national intelligence: “A calm and gentlemanly devout Christian” Andy Kim, North Korea analyst: “a legendary CIA operator who had just retired after 29 years running some of the agency’s most successful intelligence operations against North Korea” Anthony Fauci, infectious disease expert: “5-foot-7, grandfatherly and calm” Rod Rosenstein, deputy attorney general: “one of the quietly powerful men in Washington, part of the unseen bureaucracy, often overlooked and seemingly just an anonymous cog in the wheels of government ” Jared Kushner, presidential adviser and son-in-law: “Intelligent, organized, self-confident and arrogant” Robert Redfield, CDC director: “A devout Catholic” who had “gone through a religious awakening during a private 10-minute conversation with Pope John Paul II in 1989 and believed in the redemptive power of suffering” Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam   FOLLOW US

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