Owners for McCain.

• Author: Zirin, Dave
• Position: Edge of Sports - John McCain - Viewpoint essay

We are told it gain and again: "Sports and politics don't mix." Unfortunately, that hammer seems to apply only to socially conscious athletes and not the guys who write their checks. Sports owners are some of the most politically well-connected people in the United States, buying access on the Hill with cold cash wrapped up in luxury box tickets, memorabilia, and other sporting cachet. Yes, the owner's checkbook is the place where sports and politics truly collide.

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The owners are particularly frisky this election cycle, and they are breaking hard for John McCain.

According to an analysis from politico. com, the collective owners in baseball, basketball, football, and hockey have handed over more than $3.2 million for McCain, and a meager $615,000 for Barack Obama, a 5-to-1 differential! McCain even raised five times more from team owners in Obama's backyard of Chicago.

In Arizona, McCain's home field, it was direr still for Obama, with 550 grand going to McCain and a total of zero dollars for Obama. (McCain and his wife, it should be noted, in addition to all those homes, also own a piece of Major League Baseball's Arizona Diamondbacks.)

None of this should surprise us too much. As sports economist Andrew Zimbalist said, "Today, a guy who owns a sport team is somebody who has generated a big pile of money in some other industry, and it's very likely that their primordial financial interests and instincts are rooted in that other industry."

In other words, McCain, who is offering an economic plan of billions in corporate and individual tax breaks, is simply a very attractive candidate to someone like New York Jets owner Robert Wood Johnson IV, an heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, who has bundled more than $500,000 for McCain.

A McCain who has gone from...