Though the election is taking place outside of the primary population centers of Missouri, the Congressional race in Missouri’s Ninth District has drawn a considerable amount of media attention, as party candidates surge towards the August primary.
That interest’s particularly fierce on the Republican side, where a single candidate’s drawn a fair share of media attention, both inside and outside of the District/state. Brock Olivo’s that candidate and his athletic background and relatively light civic life beyond the race are the stories that seem to have the most legs.
Even for casual sports fans, Olivo’s name probably rings a bell, as his number was retired at the University of Missouri, after a four-year career (1994-1997) in which he set records as Mizzou’s leader in rushing and touchdowns. Popular for his hard-nosed style, it was his personality and “high motor” energy that he brought to the team, as much as his talent, that allowed Olivo to become a fan favorite. In ways, he was an ideal, poster-ready football player, with: a farming background, a granite chin, a “no sir, yes sir” approach to reporters and work ethic that was reputedly second-to-none, which allowed him to compete with and often supplant athletically more-talented players.
After several years in the NFL, as a special teamer with the Detroit Lions, Olivo headed to both Italy and Washington DC. In the former, he embarked on his graduate studies, while competing in semi-pro leagues; and in the latter, he both worked for the National Italian American Foundation, while also meeting his wife, Samuela. In a sense, all of those experiences – football, some work life spend abroad, employment with foundations and in consulting – would seem to have given the 32-year-old a perfect template for seeking public office.
But Olivo’s jump into a national race was frustrated early by reports that he hadn’t been a regular voter in his past; in fact, reporters raised the flag that he hadn’t been a voter, at all, a shadow that clung to Olivo early in the campaign. The situation was compounded by a Columbia Daily Tribune-created video in which the former footballer half-joked that he’d also taken social studies classes, an off-hand comment that wound up getting Olivo a verbal taking-to-task on Keith Olbermann’s cable show. It’s a rebuke that still floats around the Internet.
Were Olivo able to capture the Republican nomination for the Ninth Congressional District, he’d be sitting in the cat-bird’s seat, as the District – which stretches along the Missouri-Illinois and the Missouri-Iowa border in northeastern Missouri – tends to skew fairly-heavily towards the Grand Old Party.
To Olivo’s credit, he’s been able to run a smart campaign online, with a website that delivers all of the basics and more, including videotaped versions of speeches (www.brockolivo.com/olivoforcongress/). In those, he frequently makes self-deprecating comments, noting that his voting record indicates he’s “a recovering apathetic,” while also joking about the similarity of his name to that of Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama, cracks which seem to go over fairly well with his constituency.
Also going over well are the Republican stock-in-trade phrasings that tend to play in districts like Missouri’s Ninth, which contains both considerable amount of exurban voters (the outskirts of Columbia; and the heavily-Republican St. Charles County, west of St. Louis) along with deep veins of rural voters in the northern reaches. He supports the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; is for cutting taxes; and draws relatively hard lines on immigration reform efforts.
We’ve had feelers out to Olivo’s campaign for a chance at a one-on-one video interview with the candidate and hope to achieve that, either before or after the Republican primary in several weeks’ time.
In the meantime, here are some links to Olivo’s campaign and background, as well as links to the campaign.
A video FAQ, from the candidate’s site: http://www.brockolivo.com/olivoforcongress/faq.html#
Olivo on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8998691818
Olivo on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brock_Olivo
Missouri’s Ninth District: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/findyourreps.xpd?state=MO&district=9
Ninth District Candidates (all): http://www.uselections.com/mo/mo.htm