Being a 6-foot-4 football star with a huge online personality may not help a candidate get elected to Congress, but it doesn’t hurt either.
However, Bill Cotter, 25, perhaps better known online as Barstool Sport’s ‘Billy Football’, announced that he will run as a Republican for New York’s Third Congressional District on March 25.
In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, he shared why he is jumping into the race and how he plans to compete in a district marred by controversy in recent years.
The seat he is running for was held by the infamous and lying former Rep. George Santos until December, when he was just the sixth House member expelled from Congress.
After a quick special election, the seat was won by Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi, someone who — at least in Cotter’s assessment — is motivated more by money than political duty.
In his interview, Cotter didn’t hold back and criticized several New York lawmakers for behavior he could only describe as “disgusting.”
Bill Cotter, a Barstool Sports personality, announced on March 25 that he would run for New York’s Third Congressional District as a Republican. The 25-year-old spoke exclusively to DailyMai.com about his politics and his vision for Americans who have gotten “a bad deal.”
Commonly known as ‘Billy Football’ on Bartsool Sports, Bill was a high school football player before playing at Williams College.
“Honestly, if you want to know why I ran for Congress, it’s because Congress is full of people like Tom Suozzi and George Santos and, you know, individuals who set off fire alarms to stop the votes,” he exclusively told DailyMail.com. . “It’s disgusting.”
“Santos is irrelevant to this race,” Cotter continued. “Frankly, he has embarrassed the party and America as a whole.”
He then quickly turned his attention to the Democrat and said, “It’s hard to have confidence in your government when you have individuals like Tom Suozzi violating the STOCK Act, using his seat to profit and line his pockets.”
In fact, Suozzi has violated the law governing congressional stock trading several times, saying in 2022, “I have a lot of other things to do” and some “Congressional formalities are not necessarily something I make a priority of.”
As for the fire alarm, it was an apparent jab at Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., who was criminally charged after setting off an alarm minutes before a critical vote in September.
“We need to get back to an America that people can be proud of and that we can have confidence in because it’s ridiculous what’s happening.”
‘We need to make a change. We need people to act. And that’s why I’m running for Congress.
Former Rep. George Santos was expelled from Congress after improperly spending campaign money on Botox treatments, adult content and more.
Rep. Tom Suozzi was elected to fill Santos’ vacant seat in February
Cotter, who still works at media outlet Barstool Sports, said he was grateful for receiving his bosses’ blessings to run a campaign.
And as an influencing voice for many young Americans of Generation Z, he believes it is his duty to represent them, along with the residents of New York’s Third Congressional District, on the federal level.
“I have the luxury of being able to continue working and run for office, and I thought it would be selfish of me not to take advantage of the opportunity and not take the next step.”
Young Americans forced to come of age after the COVID-19 pandemic “have been given a bad deal,” he said.
“So many pivotal moments for young Americans growing up, high school kids missing a big part of their lives, college students being sent home and missing a big part of their college life.”
“We were sent into a post-pandemic world where the job market was terrible, inflation was literally robbing us of our savings and the cost of living was so high we had no extra income to save,” he told DailyMail.com.
The manifest destiny-style American dream, chalk-filled with neighborly home ownership, fulfilling community involvement, and a unified patriotic spirit of the times, appears to have slipped, at least temporarily, out of the reach of young voters.
He remembered that his grandparents were married, had several children and a house at his age, something that, he said, today is more like a fantasy.
Securing that dream for Americans is hard work, he admitted.
And, he added, “running for office sucks.”
‘It’s a lot of extra work. You’re working, you’re trying to get signatures. I don’t have great support from the establishment. You know, I don’t have big donors to help me fund the establishment of institutions.
‘I’m out there, me and my team, and we’re trying to accomplish this. And it is difficult.’
“I didn’t have to do this, but I do it because it needs to be done.”
Cotter has been canvassing his district to collect the signatures needed to make it to the November election.
Cotter told DailyMail.com that his top priorities are reducing inflation, cutting the deficit and border security.
With hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, he has posted frequent updates about his campaign, including photos of him collecting signatures in front of local grocery stores and shopping centers.
And the work seems to have paid off.
As of Friday, Cotter’s campaign told DailyMail.com that “Cotter is on the ballot.”
“We received confirmation that the state election board received more than enough signatures to qualify Bill Cotter for the ballot,” a campaign spokesperson said in a statement.
When asked which politicians had inspired him, he gave the answer of a politician, choosing popular historical figures. Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy.
When pressed about his Democratic model, Cotter responded.
“JFK was a Democrat, but you know, today I don’t think he would even make it to the polls in a Democratic primary.”
Despite their affinity for Kennedy, the two have many differences.
The Republican candidate’s main political priorities are very much in line with those of the Republican Party.
The former football star said he is most concerned about addressing inflation, crime, the national debt and improving border security.
‘First of all, we must curb inflation as much as we can. And that means ensuring that the Federal Reserve is not printing money to pay off our debt.”
‘The federal government does not have any revenue problem. They make enough money to run the country. They have an overspending problem. So I wouldn’t vote on any bill that would involve excessive spending.’
He said there is “a serious problem at the border” and that he would work to strengthen the rights of states to deal with immigration and “make sure that we have states that do not aid and abet people” who cross into the United States illegally.
‘New York State is one of the number one states guilty of aiding and abetting, you know, we’re giving taxpayer money on credit cards to undocumented people, and we’re giving more benefits to undocumented people than we are to our own veterans. . , to our homeless people and to our own American citizens.’
In summarizing his political views, Cotter returned again and again to the refrain that Americans have been shortchanged lately in terms of representation.
“They have treated us badly,” he said again. “And we have to do something about it.”
However, it is up to New York voters whether he is the candidate to negotiate a better deal.