WNBA, NFL, other leagues and campaigns focus on voter engagement, women’s rights

Three weeks before Election Day, Maya Moore, a four-time WNBA champion and six-time WNBA All-Star, worked the phone banks and recorded a public service announcement for a Georgia advocacy group, reminding women that early voting had begun in the state.

On Tuesday – one week before the Nov. 5 Election Day – Brittney Griner, another six-time WNBA All-Star, plans to join a get-out-the-vote event in Phoenix that will feature a “cabalgata,” a traditional Mexican procession of 200 to 300 riders that will proceed on horseback to an event near an early voting station.

On that same day, WNBA Players Association President Nneka Ogwumike will make the first of three appearances scheduled for the election homestretch, attending voting-focused events in Atlanta, Phoenix and Houston in her role as leader of More Than A Vote, a nonprofit voting rights group launched by LeBron James in 2020.

All those come under the banner of the “We Decide Our Future Tour,” a voter engagement campaign focused on women’s rights and reproductive freedom, the latter of which registered as the most important issue to women 30 and younger in a recent poll by nonprofit health policy research group KFF.

Nearly two-thirds of women polled by KFF said they expect this election to have a “major impact” on abortion access.

James formed More Than A Vote as a means for athletes and entertainers to engage Black voters on racial justice issues, launching the organization one month after the death of George Floyd and two months before the NBA resumed its season in a Walt Disney World bubble. The nonprofit was largely dormant when James announced in August that he was turning the keys over to Ogwumike, who shifted its focus to reproductive rights, including access to abortion, in vitro fertilization treatment and birth control.

Among the other current and former WNBA players who have pledged to bring their voices to the group and partner organizations Athletes For Impact and the Reproductive Freedom for All Foundation: A’ja Wilson, Breanna Stewart, Cameron Brink, Jewel Lloyd, Chelsea Gray, Kiki Rice, Lisa Leslie and Sheryl Swoopes.

“2020 was a really big year for sports and civic involvement,” said Ogwumike, who volunteered as a poll worker in Houston in 2020 after learning of a shortage through More Than a Vote and plans to do so again next week. “We had a lot of engagement and activity around our 2020 bubble season. I think through that, we were energized in so many different ways, both individually and collectively, to figure out how else we could be involved.

NBA teams have reinforced the messaging of voter registration.NBA

“As you look out in society and feel what’s going on, specifically for this year, it’s clear that there’s a huge issue on the ballot that has to do with women.”

Voter engagement also is a focus for leagues and teams, especially the NBA and NFL, which are in season during the election.

The 2020 election allowed both to get involved in an unprecedented manner, offering up stadiums and arenas as polling places during a time that social distancing recommendations took many traditional voting venues off the menu. Four years later, the relaxation of those recommendations has reduced the demand for buildings as Election Day polling places, but not eliminated their role in the process or reduced teams’ willingness to offer them up. (See story, Page 16).

Leagues and many teams have focused their PSAs and other messaging this election cycle around voter registration and turnout, as well as the need for poll workers during a time in which they’ve faced increased harassment.

In August, the NBA and NFL collaborated in support of a national poll worker recruitment day, working in conjunction with two nonprofits focused on that effort, Power to the Polls and Vet the Vote, with players from both leagues cutting PSAs and making appearances at poll worker events.

“It’s a thankless job, but we want to make it a job people feel good about participating in,” said Kathy Behrens, the NBA’s president of social responsibility and player programs. “We also want to make sure people are respecting poll workers. These are our community members, people who live in our towns. They’re volunteering their time. And however you feel about the election, the poll worker is an essential part of the process.”

The NFL and its players became formally engaged in voter education for the first time in 2020, creating the nonpartisan NFL Votes campaign as an offshoot of the league’s social justice initiative.

Over the eighth and ninth weeks of the season, NFL-produced PSA spots that in previous weeks encouraged poll worker signups and voter registration will shift toward a more timely message around the approach of Election Day, reminding fans to vote. The spots will air on game broadcasts and in stadiums. On the weekend of Nov. 2-3, NBA players will don “Vote” T-shirts during pregame warmups.

“Whether it’s the player population, club personnel or league personnel, you have every different stripe when it comes to people’s political interest — Republican, Democrat or otherwise,” said Jeff Miller, executive vice president of communications, public affairs, and policy for the NFL. “So using our platform to encourage participation in the democratic process, in general, and civic engagement, is something we and the players agreed upon when we talked about this in advance of NFL Votes being created.

“Encouraging people to exercise their constitutional right or, as some would suggest, constitutional obligation to vote…has been, I think, a good use of the NFL’s platform and one that can be done as nonpartisan as anything that can be done in this political environment.”

The campaign strategist coordinating the We Decide Our Future Tour, Mike de la Rocha, began working with athletes in 2016 when he co-founded Athletes for Impact with Wasserman WNBA agent Lindsay Kagawa Colas, Kobe Bryant marketing manager Jerry Sawyer, and Danielle Frost, the executive director of NFL wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald’s charitable foundation.

The NFL and its players have been engaged in voter education since 2020.getty images

Since then, Athletes for Impact has counseled more than 150 athletes on how best to champion the causes that are important to them, De la Rocha said.

“The key is them sharing their own personal story of how they got involved in the work,” De la Rocha said. “Folks with large platforms are just like anyone else, except they have more people that listen. So I tell folks, just tell your own experience because our individual experiences are also universal in a sense that a lot of folks have similar questions or concerns, or wonder if their vote really makes a difference.”

In this case, the women of the WNBA align particularly well with the issue they have chosen to amplify. All are in their peak reproductive years, but most who intend to have children would prefer to wait until after their playing days. While the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade focused on abortion, there is concern that the impact in some states could extend to IVF and birth control.

Of late, Ogwumike has begun sharing the story of her own use of the family planning benefits that were added as part of the WNBA’s most recent CBA. Ogwumike said she is on her second cycle of egg freezing, hoping to improve her chances of getting pregnant when she chooses to.

“You talk about reproductive rights and everyone automatically goes to abortion,” Ogwumike said. “Well, I’m an athlete who makes money with her body. Within that, you weave the idea of what it means to think about the future when it comes to my rights as a woman. It’s incredibly nuanced.”

Political strategist Jess McIntosh pointed to the alignment between the voters they hope to reach with the campaign – younger, women of color, and Black men – and the WNBA’s fan base as logical reasons for the pivot of More Than A Vote.

“The audiences that need to hear about what’s at stake this election are the audiences that listen to these women athletes,” said McIntosh, who has worked on the transition of the organization and its message. “It’s one and the same. So having them making sure that everybody who pays attention to them also knows what’s on their ballot this November, that just makes perfect sense.”