Today we learned that Rudy Giuliani is the favored presidential candidate of Jeff Gordon and several other NASCAR superstars whose names we didn't recognize but whose support may open up a huge southern Christian demographic for the thrice-divorced Catholic Brooklynite. It’s the most popular sport in the country, people! We dutifully checked HuffPo’s indispensable FundRace tool, and, indeed, there it was: Gordon’s $2,300 contribution to the Rudy campaign (offset slightly by Riverside Drive’s Jeff Gordon, a Columbia professor, throwing $250 at Hillary).

Okay, we thought, this makes sense. In a sport where uniforms look like the title sequence from The Colbert Report, who else are you going to rally behind? Kucinich? But then we remembered something. Unlike Rudy's fair-weather fandom (he had never been to a race until this year), NASCAR has a genuine longtime admirer in a top Democrat. Our own Governor Spitzer, somewhat surreally, follows “stock car racing, and has made Jeff Gordon … his favorite,” wrote the Times this year, in an amused profile that found the gov waxing eloquent about “restrictor plates on the carburetor.” And what does Spitzer get for his love? Getting called “the best Jewish NASCAR fan.”

Rudy Giuliani Favorite Candidate Among NASCAR Superstars [NYDN]
Spitzer in His Element at Nascar Race [NYT]