Trump and Carlson lead backlash as MLB pulls
All-Star Game from Georgia
Former president calls on fans to ‘boycott baseball’
Obama lauds MLB ‘for taking a stand on behalf of
voting rights’
Martin
Pengelly in New York
@MartinPengelly
Sat 3 Apr
2021 15.47 BST
Donald
Trump and Tucker Carlson led rightwing backlash after Major League Baseball
said it would not play its All-Star game in Georgia because of a new law that
restricts voting rights in the state.
The former
president and the Fox News host some say is his Republican political heir
thereby ranged themselves against current president Joe Biden and the Democrat
he served as vice-president, Barack Obama.
“Baseball
is already losing tremendous numbers of fans,” Trump said in a statement, “and
now they leave Atlanta with their All-Star Game because they are afraid of the
radical left Democrats.
“… Boycott
baseball and all of the woke companies that are interfering with free and fair
elections. Are you listening Coke, Delta and all?”
Coke and
Delta are among companies which have expressed concern over the Georgia law,
which restricts early and mail-in voting, measures seen to target minority
voters likely to back Democrats.
Laws under
consideration in other Republican-run states have attracted criticism from
corporate America. The Georgia law was passed by Republicans after Biden won
the state against Trump and Democrats won both Senate runoff elections in
January.
Referring
to the segregation of the post-civil war south, Biden called the law: “Jim Crow
in the 21st century.”
In his own
statement on Saturday, Obama congratulated MLB “for taking a stand on behalf of
voting rights for all citizens”.
He also
said: “There’s no better way for America’s pastime to honor the great Hank
Aaron, who always led by example.”
Aaron,
known as the Hammer, was a long-time MLB home-run record holder who played for
the Atlanta Braves and endured racist abuse throughout his life in the sport.
He died in January, aged 86.
MLB
commissioner Rob Manfred said he had “decided that the best way to demonstrate
our values as a sport is by relocating this year’s All-Star Game and MLB draft”
from the home of the Atlanta Braves.
“Major
League Baseball fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and
opposes restrictions to the ballot box.”
The move
was not without precedent. In 2016 North Carolina lost the right to host
high-profile NCAA college events over a bill which restricted rights for
transgender people.
On Friday
night Carlson, who some say could be a contender for the Republican
presidential nomination in 2024 if Trump does not run again, claimed MLB
“believes it has veto power over the democratic process”.
Before MLB
acted, Biden said he would support moving events from Atlanta. Carlson said
that showed the president was “willing to destroy even something as wholesome
as the country’s traditional game purely to increase the power of his political
party”.
The chief
of the MLB players union has indicated support for the move. In a statement on
Friday, the New York Yankees great and Miami Marlins chief executive Derek
Jeter said: “We should promote increasing voter turnout as opposed to any
measures that adversely impact the ability to cast a ballot … We support the
commissioner’s decision to stand up for the values of our game.”
Georgia
governor Brian Kemp – a bête noire for Trump over his refusal to overturn
Biden’s win – said MLB had “caved to fear, political opportunism and liberal
lies”. He also decried “cancel culture”, a key Republican talking point.
Stacey
Abrams, who Kemp beat in a 2018 election he ran as Georgia secretary of state,
said she was “disappointed” the All-Star game would not be played in the state.
But Abrams,
who campaigns for voting rights and has become an influential figure in the
national Democratic party, also said she was “proud of [MLB’s] stance on voting
rights” and “urged events and productions to come and speak out or stay and
fight”.
Also on
Friday, nearly 200 companies signed a statement expressing concern at moves to
restrict voting rights in Republican-run states.
Many
observers pointed out that the political ramifications of MLB’s decision to
move the All-Star Game will be stronger than the economic fallout, given that
coronavirus-related restrictions would have placed limits on capacity at the
event this year.
A leading
professor of sports economics warned that MLB could risk losing the support of
conservatives in a fanbase which skews right.
“After the
country’s top professional basketball and football leagues embraced the Black
Lives Matter movement last year,” Andrew Zimbalist of Smith College told the
New York Times, “they faced organised boycotts from conservatives, though the
effort ultimately had little effect. And baseball’s fanbase is older and whiter
than basketball’s or football’s.”
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