Hassan Has Connie Britton, Not Mrs. Coach.
Television actress Connie Britton is a pretty typical politically-engaged celebrity. Her fame hardly qualifies her to instruct voters, and she’s been upstaged by much more famous Democrat Meryl Streep at more or less every turn. (Haven’t we all?). But when Britton joined her old Dartmouth roommate, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, at their alma mater to “get out the vote” for New Hampshire Governor Maggie Hassan’s Senate campaign this weekend, something just felt off.
The problem: Britton’s best-known portrayal, really her breakout role, was Tami Taylor on the hit NBC series Friday Night Lights. And Tami, high school guidance counselor and loving wife to football coach Eric Taylor, basically is New Hampshire’s incumbent Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte.
Just like Ayotte, whom Britton’s campaigning against, Tami Taylor is a graceful, steadfast, funny, self-possessed patriot devoted to her students (here, swap in “constituents”). More than de facto first lady of football-obsessed Dillon, Texas, she was Dillon High’s steadiest hand—their emotional rock. But, as the show centered on the football team and the manic devotion that enshrined it, her first title remained Mrs. Coach. Best of all, Tami was confident enough in her career, and in her identity as a wife and mother, that this was okay.
Unlike actress Connie Britton—and even Governor Hassan, after three years as a conventional liberal in a figurehead office—Tami Taylor has a proven record. When she became principal of West Dillon High, she opposed centralized testing, as any Texan, or indeed any Granite Stater, worth her salt surely would. Furthermore, there’s no doubt clear-eyed Tami would respect the Senator Ayotte’s risky denunciation of Donald Trump, and no doubt she’d have done the same. And, in one much-discussed episode, Tami’s insistence on doing her job with integrity—candidly advising a student in a tough spot—led to her resignation. Senator Ayotte, although firmly pro-life, has similarly stood her ground against taboos: She is leading the charge for a bill to make safe and affordable contraception more accessible. (Her people even passed out condoms at campaign events.)
And as the Ayotte campaign has often pointed out, Governor Hassan was “handpicked” by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid to help carry on his legacy. Meanwhile, Ayotte campaigns on her record of breaking from party orthodoxy in the interest of her state, no matter the costs to her standing among Republican elites. Now what could be more Tami Taylor than that?
The impulse to project party lines onto the fictional town of Dillon, Texas is nothing new. Friday Night Lights showrunner Peter Berg threatened legal action against the Romney campaign over their use of Coach Taylor’s mantra “Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose” as an unofficial slogan. Britton and Berg’s politics clashed with the views of original Friday Night Lights author Buzz Bissinger, whose creative nonfiction account of football frenzy in Odessa, Texas inspired a film adaption and Berg’s show. Bissinger endorsed Romney in October of 2012.
We really can’t know how Tami would vote if she were a real person and moved to New Hampshire. But we do know that Bissinger’s original subject, the town of Odessa, is so deep red that the real Taylors would vote just the way you’d think. Of course, Bissinger’s Odessa had its own Mr. and Mrs. Coach in Gary and Sharon Gaines. And Bissinger confirmed via email, “There is as much chance of Sharon Gaines voting for the Democrat in New Hampshire as Hillary voting for Donald Trump.” There you have it.
