Politics
The 2024 WNBA season may have been the best ever. Now for the playoffs.
UPDATE (Sept. 22, 2024 10:45 a.m. E.T.): The WNBA announced Sunday that A’ja Wilson was the unanimous choice for league MVP.
When she was interviewed on CNBC’s “Power Lunch” on Sept. 9, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert was asked about racist and homophobic bullying from different players’ fan bases and gave an answer that was insufficiently empathetic and filled with corporate jargon. Her response upset players and fans in that it didn’t seem to sufficiently condemn the bullying or stand up for the league’s players.
And to be clear, they care for reasons other than the exciting play of rookie phenoms Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese.
While she didn’t adequately answer the question about a topic that affects the well-being and safety of the WNBA’s players and has since apologized for not doing so, there’s no denying the truth in something Engelbert did say in that interview: “There’s no more apathy,” she said about the WNBA. “Everybody cares.”
And to be clear, they care for reasons other than the exciting play of rookie phenoms Caitlin Clark and Angel Reesethe subjects of so many headlines this WNBA season. This season wasn’t just about the league’s future but also about its exciting present and its iconic past. And the WNBA playoffs, which tip off Sunday, will make that clear.
A’ja Wilsonwho plays center for the back-to-back champion Las Vegas Acesput together one of the most dominant seasons in league history, becoming the first WNBA player to reach 1,000 points in a full season and putting up the best numbers of her career, averaging 26.9 points per game, 11.9 rebounds, 2.6 blocks, 1.8 steals and 2.3 assists. This season might be the last we see of Diana Taurasi, the league’s all-time leading scorer.
The New York Liberty, the only original franchise without a title, is still looking to win one. The Connecticut Sun, which has been in two of the last five WNBA finals, is also still looking for its first championship. The Minnesota Lynx is a team that few predicted would be in the running for a WNBA championship, and the team will begin the postseason with the No. 2 overall seed. And despite underperforming during the regular season and forcing Wilson to take on a much heavier load, the Aces are entering the playoffs hoping to three-peat.
To Engelbert’s point about there being no more apathy, this season, six teams recorded an average attendance of more than 10,000 fans per game, which hadn’t been done since the league’s second seasonin 1998. ESPN reported that the 2024 WNBA regular season has been the most viewed regular season on its family of networks, which includes ESPN2 and ABC, since the network televised games during the league’s inception in 1997. The ION Network, which began showing WNBA regular-season games in 2023, reported on Thursday that the league doubled its viewership on the network this season and aggregated 23.72 million total viewers.
Engelbert also announced two new expansion franchises for the WNBA, one in Toronto and the other in Portland, Oregon. The ownership group that will oversee the Portland team paid a $125 million fee for the team. Compare that to the $10-14 million Joe and Clara Wu Tsai spent in 2019 to buy the New York Liberty, an original WNBA franchise. The Portland ownership duo of Alex Bhathal and Lisa Bhathal Merage are paying around 8 to 10 times more.
In addition to who will win the 2024 WNBA championship, there’s so much more to look forward to before these playoffs end. Will Wilson, a shoo-in to win her third MVP award, be the unanimous pick of the members of the media who vote for the award? The only time that’s ever happened was in the league’s inaugural season in 1997, when the award was granted to Cynthia Cooper-Dyke.
Is this it for the 42-year-old Taurasi? The Phoenix Mercury, with its social media posts titled “If This Is It,” is encouraging us to think so, even as Taurasi says “I don’t know.” She said, “The last couple of weeks have been a little nerve-racking for myself. I don’t want to make any emotional, rash decisions. I know the end is near. When that is, I don’t know.”
Will Wilson, a shoo-in to win her third MVP award, be the unanimous pick of the members of the media who vote for the award?
On Thursday afternoon, the team posted photos of the free T-shirt fans received at the Mercury’s final regular-season home game. The front features a silhouette of Taurasi with text calling her the greatest of all time, and on the reverse is a long letter to the WNBA legend thanking her for 20 seasons of stellar WNBA play. Taurasi’s family, friends and former coaches were all in attendance on Thursday night to watch her be celebrated by her home crowd for potentially the last time.
The 2024 WNBA season has given us a long list of compelling storylines, people and teams to root for and against. This has always been the case throughout the league’s history, but the issue was the lack of mainstream attention. In the past, networks have refused to put these games of meaning and consequence on television because of a bias that the casual sports fan doesn’t want to watch women’s sports.
The executives at the top of the league who preceded Engelbert didn’t try hard enough to alter those biases.
The dual phenomenon that is both Clark and Reese took the WNBA’s exponential growth in recent years to new heights. Clark led the league in assists this year with 8.4 per game, as did Reese in rebounds, with 13.1 per game. Both rookies broke records. Clark broke the rookie season scoring recordand Reese set the record for the most consecutive double-doubles.
Clark’s Indiana Fever averaged 17,035 fans per home game this season, the highest attendance average across the league. Reese has expanded her personal brand and helped expand the WNBA’s. She partnered with well-known brands like Reese’s candy and Reebok, launched her own weekly podcast and even appeared in a commercial promoting the highly anticipated movie musical “Wicked.” She and Clark are expected to be honored as members of the WNBA’s All-Rookie team, with Clark most likely to earn the rookie of the year honors.
And while there’s been a lot said about how veteran WNBA players have responded to the attention Clark and Reese have attractedthere’s an understanding that the exposure and sometimes uninformed hot takes serve a purpose.
“I think that is a sign of growth,” Lynx star Napheesa Collier told me on Sept. 16. “And having all these controversies, while sometimes obviously it’s really frustrating, it gets people talking … and you need people discussing what’s going on. So for better or worse, and what they’re talking about, I think it’s great for the game overall.”
But don’t forget there’s still work to do, including making sure games of consequence during the final week of the regular season are shown on national television, the league continues to find ways to protect its players from online harassmentthat 50-50 revenue sharing becomes a reality rather than a targetand so much more.
If anything, this season was a glorious rebuke to all the haters who claim that nobody cares about the WNBA.
Jackie Powell
Jackie Powell has covered women’s basketball since 2019, including college basketball, WNBA and international and high school prospects. Her work has appeared in Bleacher Report, Yahoo Sports, The Next, Sports Illustrated, Hartford Courant, SLAM, Harper’s Bazaar, and she hosts the Locked on Women’s Basketball podcast every other week. She also is a Lady Gaga stan, a connoisseur of pop music and a mental health advocate.
Some top congressional Republicans have privately concluded that it is likely impossible for them to keep control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, and they are now focused on limiting the scale of the defeat and salvaging the party’s Senate majority.
Five senior Republican lawmakers, all granted anonymity to speak candidly about their party’s dire position, told Blue Light News the House had all but slipped away.
One senior House Republican said the GOP’s goal at this point was to “save as many Republican seats as we can.” The president, this person said, was not helping.
“President Trump has made this election all about himself,” the lawmaker said. “Now we have to survive that political storm.”
A second Republican member of Congress said the movement of campaign advertising made plain which side was in control of the midterms. This lawmaker predicted Democrats would pick up about 10 seats, more than enough to take control of the chamber.
Even in newly redistricted red states like Florida and Texas, this person said, Republican candidates were “hanging on with their fingernails.”
Republicans have already fallen back from several contested House districts that they feel are no longer winnable, including those held by Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa and Tom Kean Jr. of New Jersey. Trump carried their districts just two years ago. The party last week gave up on an Omaha-based district held by retiring Rep. Don Bacon.
Trump officials and other top GOP operatives say more candidates may be cut off in the coming days, in order to shift advertising money to races where it can make more of a difference. Republican groups have already given up on multiple races where they once hoped to unseat Democratic lawmakers.
The Republican Party is under extreme pressure across the Midwest, where it is now spending heavily to defend Senate seats in once-reliably MAGA states like Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas.
Bacon, a maverick often at odds with the White House, said there was no mystery in his party’s political tribulations.
“I’ve talked to some who are making these decisions: The biggest problem is the president’s polling numbers and unfavorables,” Bacon said.
White House officials insist they’re not giving up on either chamber of Congress. In a statement, White House spokeswoman Liz Huston said Trump remained “committed to maintaining Republican majorities in both the House and Senate.”
As he departed on Tuesday to campaign in Alaska for embattled GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan, Trump professed optimism about the midterms but acknowledged that sitting presidents typically see their party lose seats in the off year.
“But I’m doing a tour right now and I’m doing rallies,” Trump added. “The level of enthusiasm for the Republican Party is way up.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson went even further, flatly declaring during a campaign stop in deep-red Texas that “the polling is wrong” in showing his party on the brink of a broad defeat.
Yet at a tactical level, the Republican Party’s moves to shift money away from defending the House and toward saving the Senate are clear enough. In recent days, the Congressional Leadership Fund, the top super PAC for House Republicans, canceled advertising for key House candidates in Nebraska and Iowa and allowed the Senate Leadership Fund – a Republican group focused on the upper chamber – to swoop in and claim the airtime to support Nebraska Sen. Pete Ricketts and Rep. Ashley Hinson, who is running for Senate in Iowa.
“These are not the moves of a party that’s going to keep the House,” a third Republican lawmaker said.
In statements to Blue Light News, both CLF and the National Republican Congressional Committee said they had no intention of giving up on the fight for control of the House.
NRCC spokesperson Mike Marinella said districts are won “one by one,” and that the GOP has “the financial firepower and ground game needed to win.”
Chris Winkelman, president of CLF, said his group would keep moving money around to maximize the impact nationally.
The goal, he said, was to “keep the pressure on the most vulnerable Democrats and preserve a path to 218 seats.”
Former Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a Florida Republican who lost his swing seat in Trump’s first midterm election eight years ago, said his former colleagues were clear-eyed about where the election seemed to be headed.
“The environment is about as tough as one could expect,” Curbelo said. “There is no one who has privately stated that they believe Republicans can hold the House — not in recent weeks, anyway.”
Megan Messerly, Lauren Fedor, Lisa Kashinsky and Myah Ward contributed to this report.
Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff said Tuesday he will not run for president in 2028 and committed to serving a full six-year Senate term if reelected.
“I have zero interest in running for president. I’m not running for president. I’m running for reelection to the Senate,” Ossoff said during a Georgia Senate debate against Republican Rep. Mike Collins.
Asked by Greg Bluestein of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution whether he would serve his full term if he wins in November, Ossoff replied: “Yes, I will.”
The remarks are Ossoff’s most forceful rejection yet of a potential 2028 presidential bid even as his name has repeatedly surfaced in national Democrats’ conversations about possible contenders for the party’s nomination. His public commitment to a full Senate term on Tuesday is the latest of his campaign’s many efforts to tamp down that speculation.
Ossoff gained national attention this year given his strong fundraising numbers, his consistent lead in public polling against Collins and his ability to generate viral moments on the campaign trail, particularly through his attacks on President Donald Trump. Democrats are bullish about Ossoff’s ability to hold onto his Senate seat — so much so that the Democratic-aligned Senate Majority PAC said Tuesday it was removing its ad spending in Georgia for the week.
He’s also taken steps to boost the state Democratic party in Georgia, a perennial battleground that has been and will be key to winning the presidency. If November brings historic wins up and down the ballot, Ossoff will get some of the credit — and he’ll have confirmed his status as a leader in the swing state.
Democrats may be discovering the political power of calling something rigged.
They’re leaning hard into anti-corruption messaging in the final weeks of the campaign as new research suggests that linking corruption to Americans’ economic struggles can boost Democrats into the home stretch.
Messaging from Democrats that tied corruption to housing, health care and the cost of living increased voter support for Democratic congressional candidates by about 3 percentage points, according to a national survey last month conducted by Blue Rose Research and Democratic-aligned Winning Jobs Narrative Action, which was obtained by POLITICO.
The findings align with a shift in how Democrats are talking about corruption — and help explain why that message has exploded on the campaign trail. From Sen. Jon Ossoff in Georgia to James Talarico in Texas and Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, Democrats have zeroed in on a common argument: Washington is rigged to benefit the wealthy at the expense of everyday Americans.
“We have a corruption crisis in this country, and it is leading to an affordability crisis,” Iowa Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek said during his Senate debate against Rep. Ashley Hinson last week.
It’s a message that is reverberating across campaigns. In a recent presentation delivered to Democratic groups on Capitol Hill, longtime Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson offered a succinct playbook: “Corruption is why your costs are high,” according to the presentation viewed by Blue Light News.
His presentation also encouraged Democrats to lead with the acknowledgement that costs are high and then go into corruption, acknowledge that it happens across parties and avoid making President Donald Trump the sole focus of their attacks. “Trump works as an example of corruption that raises costs, not as the whole case,” the presentation said.
Since April, Democratic candidates and outside groups in House and Senate races have spent roughly $104 million on advertising mentioning corruption, according to ad tracking firm AdImpact. Republicans, meanwhile, have spent $36 million across House and Senate campaigns over the same period.
“It’s not just like, ‘oh, look at what’s happening with the ballroom,’ or ‘boy, Donald Trump’s made a lot of money on crypto,’” Democratic strategist Chris Meagher said. “You have to be able to tie it to the impact on people’s lives.”
“The narrative works best when it’s an outsider candidate who is linking a rigged economy to a rigged political system,” longtime Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said of the anti-corruption messaging.
Running against corruption is not new. But as Democrats looked for a way out of the political wilderness after 2024, they began turning a familiar attack — anti-corruption — into a broader message tied to voters’ economic pain. What once was an attack largely focused on Trump has become a more expansive argument for candidates trying to connect it to why Americans are struggling financially, potentially providing a blueprint for the party beyond November.
“Democrats used to talk about corruption as a crime. Now corruption is the explanation for costs,” Ferguson, the Democratic strategist, said.
The issue — and messaging around it — is also coming to the fore in a cycle when anger over the suppression of Epstein files hit a fever pitch and public pressure to ban Congress from trading stocks continues to mount.
And it’s not just the research by Blue Rose that shows the potential potency of that message.
In another recent survey from the Democratic group Navigator Research, obtained by Blue Light News, the vast majority of Americans — both Democrats and Republicans — say corruption is driving up their costs. That same survey of registered voters, conducted in August, found majorities, including roughly a quarter of Republicans, say Trump is bringing more corruption to Washington than fixing it.
And new results from the nonpartisan Center Square’s Voter Voice Poll, conducted this month by Noble Predictive Insights and shared first with Blue Light News, show 10% of voters ranking government corruption as the second most important issue facing Americans, tied with the economy and jobs, and only behind inflation and price increases.
In some instances, Democrats have wrested the word “rigged” away from Trump who has used it in the context of unproven election fraud and turned it into a mobilizing political talking point. That’s a departure from March 2024 when Democrats criticized then Rep. Katie Porter for accusing special interests of spending money to “rig” the California Senate race after she lost in the state’s primary. But now some Democrats are embracing that language as a way to rail against what they see as a corrupt system.
“They’re rigging the rules to benefit their wealthy donors and corporate special interests,” former Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown said in a message to supporters announcing the launch of his campaign to return to office.
But the corruption resonates across parties. Republicans who spoke with Blue Light News said Democrats do not own the issue — voters everywhere are animated by it. While polling shows that voters in both major parties believe the government is corrupt, Republicans accuse Democrats of lacking credibility on the issue.
“Americans have been disgusted by the level of self-serving corruption that spread like herpes through the slimy politicians who run the Democrat Party, and now they’re suddenly changing their tune because it’s an election year,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Mike Marinella said in a statement. “Voters see through the facade, and they know Republicans are cleaning up the rot left behind by Democrat leaders.”
On the Senate side, National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesperson Bernadette Breslin pointed Blue Light News to a poll in Minnesota — a rare offensive opportunity for Senate Republicans this cycle — that shows there are just about as many voters who blame Democratic Gov. Tim Walz for widespread fraud of federally-funded government programs in the state as there are who blame the criminals. Walz’s lieutenant governor, Peggy Flanagan, is running for Senate against Republican Michele Tafoya, and corruption under Democratic rule is a key theme for Republicans in the race.
“The overwhelming majority of Minnesotans blame the Walz-Flanagan administration — and the criminals it aided and abetted — for plundering their hard-earned taxpayer dollars,” Breslin said. “They’ll vote for Michele Tafoya to right the ship this November.”
Steve Pierce, executive director at Winning Jobs Narrative Action, said one of the biggest shifts for Democrats this cycle on corruption has been a move away from a message largely rooted in concerns over democratic norms, which have struggled to break through in a way that moves voters in past cycles.
“You’ve seen Democrats, rather than connecting corruption to democracy, connecting it to affordability, connecting it to the top concern that voters have,” said Pierce. “It’s connecting it in a way that’s meaningful to voters around the things that they are thinking about every day.”
The anti-corruption message has played out across the country, and as an explanation for frustration against different economic pain points, including rising electric bills and local data center projects.
A recent memo on data centers from House Majority PAC, the main super PAC working to elect House Democrats, noted the “message environment in the 2026 election cycle has been dominated by costs, with an important secondary theme around corruption that began to emerge last year.” The group’s spokesperson, CJ Warnke, told Blue Light News that “every single poll and every single focus group shows affordability to be voters’ number one issue, and they specifically point to corrupt politicians as being responsible for driving up prices.”
Next month’s midterms will offer the clearest test yet of whether Democrats can turn this message into votes. But Democratic operatives increasingly see anti-corruption messaging as more than just a short-term political weapon — as long as they try to do something about it if they win control next year.
“I think the thing for Democrats, if they do want to keep it on the radar heading into 2028, and I think they should because I think it is a really potent issue for them, they are going to have to also deliver on it,” said Pierce.
“They have to be able to show up to get caught trying,” he said.
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