Chris Kluwe doesn't need this shit
The former Minnesota Vikings punter could be playing video games in his basement. Instead, he's running for Assembly. Why? "To help save democracy."
Chris Kluwe is a strange dude.
I write that lovingly and admiringly, as a longtime sports journalist who has devoted much of his life toward covering athletes. At age 43, cliche dictates that Kluwe should be playing golf right about now, then heading off to some card show or memorabilia shop to sign a bunch of balls and hats. He’s supposed to regularly wear a Vikings pullover, just so folks will ask, “Hey, did you play in the NFL?”—then pay for his beer. He’s supposed to embody the retired pro football player, a species that simultaneously mourns and celebrates what once was and can never again be. He’s supposed to be on Twitter, typing VIKING NATION! every Sunday. He’s supposed to live and die with the games, because he was—for nearly a decade—one of the NFL’s elite.
And yet …
As we sit here at the Bagelmania Coffee House in Huntington Beach on a Wednesday morning, Kluwe has little interest in reliving the good ol’ days of Brett Favre and Adrian Peterson. Nope—he’s here to talk politics and, specifically, his efforts to run for the 72nd Assembly District seat, which will lack an incumbent with Diane Dixon’s departure to vie for the OC Board of Supervisors. His opponent will likely be Gracey Van Der Mark, a member of the Huntington Beach City Council who is 754,976,321 levels of crazy and is scheduled to spin off the planet any moment now.
And Kluwe … he’s not what you’d expect of a former jock. First, he’s endearingly real. And a hair awkward. He looks cool and simultaneously lacks cool. He doesn’t think of himself as a celebrity, or a star; certainly doesn’t brag of athletic glory. And yet, the dude oozes integrity, honor, steadfastness. Hell, that’s why he was famously arrested at a Huntington Beach City Council meeting earlier this year. Because someone needed to stand up.
Kluwe clearly wants to end the Fever Spell Donald Trump holds over far too many corners of America, but he also sees his future as a spokesman for a region of Orange County that he genuinely loves and worries about.
Here’s Chris Kluwe …
JEFF PEARLMAN: “All right, Chris. Before I get into anything, something I find interesting about you—it seems like one of the things you have going for you is you’re a former NFL player. But it seems like you have literally no interest in talking about football or sports. So whereas most athletes who run for office, they inevitably get the fan statements like, ‘Oh, I was at that game where so-and-so,’ and then you are required to say, ‘Oh yeah, Dante was great at quarterback and blah, blah, blah, blah’ … you seem like you have no interest in that. But do you need to express more interest in that to run for office?”
CHRIS KLUWE: “I mean, it’s weird because I’m more than happy to talk with people about it, but talking sports has never really been a passion of mine. When I was young, my dad would try to get me to watch sports on television. He tried to get me to watch football, tried to get me to watch baseball, tried to get me to watch Premier League soccer, and I just wasn’t interested. I loved playing sports, but when I had TV time, I was like, ‘I want to play video games.’ I was like, ‘Why am I watching sports?’ I can go out and do sports.’ And so yeah, I really don’t mind talking with people about it. I do have a lot of cool memories of that, and it’s always fun when someone’s like, ‘Oh yeah, you were at the 2010 NFC Championship game.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, no, that was certainly experience.’ But yeah, if it’s up to me, I’d rather be talking video games or just weird stupid shit that’s happening online or fun stuff.”
J.P.: “Do you find it weird that we live in a society where that gives you a certain credibility because you were an NFL player? ‘Oh, former NFL player Chris Kluwe.’ Is that weird? Is there something warped about that?”
C.K. : “Yeah, it is. I understand where it comes from. I think it’s this underlying idea where if you’ve been successful at one thing, that means that you should be successful at other things. But unfortunately, I don’t think that’s always the case or frequently the case. And we see that a lot with athletes who want to become musicians. I mean, that’s a tale that’s been done over and over again. I did the same thing. I like to think my band was good, but obviously we weren’t selling out stadiums or anything. We were playing local shows. We were just a local band.
“But yeah, I think when you see with billionaires, they think, ‘Oh, this person made a billion dollars. That must mean they know what they’re doing.’ When it comes to politics, it’s like, well, no, not necessarily. Those are two very separate spheres. So I want people to know that yes, I am going to give this everything I have and I will be approaching it with 100 percent dedication just like I did with sports. But it’s going to take more than just being an athlete. To be good at something, it means you actually do have to do the work that’s required for that new sphere. Not just say, ‘Oh, I did the work over here, therefore it’s going to translate over here.’”
J.P.: “Do you know how to run for office?”
C.K.: “I have a vague idea, but what I find is—and this is actually where a sports analogy makes sense, especially with football—individual players don’t win the game. It’s the team that wins the game. So for me, it’s really important getting a good team that can help me. And I’ve been very upfront with the people that I’ve hired and that I’m working with. Were like, ‘Look, I don’t know what I’m doing here. I am a newbie to this. I’m going to need you to help guide me and help me through these things. And that’s not to say you’re going to be doing everything. I will listen to what you say, if it makes sense to me, yeah, I’m going to do it, but there are going to be certain things that I’m going to do because that’s just simply who I am. I’m not here to be a corporate clone. I am running for office because I feel have to that our society has reached such a point that it’s like, well, shit, there were supposed to be adults in charge. Where are they? Why aren’t they doing anything?”
J.P.: “So why assembly, of all the jobs to run for?”
C.K.: “So first off, I had a lot of people ask me if I was going to run for Congress, and currently it’s Dave Min, and I don’t agree with Dave on everything, but I think on the whole, he’s done a pretty good job, especially for a freshman congressman. It is not like he walks into a room and he’s Hakeem Jeffries or Cory Booker or someone who’s established themselves. So that being said, I didn’t want to run for Dave’s seat. And then in terms of what we’re currently facing, I think it actually is more powerful right now to be in a state government versus the federal government because what we’re seeing right now is that the federal government is trying, under Trump’s control, to take over the states, and specifically they’re focusing on Democratic states like California, like Illinois, like Washington. And in order to combat that, we can do that at the state level.
“Because right now at the federal level, Democrats hold no power. Republicans control every single lever of power. So if you think that Trump is going to go all the way, and I do think Trump is going to try to go all the way, he’s made no secret about his desire to stay in office until he dies. We need to be thinking about how to fight back against that. And that starts at the state level. And so that’s where California should be taking the lead on things like the Vaccine Alliance that we have with Oregon and in Washington, but we should be thinking broader than that. We should also be thinking about economic alliances like, ‘OK, can we create our own trade network between those states, military alliances? Can we coordinate our national guards?’ So if Trump decides to federalize one, the others say, ‘No, we’re not going to support them. You can’t just pick us off one by one.’ And it sucks to have to talk about that stuff, right? Because it’s verging right on the edge of secession, and I don’t want secession. I want us to be the United States of America, but in order for us to be the United States of America, the other side has to want to be united. And I’m not seeing any of that from the Republican party.”
J.P.: “So, despite it all, I feel like 95 percent of people in America—Republican, Democrat—just want to take care of their kids, have a good meal, have a car that works. I don’t think most Republicans in America are like, ‘Let’s tear this shit down!’”
C.K.: “Yeah, no, the average person wants to be left alone and for the future to be slightly better than it was today. They want their kids to have a chance. That’s what I want. I don’t want to have to be getting arrested for protesting. I don’t want to have to be running for office. I want a boring government that works and provides for every single one of its citizens. Now, unfortunately, we don’t have that right now. And so that means we have to fight for it. And if you look through history, democracy has never been something that’s been given to people. It’s always something you’ve had to fight for. Human rights is never something that’s been given to people. It’s always something we’ve had to fight for. And unfortunately, we’re at one of those inflection points where we have to fight for it again. And that means running for office. That means showing up to protests and rallies. That means telling the billionaires that, no, we’re not going to let you keep consolidating wealth and power into fewer and fewer hands and using that to control the rest of us. Everyone deserves a say in their government. Everyone deserves a chance to thrive and prosper.”
J.P.: “When you wake up in the morning and you read the latest Trump awfulness, how do you feel? And how do you not want to curl up into a ball?”
C.K.: “So for me, and I totally get that feeling, I feel it, too. I’m just like, ‘What the fuck? Why do we have to deal with this?’ But then I turn around and look at it—how many people have it worse off than I do? I’m a straight white man who played in the NFL. I have every advantage that this world can possibly give you. If other people who don’t have those advantages, if they can wake up and put the work in, then what the fuck is my excuse? You know what I mean? And again, to go back to sports, in order to be good at football, it’s not just kicking the football. You also have to do the conditioning. You have to do the weightlifting. I fucking hated conditioning and weightlifting, but I did it. That’s part of the job. So in terms of the political environment, we’re going to have to do shit that we’re not going to enjoy. We’re not going to, but it’s stuff that needs to get done if we want to protect our democracy.”
J.P.: “Do you not get depressed over it?”
C.K.: “I try to think of myself as a optimistic pessimist in that it is hard to study history and not come away with a very negative view of humanity. But at the same time, we have continually pushed past our worst parts. Just in America alone. We’ve been through the Civil Rights struggle, we’ve been through the Great Depression, and then World War II. We’ve been through an actual Civil War. So these are unprecedented times, actually, they’re not unprecedented. We have gone through all this shit before and we have come out the other side. Now how long it takes us to come out the other side depends on how quickly we act to start making that a reality. So the longer we wait, the harder it becomes and the more it costs us to get our democracy back, which is why I would like people to understand—act now, and it will save us a lot of grief in the long run.”
J.P.: “But I feel like a lot of people, when they hear someone say, ‘You need to act now!’ are like, what the hell can I do? So what do you feel like that means for the average person?”
C.K.: “So I actually get this a lot in talks, and I think it’s important to have an answer to that. So you’re not just offering platitudes, and really one of the best things you can do, find your local communities, form those local community bonds. Because at the end of the day, everything starts with local politics. So whether that’s showing up to a No Kings protest, showing up to a city council meeting, you don’t even have to talk at a city council meeting. Just show up and see who is talking, right? Those are generally the people in your local community who are invested in what’s going on. And then when you need resources, when you need to know more, you can go talk with them and they will tell you. That’s literally what happened with me. I didn’t really know a whole lot of the local community members in Huntington Beach. And then I went and started speaking at the city council meetings.”
J.P.: “How long ago?”
C.K.: “This was about 3 1/2 years ago when I first started speaking at the city council meetings. And I very quickly saw, ‘Oh yeah, there are groups here that are invested in what’s best for the city. They’re invested in what’s best for people.’ And then after one speech, one of ‘em came up and said, ‘Hey, you look like you’d be interested in keeping up to date on city stuff. Do you want to sign up for the Protect HB newsletter?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, actually I would.’ Because normally I’m just like, ‘Yeah, no, don’t take my mail’ but this time I said, ‘This seems like a worthwhile thing.’ And then from there, it became more, ‘OK, here’s the airshow settlement stuff. Here’s what’s going on with our current city council. Here’s them hiding how much money they’re paying for these lawsuits against the state.’
“And that’s where you start building those local connections. And then, from there, you start making even more and more connections. So what you can do, and it’s what’s always worked, is build local connections, be ready to look out for each other. And another part of that is being prepared for what’s going to happen in the future. Prices are continuing to rise. We need to pool our resources and take care of those people who can’t take care of themselves. For example, here in Huntington Beach, the Oakview Community—we have a weekly food drive …”
J.P.: “Wait, what community?”
C.K.: “That is Oakview. It’s a large Latino community. A lot of those people are afraid to go to their jobs. ICE has been raiding in Huntington Beach. And so it’s like, ‘OK, we as a community, we can help them. We can provide them with essentials that they need in order to get by until we solve this problem of masked kidnappers funded by the federal government.’ So if you want to do something, just get involved with the people around you. Also, it’ll help you feel a lot less depressed. You see others share your beliefs. And then we just need to figure out how to come together.
“I won’t say I have the perfect answer for how to solve everything. I don’t think anyone has that answer right now. All we can do is just try stuff and see if it works. And I think there’s this fear of like, ‘Oh, but what if we try this and it doesn’t work?’ It’s like, that’s fine. You’re never going to get everything right on the first try. We just have to try and see what works, what doesn’t work, and then keep iterating off of what does work.”
J.P.: “One thing I will say that is 100 percent true. I started this website just because I was frustrated. And people are like, ‘But doesn’t it bring you down?’ And it’s actually the opposite, because you feel like you can make an impact locally, and there’s something empowering about that when all the shit is going dow”
C.K.: “I completely agree. I’ve started to get recognized in the community and I’ve started to recognize other people, and really that’s who we are as human beings. We’re social animals, and I am not the most social of people. I prefer to just sit on my couch and play video games all night. That’s just who I am. But you still need that human contact. You still need to understand that the world you operate in is built by other people, not just you. And so when I was younger, I considered myself independent, possibly libertarian, but the problem with the libertarian mindset is that stupid Ayn Rand philosophy of like, ‘Oh yeah, this one person can do everything.’ It’s like, ‘No, you can’t. Your society is built off so many other people doing all these other things that you physically will just never be able to do. You don’t have the time to do it.’ So that’s why we got to look out for each other.”
J.P.: “It’s funny, because libertarianism in and of itself as a philosophy has some virtue, but it’s been so corrupted. It’s just really depressing.”
C.K.: “Yeah. Well, because the modern version of libertarianism is like, ‘I am the one person that does everything, and I’m going to ignore all the people in systems that are propping that up.’ So I think that’s why you always hear about when the libertarians go to form their own city, it inevitably fails. No one’s picking up the trash and no one’s making sure the water’s clean.”
J.P.: “What made you go to your first meeting? You said like two and a half years ago you went, what was it that even got you to go?”
C.K.: “So I was coaching in the local AYSO. And the city was going to get rid of the fields at Brethren Christian, which was a private school close to Edison. It backs up to Edison. And those were the only big field practice areas in the city where it was enough space for a full-sized field. So that was where the U-14 and U=16 teams played. And the AYSO people were like, ‘Hey, we need people to come to city council and say that this is our last remaining field. If you’re going to get rid of it, we need a place for kids to play, otherwise kids will stop playing.’ So I went there solely with the intention of speaking on the field. And that was when Gracey was first talking about implementing her book ban on the LGBTQ+ books at the library. And at the time, I had no idea this was going on. And so I get there, I put in my request for public comment to speak, and I’m hearing all these other people talk about book banning. I’m just like, ‘What the fuck?’ And so I’m listening to them, and then I’m kind of reading the agenda stuff and I’m just like, ‘Wait, hold up. What are they trying to do?’ So I spent half my speech talking about the soccer fields, but then the other half I was just like, and, ‘Yeah, on the topic of book bans, this is really fucking stupid. How could you even be considering this? This is not OK.’ And then sure enough, they didn’t care about the soccer fields. They didn’t care about the book banning. And I came to realize that the four members of the city council who were MAGA didn’t really care about what people had to say. And then the next meeting I knew for certain that they didn’t care what people had to say. They were just going to do what they wanted to.”
J.P.: “I still find the city council confusing at Huntington Beach. It just seems really mean. It just seems cruel, but I can’t imagine in their day-to-day lives. I have a hard time imagining that Chad Williams, whatever, going to church on Sunday and whatever, is a dick to everybody, or Gracie is a dick to everybody, but they come off as so fucking mean. How do you explain it?”
C.K.: “So I think a lot of it has to deal with the fact that they’re in their own little bubble. Geographically, a lot of them live in that same Huntington Harbor area. They go to the same church. They’re occupying the same spaces. And then just ideologically, I am not going to say because I don’t know for certain, but I would wager they’re probably watching Fox News or Newsmax every night. They’re getting their information from far-right sources. And so they’ve been conditioned by propaganda to believe that anyone who doesn’t agree with them is the enemy, as opposed to someone who just has a differing viewpoint. That’s the whole thing about democracy. You don’t have to like everyone that is in your democracy. In fact, you probably won’t like a lot of the people. But you still need to listen to them.
“And that goes in all directions. So, for example, one of the Democrats’ biggest mistakes leading up to the last presidential electuon was that the Democrats were insisting the economy was fine because the stock market was fine. And a lot of poor people and right-wing people were saying, ‘No, the economy is not fine. The prices are too high. We can’t afford groceries.’ And they were correct. And the Democrats didn’t have an answer for that.
“And again, I see this in my daily life. The prices are too high because I’m in both worlds. I have a lot of long-term investments in stocks, and I’m just like, ‘How the fuck does the stock market keep going up? This is insane.’ I really do not understand it. And then in my day to day, I’m going going grocery shopping or doing the small tasks of keeping a household running, I’m like, ‘Everything is getting so much more fucking expensive.’ Yeah, we can afford it, but what about all those families that can’t afford it? They’re having to choose between buying groceries, paying the rent, paying their electrical bill. Those aren’t choices that people should be forced to make.
J.P.: “Were you surprised the other day that the Republican Party endorsed Gracey? Because she seems to be seven flavors of crazy …”
C.K.: “Yeah, I was very surprised by that because I don’t know who she appeals to outside of that core MAGA base—especially given her record here in Huntington Beach. Her political record of things she has accomplished is pretty grim: She got the city really angry at her for messing with the public library; she was soundly beaten on two ballot initiatives to protect the public library; and they took us from a $15 million surplus to an $8 million deficit. Those are the sum of their achievements. Of her achievements. And it’s like, ‘How do you think that equates to good governance?’ We’re facing significant budget shortfalls for significant maintenance that we need in the city. Our infrastructure is not good. We need to be replacing stuff. We moved our pothole filling schedule from, I think it’s from an eight-year schedule now to a 12-year schedule. We simply can’t afford to pay the pavers to do it. These are the basic functions of city governance, and yet you’re focused on, ‘Oh no, are there trans kids playing sports?’ It’s like, why the fuck is that even a topic? Who gives a shit? So yeah, I really don’t see what her appeal is other than just trying to get the Trump base riled up and hoping that they outnumber everyone else.”
J.P.: “Are you excited for the Charlie Kirk mural?”
C.K.: “I’m going to be speaking on that at the next city council on Oct. 7.”
J.P.: “You posted some controversial content about him on BlueSky …”
C.K.: “Yeah. Yeah. So I posted a sowing reaping meme about Charlie Kirk. It is a classic internet meme.”
J.P.: “How did you feel about his shooting? The aftermath and all?”
C.K.: “You know, it felt tough to muster up anything just because I knew what kind of person he was and the type of vitriol that he espoused. That said, I feel bad for his kids. Because that’s something where they have no control over who their parents are. They’ve lost a father. Your mom and dad are your everything when you’re kids. Those are your parents.
“And the other thing that really sucks is that now he will never have the opportunity to admit that he was wrong and be a better person.”
J.P.: “I was thinking the same thing …”
C.K.: “Because this is a guy who was clearly charismatic, he was able to talk with people and get them to believe in things. It’s just he used all of that power to punch down over and over and over against people who were already oppressed and already marginalized. It’s like, you could have turned that to so much good and then to do it in the guise of religion … what he preached went counter to everything that Jesus taught.”
J.P.: “Why do you think they wanna put a mural up? I don’t get it. He wasn’t even from Huntington Beach …”
C.K.: “Because our city council members are true believers. They are true MAGA believers. They think that their world is real America and that everyone is going to get behind them. They’re just momentarily confused. And again, I think it goes back to the information ecosystem that they live in. They’re 24-7. It’s being constantly poured into their brains that Democrats are evil, leftists are terrorists. They’re hearing, ‘These are bad people who want to kill you and take your money and your property.’ And propaganda works. A lot of people don’t like to admit it, but it does work. That’s why regimes use it. That’s why governments use it. And if you hear something enough times, if you’re in that environment for long enough, it starts to shade your thinking. Whether you realize it or not, we see that on Twitter, right? Nowadays, Twitter is just a fucking Nazi base.”
J.P.: “It’s so grim.”
C.K.: “We see that the propaganda that does work and that a lot of these true believers really do buy into this idea that they deserve what they get. And if they’re not getting what they think they deserve, it’s someone else’s fault. And the enemy is the Democrats, the enemy is the leftist, the enemy is the rest of America that isn’t going along with what they want to do. And so, yeah, I think to them, it really is just the fact they feel it’ll be like this inspiring moment that will show everyone in the city like, oh yeah, we care about this fallen martyr. And I mean, probably I would wager 70 percent of the city has no idea who Charlie Kirk even was. That’s a thing. And that’s not even giving the fact, ‘OK, if we’re putting up a mural to Charlie Kirk, why aren’t we putting up a mural for Melissa Hortman? That was an actual legislator who got assassinated.”
J.P.: “I was actually thinking—there are a million better mural subjects. Why not put up the John McCain mural? Or the Abe Lincoln mural?”
C.K.: “Or even just something that grieves the victims of gun violence.”
J.P.: “There are million murals you could do …”
C.K.: “Put up Tito Ortiz. I don’t fucking care. At least it would make sense. At least he’s from here.”
J.P.: “Do you at all worry about running here? The assembly district includes Huntington Beach, Newport Beach … conservative places that are gonna see you as this gay-loving lib who got arrested at a council meeting. They’re gonna make you out to be a liberal freak …”
C.K.: “Well, I think that was always going to be the case just simply for the stances I’ve taken in the past. But I think people that are willing to do even the slightest bit of research or listen to me will understand that I don’t consider myself a raging leftist. I just want what’s best for everyone. I want everyone to have the same opportunities that I had as a kid. And our country is not providing that, and it won’t provide it under Trump’s leadership. It is just physically impossible for our country to provide that, because Trump’s agenda is built off of white supremacy. There’s no room for other people in that.
“Also, I’m from this area. I understand the mindset of just wanting to be left alone. You don’t want to have to care about politics. And it is a very privileged, upper-middle-class white mindset where you don’t have to care about politics because it’s not personally affecting you. But the thing is, now’s the time when we do have to care about politics. I don’t want to have to be doing this. I want to be retired in the house playing video games. That’s who I am. But if I don’t speak up and act now, we are in an existential crisis for our democracy. So now’s the time where we do need to show up and we’ll see what happens. I think there are a lot of disaffected people out there who are pissed at both the Republicans because of Trump as well as the Democratic Party, because what leadership has the Democratic Party shown over the last 25 years?”
J.P.: “What do you feel like the Democratic Party should be doing?”
C.K.: “I mean, much more forceful in denouncing what Trump is doing, especially led by leadership like Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer. They should be putting younger Democratic members into positions of power. I can’t think of anything that exemplifies it better than when AOC was going for the judiciary chair and they’re like, ‘No, we’re going to give it to the 80-year-old dude with throat cancer’ … who then ends up dying in office. And it’s just like, ‘What the fuck?’ I mean for me, for example, I can remember Nancy Pelosi being one of our representatives when I was, like, 8-years old. You’ve had your chance. And don’t get me wrong, Democrats have done a lot of good stuff over the years, but the problem is if their way worked, we wouldn’t be in the situation we’re in. And so that means we need to change. Take a football team, for example. If your game plan doesn’t work, you don’t just keep trying to run the same game plan. You find out, ‘OK, what do we need to do differently?’ Otherwise we’re just going to keep getting our asses beaten game after game after game.”
J.P.: “So as a socially reserved video game guy who doesn’t like having to ask for money, how have you adjusted to having to ask for money?”
C.K.: “It’s been tough. I didn’t like doing half-gassers with the Vikings, but I had to do them. So this is unfortunately a part of the political process. So I have to do it. And what I make sure to tell people is, ‘Please only give me what you can afford. And if you can’t afford to give any money, if it’s just emotional support, if it’s just you’re going to volunteer for canvassing, phone banking, postcards, whatever, that’s fine. All support is useful. It doesn’t have to be money.’ I also look at Zohran Mamdani’s campaign in New York. He’s wildly popular and getting so much of the vote—not because he’s raising a shit ton of money (although he is raising a really decent amount), it’s because he’s getting out and knocking on doors and talking to people and connecting with people. And that, to me, is fundamentally where I went. If I can get enough people to volunteer for canvassing and I’m out there with them and we’re knocking on doors and talking to people, then you get that human connection of like, ‘Yeah, I’m here to represent you. And even if you don’t vote for me, if I win, my job is still to represent you. My job is to make sure everyone has the best possible opportunity to succeed.’”
J.P.: “Are you literally knocking on doors?”
C.K.: “Not yet, because right now with the Prop 50 stuff … I’m going to be canvassing for Prop 50 I think this weekend. And that’s the main focus.”
J.P.: “You think it will pass?”
C.K.: “I think it will. My worry is how close it’s going to be. The opposition has a lot of NO ads out already, and they were quicker off the bat. And again, what the fuck are the Democrats doing? You knew Newsom was going to sign this. Why weren’t you immediately prepared to be like, ‘Here’s why YES is important!’ They let the opposition have almost a week and a half of uninterrupted NO ads before they finally started sending something out. And the thing is, it’s an easy argument for the other side to make, because gerrymandering actually is bad. We shouldn’t be gerrymandering, but the problem is we have to do it in response to Texas, because otherwise we don’t even have a chance at saving democracy.”
J.P.: “Don’t you think the key messaging on this is, ‘We don’t want to have to do this. This sucks’ …”
C.K.: “Yeah, we’ve got to do it. And that’s what I’ve been saying, and it’s been resonating with people. I mean, when you explain it that way, people understand. They’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, that does make sense.’ We are committed to our independent redistricting commission. So that’s the other thing about Prop 50 is it doesn’t get rid of the independent redistricting commission. That’s still in effect and will be in effect in 2030, which is when redistricting normally happens. This is a temporary stop-gap measure to say, ‘Texas, you’re stealing five house seats. We are taking five house seats back to try to keep it on a level playing field.’ And I feel, for a long time, the Democrats have been the guy watching the golden retriever dunk the basketball over and over saying, ‘Well, there’s nothing in the rules that says a dog can’t play basketball.’ At a certain point, we have to say like, ‘Yeah, no, that dog’s dunking on us. We’ve got to do something about it.’”
J.P.: “Why do you think more people aren’t concerned about climate change?”
C.K.: “It’s a long-term problem, and human beings are notoriously bad at dealing with long-term problems. And it’s super frustrating because I’ve seen us deal with long-term problems. So growing up, the smog from Seal Beach to the mountains in LA, you could barely see Long Beach. Some days it was ridiculous, and it was really bad. Air quality was terrible. At the same time, we had the hole in the ozone layer, and it’s like our country and the world came together and said, ‘This is a bad, long-term effect. We need to get together and do something about this.’ And we did. We solved those problems. There’s still some smog here in Southern California, but it’s nothing close to what it used to be. You can actually see the mountains, you can see Catalina, you can see Long Beach into Signal Hill. We are capable of doing it.
“We just have to put the willpower behind it. And the problem now is, since we’re in late stage capitalism, a lot of very rich and powerful people are invested in the idea of ignoring climate change because it’s going to affect their business models. And they’re not smart enough to see that this is a pivot that they can take where, ‘OK, yeah, you’re a fossil fuel company, npw pivot into green energy. You have the funds, you have the expertise of people who know how to construct large scale projects. Yeah, there’s going to be some retraining required. Yeah, you’re going to have to figure out some different things, but here’s where the future is at.’ And people want this future. People want clean energy.”
J.P.: “Trump has an 18-year-old granddaughter who’s a golfer at the University of Miami, and I always think, ‘Bruh, you have a grandkid …’”
C.K.: “It’s insanity. And it’s super selfish. And I think part of the problem is that in order to accumulate a billion dollars or more, you inherently have to be a selfish person. There is something in you that says, ‘Yes, I deserve to have this amount of money.’ And I don’t know that that’s fixable. If it were up to me, being a billionaire would be in the DSM as a symptom of wealth hoarding. It would be a legit psychological disorder, because there’s something wrong at that point. We call every other form of hoarding ‘hoarding,’ and we try to help people with their problems. But, somehow, greed is celebrated.”
J.P.: “My wife always says, when is enough enough? You’re Elon Musk. Is it not enough?”
C.K.: “You could solve so many problems. So many. That was actually a conversation I had with myself back when I was an NFL player and speaking on LGBTQ rights. Like, if this cost me my job, had I made enough enough? Would my family be provided for if I never worked another day in my life? And I had, and that was only around $4.5 million dollars. We live modestly. We live in a nice area. We live in Huntington Beach, and we have enough where we can afford to send our kids to do cool stuff. We can pay for their music camps and their sports camps. We have good public school systems that we can send them to. We have enough to send them to college where they want to go. And it’s like, ‘You can have enough, and it’s really not that big of a number. You just have to be satisfied.’”
J.P.: “You have a year and a couple months until the actual election. When do you feel like you have to kick it into gear hardcore?”
C.K.: “I’m looking at January. So because basically Prop 50 is going to occupy us all the way up through November. Then November through December is going to be the holidays. And I don’t think anyone’s really going to want to be out there knocking on doors, especially after doing Prop 50 work. That’s another important part of resisting, is you got to give yourself time to recharge. You can’t make every rally, you can’t make every protest. You can’t make every city council meeting, and it’s OK. Take time to recharge your batteries, otherwise you’re just going to burn out.
“So I’m looking at January as like, ‘OK, now let’s start getting all the volunteers together. Let’s get out there. Let’s start knocking on doors. Let’s start talking to people doing potential town hall events, just getting people aware that here I am, here’s what I stand for. Here’s what I’m talking about. And I would like to be your representative because I think I can do the job in a way that will help all of you. And, not for nothing, your alternative is really going to suck.’”
J.P.: “How much do you delve into your opponent when you start running?”
C.K.: “Right now I’m more focused on my message. I don’t even know if I’ll be running against Gracie because Matt Harper’s still in the race, and who knows what happens. Maybe he overtakes her and the GOP flips and says, ‘Oh yeah, no, we want to go with this guy instead.’ So right now, I don’t think it’s worth focusing on an individual person. I think it’s more focusing on the fact that if you are a member of the Republican Party these days, you’ve really got to find a way to square this circle in your mind. Because right now, the Republican Party does not support the Constitution. They’re not upholding their oaths to the founding bedrock of this country. And if you don’t like that, you need to do something about it. And regardless of who your rep is going to be, they have signaled they’re on board with Trump’s agenda. So are you on board with Trump’s agenda? And if not, you don’t even necessarily need to vote for me, although I would like you to just don’t vote for them. Tell them, ‘No, this does not represent me. This does not represent my party. You are not getting my vote.’”
J.P.: “I saw an interview this morning where Mike Johnson was asked about Trump saying that American cities will serve as dress rehearsals for the military. And he wouldn’t criticize Trump …”
C.K.: “And that’s your whole job in congrees is to be a check on the president and the Supreme Court. That’s what separation of powers is for.”
J.P.: “So are these people cowards, do you think? Or do they believe what he’s saying?”
C.K.: “I think there are a couple true believers, but I think the majority of them are cowards. I think they view their jobs as jobs that they want to keep versus being public servants. And their job is to serve the country and their constituents. And if the founders could see what was happening right now, they’d probably be having heart attacks. Congress was designed with the idea that ‘These would be ambitious people that would not accept a unitary executive, because that’s really close to a king. And if you give it enough time, it becomes a king. And they had experiences with kings and they said, ‘No more. We are not doing this ever again.’”
J.P.: “Do you think, I don’t know, 10, 20 years from now, we look back and we say, ‘Wow, that was the end of democracy, and now we live in this autocracy.’ Or do we look back and say, ‘That was a really fucked-up period that we survived?’”
C.K.: “Well, I know which one I want, but I can’t guarantee that we’ll get the right outcome because it doesn’t just depend on me. It depends on everyone showing up. That’s the thing. The American populace has to show up and make a decision. They have to say either we are going to be a democracy or we’re going to be something else. And what that something else looks like … it might be a fake democracy like Hungary or Russia. On paper, those are democracies. They’re not democratic countries, but they’re listed as democracies. Or are we going to be an actual democracy where we abide by the rule of law? Where we don’t have masked kidnappers snatching people off the street based upon the color of their skin. It really is a very simple question. When you boil it down, it’s like, ‘Do you want to live in a democracy or do you want to live in something else?
“I want a democracy.”
J.P.: “How confident are you that you’re going to win this election?”
C.K.: “I don’t know. I’ve never done this before. I’m going to approach it the same way I approach everything in my life—I am expecting to win and I’m going to do a 100 percent effort to make sure that I win. But you can’t ever predict anything for certain. It is the same thing as trying to make it to the NFL, right? I’m going to do everything in my power to make it to the NFL, but at a certain point it’s out of my hands. Either a team’s coach likes me or they don’t like me. Either there’s an opening available or there’s no opening available in terms of the election. Either people show up and vote or they don’t, and I am going to do everything I can to help you understand why you need to show up and vote and why you should vote for me, but it might not be enough. Sometimes that’s just the case. Sometimes you lose.”
J.P.: “And sometimes you win.”
C.K.: “I prefer that outcome.”
To learn more about Chris Kluwe’s campaign, visit his website here. To learn more about the ‘holy shit!’ weirdness of his opponent, well, here you go.