Ex-Bill & Hurricanes star Jim Kelly to consider run for Congress?

A friend in DC gave me a head's up about this and I thought I'd share it with you.

The New Republic's The Plank blog post speaks for itself, while the comments to it, to my eyes at least, read like they're largely from people who are unfamiliar with the particulars of the C.D. (congressional district), since everyone who knows anything about that area knows how much people up there revere Jim Kelly.

Athletes in other cities who've been elected to Congress -Steve Largent, Jim Ryun, et al- while popular in their own right, have nothing like the reservoir of goodwill that Kelly enjoys, witness the amazing display of support and affection for him in 2002 when he was inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame.
See http://www.jimkelly.com/ , http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/features/the100?index=68
and http://www.profootballhof.com/hof/member.jsp?player_id=112

At the Arlington,VA townhouse I lived in from 1996-2003, I had a really wonderful housemate from the Buffalo area who was a devout Buffalo Bills fan, as well as a very knowledgeable source of info about pop culture and the Lively Arts, particularly ballet and classical music.

As I recall it, her bedroom had two walls that I remember in particular because of the way she showed off two of her deepest passions.

One was a veritable Buffalo Bills shrine, complete with boxes of Flutie Flakes and 1,001 other Bills-related things, from the funny to the banal, but all quite recognizable to a devout Dolphins fan like South Beach Hoosier, since I'd had or seen the same things in aqua and orange before.

(When she came by to look at the place for the first time after having seen my ad, I knew she and I would hit it off when I asked her whether everyone in Buffalo was still "Talking Proud," and she laughed.
Then I told her that the first Dolphin game I ever attended was a 45-3 win over the Bills at the Orange Bowl, which propelled the Dolphins into the playoffs for the first time in franchise history.
But then she came back at me right away with something along the lines of "been a couple of years in between Super Bowl trips, though, eh?"
The Bills playing in four Super Bowl games in a row sort of hammered that point home.
http://www.winkandthegun.com/archive/august/5.html )

Every time I saw her collection of ephemera, it made me smile and laugh, recognizing that I'd had something just like that while I was living in Blooomington and later in Evanston/Wilmette, dedicated to the Dolphins, Hurricanes and Hoosiers.

Another wall had a bookshelf full of just about every book you'd ever heard of or would expect to find in the Library of Congress on the subject of ballet, especially bios of the usual suspects, with ballet slippers, trophies and ribbons on top.

When she first moved in, one of the more regular topics we discussed was one that bridged our political differences and united our common love of the NFL was the future of Jack Kemp, the former Bills QB turned politician.

When I first moved to the D.C. area in 1988, Kemp's congressional office in the Rayburn Bldg., the largest of the House office buildings, was near many of the congressional offices that I had regular business with.

Much like Tom Ridge's congressional office in the years before he became governor of Pennsylvania, Kemp's staff was always among the friendliest and most professional of the ones I dealt with.

Lots of very grounded people who were very dedicated to their work and to their boss, unlike the absurd way congressional offices are always portrayed in films or TV as full of psychopaths and folks continually on the make.

Kemp's office, owing to his great fame and constant media attention at the time, was constantly abuzz with all sorts of activity, as people visiting Washington, constituents and non-constituents alike, just walking down the hallway, would spot his nameplate near the door, pop their head in and wander on in.
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March 24, 2008
Is Scott Norwood Not Available?
By Josh Patashnik

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/03/24/was-scott-norwood-not-available.aspx#comments

24.03.2008
Is Scott Norwood Not Available?