Patrick Mahomes on staying out of presidential race: 'I don’t want to pressure anyone'
(The Hill) - Kansas City Chiefs star quarterback Patrick Mahomes is declining to weigh in on this year's presidential race, urging voters in a new interview to do their own research before the election.
“I don’t want to pressure anyone to vote for a certain president,” Mahomes said in an interview with Time magazine published Tuesday. “I want people to use their voice, whoever they believe in. I want them to do the research.”
Time interviewed the three-time Super Bowl champion as part of its 100 Most Influential People of 2024 series.
He led his team to victory against the San Francisco 49ers in this year's Super Bowl, also earning the Most Valuable Player award for the third time.
Mahomes and the Chiefs were further thrust into the national spotlight leading up to the championship after popstar Taylor Swift started attending the games to support her boyfriend, tight end Travis Kelce.
Conservative media spiraled into unproven conspiracy theories leading up to the Super Bowl that the NFL had rigged the playoffs to deliver a win to Kelce’s team so that Swift could endorse President Biden after the game. It’s not clear whether Swift, who endorsed Biden in 2020, will endorse anyone in 2024.
Mahomes joined Lebron James’s More Than a Vote campaign to help increase African American voter turnout in the 2020 election. He told Time that he is still considering his plans for the upcoming election, but the magazine noted that he did not publicly endorse anyone four years ago.
The quarterback joined Biden alongside his teammates last year after winning the 2023 Super Bowl. The president predicted at the time that Mahomes would be one of the greatest quarterbacks out "of any generation."
Mahomes is not the only public figure to decline to endorse a candidate for 2024. Actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson said that he will not be endorsing anyone for this year’s election after previously doing so in 2020.
“In the spirit of that, there’s gonna be no endorsement. Not that I’m afraid of it at all, but it’s just I realize that this level of influence, I’m going to keep my politics to myself. I think it’s between me and the ballot box,” Johnson said in an interview with Fox News’s Will Cain earlier this month.