The GOP’s NASCAR primary
In a prior radio life at Sirius XM, I helped create and, for a while, oversee the NASCAR Radio channel. I have been a fan of the sport for a long time. I will, on occasion, use the sport as a Rosetta Stone for my on-air political reporting and analysis. Really. Although in NASCAR, the cars usually turn left only, there are a couple of road courses where they turn right as well. There are crashes, personal rivalries, arguments over rules and unforeseen moments of high drama. Like politics. Only smellier.
{mosads}With the Daytona 500, NASCAR’s high-profile annual season debut, mere weeks away, I see a political parallel to the 1979 edition of the Daytona 500, one of the most talked-about in the history of the sport.
Richard Petty, at the time the “establishment” NASCAR driver, had already won the race five times. His father, Lee Petty, won the inaugural race at Daytona Superspeedway in 1959. (Prior to that, they ran the race on the beach at Daytona, occasionally battling the incoming tide. But that’s another story). Richard was “the King” (and still is, to many fans).
It was a show playing to a record TV audience: the first live national broadcast of the race, ever. That Feb. 18, a massive snowstorm socked the East Coast, and a captive audience with nothing better to do (there were, after all, only three TV networks at the time) was riveted to this strange Southern ritual that had its origins in bootlegging alcohol, with all the attendant trappings: the high-powered engines, the flirtations with what was legal and illegal in the car, and cigarettes tucked into the shirtsleeves of the pit crews.
At last, Tom Wolfe’s “The Last American Hero” had gone prime-time.
That Sunday, Petty was running behind nearly all day, mostly trailing Donnie Allison. Allison was a hardnosed competitor who, along with his brother Bobby, had raced the small venues throughout the South, traveling from track to track to make a living, subsisting on peaches as they went. At 40, he was a 10-time winner, but had never enjoyed the kind of success that older brother Bobby had (at that point, a winner of 52 races, including the 1978 Daytona 500, a race he would win two more times).
Donnie Allison was not an outsider — he was part of the “Alabama gang” that included his brother, and drivers Neil Bonnett and Red Farmer — but, while a fine wheelman, he was more of a disruptor that day. His dominance was unexpected.
Thirteen different drivers would take the lead, then lose it, in unequal parts due to rain the night before scrubbing the track of its precious grip, the usual equipment failures and the clash of 41 highly competitive Type-A drivers running on adrenaline at 200 miles per hour within inches of one another.
At the end of the race, Allison was dueling for the lead with Cale Yarborough, a tough-as-nails charger from South Carolina, who had been to Victory Lane twice before at Daytona. If there was ever a street fighter in the sport, it was Yarborough.
The final 22 laps featured an amazing display of give-no-quarter side-by-side racing; imagine the chariot race in “Ben Hur” with 800 horses instead of four under each hood. (So to speak.)
About now, you’re asking: Where the heck is the political angle? Well, here it goes.
On the very last lap, Yarborough tried to pass Allison, slipped a little after touching the muddy infield grass, lost control of the car, and took out Allison and himself in the ensuing crash. King Richard, a full mile behind (it’s a two-and-a-half mile track), catches up, passes the smoking and crippled heaps that moments before seemed headed for a one-two finish, and takes the checkered flag, breaking a 45-race losing streak. Afterward, a fight broke out between Yarborough and Bobby Allison; Allison had wanted to check on his brother’s condition and instead found himself trading punches with Yarborough, who wanted to blame someone for his loss. It’s a scene that guaranteed more fans would TUNE IN NEXT WEEK FOR MORE MAYHEM WITH THE MEN AND MACHINES OF NASCAR!
Check out the video for yourself.
(Miraculously, no one was injured in the crash. Bobby Allison likes to say Yarborough hurt himself beating Allison’s fists with his face; Yarborough insists on a different version.)
People watching the 2016 GOP presidential contest are watching the side-by-side battle between Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz grow more intense daily. Republican fans of someone (anyone?) other than those two believe that Trump (Donnie Allison) and Cruz (Yarborough) will take each other out and leave an opening for Jeb Bush/Marco Rubio/Chris Christie/John Kasich (Petter) to slide past and thus show that the adults have reassumed control of the race.
By the time this year’s Daytona 500 is over (Sunday, Feb. 21), we’ll know who won and performed well in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. In 1979, Richard Petty went on to win his seventh — and final — championship, and a young upstart named Dale Earnhardt was named Rookie of the Year. Will we see an old standard win the long game for the Republicans, or perhaps a young gun, a superstar in waiting? Is the party headed for trouble in turn two, a spin on the backstretch, a major blow-up?
Candidates/drivers, start your engines.
Farley is managing editor and host of “The Morning Briefing” and “The Midday Briefing” on P.O.T.U.S., Sirius XM’s 24-hour politics channel.