Amid the tattoos, tank tops and potbellies, the handlebar mustaches and ZZ Top beards, the beer-swilling, breast-ogling and butt-slapping, the ass-hair and dick references this weekend at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, it was hard to picture how NASCAR Dads became the political demographic du jour. And this was outside the stadium on Friday, the first day of a three-day NASCAR-nival that brought the equivalent of Henderson's population to the outskirts of town to watch well-paid daredevils drive super-powered cars at dizzying speeds around an oval track. After the 100th zoom, I thought my ears were going to bleed. Maybe that's the real power of NASCAR Dads: Convincing their families that this stuff is actually fun.
By Sunday, the big race day, there appeared a more representative picture of Americana. More normal-looking guys than Hell Angels duplicates. More minorities—blacks, Hispanics, Asians. More Dockers emerging from the denim jungle, fewer cowboy hats, a collared shirt or two among all the logoed T-shirts. Porsches and Cadillac Escalades and Lexuses next to pickups and Harleys. And looser lips. Friday, folks had little to say. Not so on the day of rest. Mouths were motoring:
"Rat bastards, they suck my yanker, then lick it."
"Tell that bitch she can kiss my hairy hide."
"Hey, you got some herb?"
Skip Burfoot, a NASCAR Dad—and son—here from Washington with a crew of six, including his girlfriend, a self-described NASCAR grandma, and father, couldn't stop gabbing: He's always been a car nut. NASCAR is a real sport. Racing keeps kids off the streets. They've got a shrine to Dale Earnhardt Sr. Walking the steps at the Speedway has been therapy for his 80-year-old pops, who just had a knee replaced. It was his girlfriend's dream "to meet a man with grease under his nails and who smelled like car parts." This is a true family sport. "Me and my son went to the Daytona 500 in 1995. We spent more quality time there than we had in 20 years."
And that's the thing about NASCAR Dads, about the racing fans, really. Flattering as it may be to be courted by politicians, Andrew Giangola, NASCAR's director of business communications, says the term conveys a narrow stereotype. "It's often used as shorthand for strictly rural, lower-to-middle class." He traces its roots to a trio of circumstances—Sen. Bob Graham's sponsorship of a truck in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series; Democratic pollster Celinda Lake's demographic pigeonholing—"blue-collar fathers between 35 and 55, culturally conservative but very populist"—and Bush inviting the top-10 drivers to the White House last December. From there, he says, it's taken on a misguided life of its own.
"Compared to the average American, the typical NASCAR fan is more affluent and more likely to have children under 18 … women make up 40 percent of the fan base, so you have a lot of NASCAR moms, and blacks and Hispanics comprise 20 percent of the fan base," Giangola says. "It's unfair and misleading to stereotype 75 million fans as a monolithic voting bloc with homogenous views."
Nancy Gurr is a NASCAR Mom. In name only. Politics is her husband's bag and, though she's grown enamored of racing, she's not a rabid fan. "You can sleep the rest of the time," she says, seated on a bench in the midway.
Kim Brunton was at Daytona last month when Bush made a two-hour pit stop but says he wasn't too impressed with the prez's photo op/vote grab.
"Eh, it was all right."
Are you a NASCAR Dad?
"I don't know how to answer that. What is a NASCAR Dad?"
Told of Lake's description, he said, "Yeah, I guess I'm a one. Maybe."
Talking to the Denver resident, he comes off more like a father who loves going to the races.
"It's a grass-roots sport, a family sport. I couldn't bring her to a football game," he says, patting Kelsey Bishop, his 8-year-old NASCAR Niece, on the top of her ponytailed head. (She likes driver Casey Cain. He's sponsored by M&Ms.)
"You see all these shirts?" Brunton continues, pointing to all the companies emblazoned on his jacket. "If you come to a Denver Broncos game with a Raiders jersey on, you're going to get in a fistfight. You don't have all the controversy of other sports. We live in Colorado, and we're dealing with Kobe."
Apparently, Brunton forgets that NASCAR's had a problem with fisticuffs and foul mouths among drivers in recent months.
Appealing to the political shrewdness of the NASCAR crowd might not necessarily be a good idea. Political consultant Terry Murphy says they're less predictable in terms of their partisanship and are less likely to go to the ballot box.
"They are busy working and paying bills and making a living," Murphy says. "They're probably relatively comfortable and probably passionate about their issues, but I don't think they make that connection to voting."
Dan Hart, another political consultant, says NASCAR Dads differ from Soccer Moms—one of more memorable sought-after voting blocs in recent memory—in that they "are generally working-class people who might be affected by campaign planks that deal with the economy, whereas Soccer Moms were concerned with social issues." As such, he says Vegas could potentially be a hotbed, citing geographic pockets in Green Valley and snippets of Summerlin. "Green Valley more than Summerlin because Green Valley votes Republican but can be swung Democratic, and Summerlin votes more Democratic because there are a lot of seniors there."
Those numbers could grow, as Vegas continues its embrace of all things NASCAR. Last year's event, the fourth installment, was the 13th largest of 38 points races, and this year's crowd of 148,000 could do even better.
Which doesn't necessarily translate into anything in political terms. A Fresno man in the midway couldn't be steered toward political talk; he had more down-to-earth issues on his mind. "A lot of cottage cheese thighs around here," he said, watching the women.