Why Dan Rooney fell for Obama: Steelers' boss, a lifelong Republican, took a chance being public

[RamboLiberal]

On the night of Jan. 3, 2008, little more than two weeks after the Steelers were beaten up at home by Jacksonville and little less than two days before they were to confront the Jaguars again in the first round of the National Football League playoffs, the club's normally unruffled chairman found himself unable to sleep.

Around midnight, Daniel M. Rooney picked up the phone and rang his son Jim.

"This is the greatest speech I've seen since John Kennedy," Dan said into the phone. "This guy connects with people like no one I've seen since John Kennedy. He convinced me that this is more than just a good politician. I want to stand up and say something for this guy. I want to be involved in this."

Mr. Rooney, a lifelong Republican, had just finished watching long-shot Democratic candidate Barack Obama thank voters in Iowa, where the Illinois senator returned the opening kickoff of America's overlong, convoluted presidential campaign for a touchdown against political stalwarts Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards, in a state that's more than 92 percent white.

That his father would be eager to talk politics at odd hours or that he would be moved by the triumph of an African American against systemic or raw political obstacles did not surprise Jim Rooney -- the NFL doesn't call the requirement that NFL teams with head coaching vacancies interview a minority candidate the Rooney Rule for nothing -- but Jim knew almost instantly that what he was hearing on the phone from the family's North Side home that night was more than his father's basic chord structure.

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"There was just a visceral connection between my father and Obama," Jim said. "He loved how enthusiastic young people were getting for him, and when you get to my father's age (76), you start to hope the future is bright for generations beyond. Obama, to my father, was just so fresh. Colin Powell used the term 'transformational figure' to describe him, and my father had a strong sense of that a year ago.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08314/926590-176.stm


Senator Barack Obama walks with Steelers owner Dan Rooney to a rooftop deck on the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Downtown, to get a view of Heinz Field in April of this year.

I didn't know Dan Rooney was a Republican. But what great owners the Rooney family are in the NFL. Rooney is also a staunch pro-life Catholic - the Rooney family has a very long relationship with the Catholic church in Pittsburgh, but as he so well puts it, it's more important to be more than a one-issue voter.

[OKNancy]

1. Good article. I hope everyone will take the time to read the

whole thing. Thanks for posting it!

[dipsydoodle]

2. If you can still do it

can you replace the hyphen with a full stop to make sense of the title.

Good article by the way.

[BrklynLiberal]

3. An intelligent man of principle and justice. How rare is that these days?

[DeepModem Mom]

4. K&R!

[ecstatic]

5. Didn't see that speech. Pulling it up on youtube now

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqoFwZUp5vc

[DeepBlueDem]

6. Thanks for posting this article..I hope everyone reads it too.

[qanda]

7. It's late but I'm going to bookmark this to read later

So proud of Rooney and Obama.

[Jennicut]

8. Dan Rooney is a good guy, glad he decided to switch over

[Window]

9. A great read. Thanks for sharing. K/R.

:kick: