In 2008, LeBron James, then just 23 years old, still a year out from the first of his four MVP awards, did something highly unusual for a top-tier professional athlete: He endorsed a presidential candidate.
Athlete endorsements weren’t new: In 2004, a collection of athletes including Carlos Beltran, Jack Nicklaus, Kerri Strug, John Elway, and Ernie Banks banded together to throw their support behind then–President Bush and praise his “decisive, principled leadership.” Recent Red Sox World Series hero Curt Schilling actually introduced Dubya at several rallies. Grant Hill and Julie Foudy showed up for John Kerry. (Also, fun tidbit I found researching this piece: Madonna was once a Wesley Clark booster; he was introduced to her by Michael Moore! The 2000s were a crazy time.)
But the best athlete in the world, at the absolute apex of his fame, using his celebrity capital to take a clear stance in a presidential race — to the point that he hosted a fundraiser for Barack Obama alongside Jay-Z? James was doing something unprecedented. (Michael Jordan, famously, stayed out of politics entirely, with his infamous, and now confirmed-to-be-real, proclamation that “Republicans buy shoes too.”)
Since then, James has gotten more and more involved in politics, and he has never missed an opportunity to make a presidential endorsement. He endorsed Obama again in 2012 and held rallies with Hillary Clinton in Cleveland in 2016. It remains very strange to see those two people on a stage together, by the way.
That led to James essentially leading a movement in 2020 — the most politically active sports year in decades — through the voting-rights-focused activism nonprofit More Than a Vote. The group worked hand in hand with the NBA to transform the league’s arenas into early voting sites and canvass tens of thousands of new voters. James had fully established himself as a political player, and you could tell, because he would spend the next year and a half being waylaid on a near-nightly basis by Fox News.
With all that in mind, it’s fascinating how quiet James has been recently. The stakes are even higher in this election than they were in 2020 and 2016, yet we’re a month away and James hasn’t said a thing about it — despite having shown support for Kamala Harris personally in the past. He has stepped away from More Than a Vote (it recently relaunched without him). His tweets are more about his gambling picks, Taco Bell ads, and upcoming Netflix series than anything involving the election. Every story about him focuses on the (admittedly incredible) fact that his son is now his teammate. While one shouldn’t be surprised to see James make an endorsement at some point before Election Day — this is a guy who once called Donald Trump a “bum,” after all — there is no question that he has toned down his political rhetoric dramatically over the last four years. He’s staying out of things as much as he can.
He is hardly alone in this. Some athletes have spoken up about the election, most notably Stephen Curry and Steve Kerr, who both appeared at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. And WNBA players, usually the most politically active athletes, have lined up in their support for Harris (including MVP A’ja Wilson, who praised the candidate as her “sorority sister”). But in general, athletes seem to have made a conscious decision to keep this election at arm’s length in a way very different from 2020. That year, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes fought to make Arrowhead Stadium a polling place and pushed NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to acknowledge Black Lives Matter. This year? Mahomes made a big announcement that he would not be endorsing anyone. (As did The Rock, for what it’s worth.) The default setting for superstar athletes in 2024 has been to simply say that they’re encouraging people to vote and “educate themselves”; that was how Caitlin Clark explained liking Taylor Swift’s Instagram post endorsing Harris.
This would have been inconceivable four years ago, the idea that you could just give a vague platitude of “educate yourself” but not stand up against Donald Trump. The clear subtext of the NBA’s voting push then was “register to vote … and obviously don’t vote for that guy.” On one hand, there’s no question the political climate has changed — it’s fair to say you will never hear Goodell utter the words “Black Lives Matter” again. But then: Donald Trump is running for president once more — and he has better odds than he did last time.
But the sports world isn’t speaking up the way it was. Even the Athletes for Harris group feels a little musty. It launched on September 28 with endorsements from Magic Johnson, Dawn Staley, Chris Paul, Billie Jean King, Emmitt Smith, and Kerr, among others, but the group hasn’t made so much of a peep since then. And there’s only one currently active player in that group anyway — Paul, the second oldest player behind James. The energy you saw four years ago? “Athletes were fed up with injustice, spoke out on their own terms, and came together to wield their power to benefit the communities they represent in a tangible way,” Michael Tyler, who was then More Than a Vote’s executive VP of public affairs and talent relations, told me back then. (Tyler is now director of communications for the Harris campaign.) That “tangible way” is difficult to find in this current election. Then–More Than a Vote executive director Addisu Demissie emphasized in 2020 that James was central to the effort: “LeBron would call Athlete X, and Athlete X would call Athlete Y. Next thing you know, I’m on a Zoom with 25 of the most prominent Black athletes in the country, talking about getting this thing off the ground and engaging them in this moment.” This is, suffice it to say, not happening now.
Considering James’s brief status as Fox News bogeyman, not to mention what the U.S. women’s soccer team went through, it should perhaps come as little surprise that athletes are taking more of a back seat in this election. Who needs that kind of headache? But if athletes who endorsed Joe Biden and spoke out politically wanted the accolades and praise they got for getting involved in 2020 — and trust me, they all did — isn’t it fair to note how much quieter they’re being this time? LeBron James, and many of the athletes he inspired, made it clear that voting out Donald Trump in 2020 was an act of service. They seem not to feel that way this time.
