Almost 40 years after his final snap in the NFL, Burgess Owens is headed to Washington. CNN projects the former New York Jets defensive back, a Republican, defeated Democratic incumbent Rep. Ben McAdams in Utah’s 4th Congressional District race.
Owens was the Jets' first-round pick in 1973, going No. 13 overall. The safety played seven seasons with the Jets, before finishing his 10-year NFL career with the Raiders. He won a ring in 1981 when the Raiders beat the Philadelphia Eagles, 27-10, in Super Bowl XV. In 137 career games, Owens had 30 interceptions and 13 fumble recoveries.
As for Owens the politician, here’s what you need to know. CNN reports he is a “staunch defender of President Donald Trump and a Fox News contributor." Trump endorsed Owens' candidacy in July.
An internet archive of Owens' campaign website shows he’s on the record as saying the Affordable Care Act needs to be “fully repealed.”
In a 2019 opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, Owens, a descendant of slaves, said “I didn’t earn slavery reparations, and I don’t want them.” He called the reparation movement a “divisive and demeaning view of both races.”
It grants to the white race a wicked superiority, treating them as an oppressive people too powerful for black Americans to overcome. It brands blacks as hapless victims devoid of the ability, which every other culture possesses, to assimilate and progress. Neither label is earned. ... The idea of reparations demeans America’s founding ideals.
Speaking of race, Owens told Sports Illustrated he’s prepared to stop watching NFL games “because of commissioner Roger Goodell’s recent lobbying for the return of Colin Kaepernick and the sanctioning of player protests during the national anthem.”
“If Goodell allows Kaepernick to come back, if they allow players to kneel during the national anthem, I’m willing to not watch the game,” Owens, who is Black and Republican. ... We have too many Americans now accepting the notion that the flag should be a place where people should be ashamed of or take a knee, that’s what it comes down to. I am disappointed that so many people are acquiescing today. They don’t understand the American way, they don’t understand the price paid. They need to understand that we can’t be bullied and [also] that we’re not an evil country. There is no other country in the world with the mixing of races and tolerance. We have to change the current narrative.”
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