A.G. Gancarski
Former NBA center Jason Collins made history by being the first openly gay player in a major men’s American team sport.
Now, Collins is helping Hillary Clinton achieve history in her own right, as she campaigns to be the first woman elected president.
On Thursday, Collins is playing a doubleheader, so to speak, for Clinton, dishing out assists for the former secretary of state in two Jacksonville locations.
UNF Pride hosts the afternoon engagement for Collins, at the Lazzara Performance Hall on campus at 1:30 p.m. for what is billed as a non-partisan voter registration event.
From there, Collins gears up for a Happy Hour visit to Five Points’ fashionable Brew, a hipster enclave on Park Street that has seen campaign visits from local politicians Tommy Hazouri and Bill Bishop in recent years.
The event will be hosted by the Duval County Democratic Executive Committee, and unlike the UNF event, the evening engagement is decidedly partisan.
“The GOP nominee for president has used insults and bigotry as a campaign strategy. As Democrats, we are proud to have Hillary Clinton as our nominee because she will never stop fighting for all of us, regardless of our race, creed, religion, or sexual orientation,” said Neil Henrichsen, chair of the Duval County Democratic Executive Committee. “As the first openly gay active player in the NBA, Jason Collins has shown us just how important it is to have strong leaders willing to blaze the trail when faced with adversity.”
The DCDEC press release adds a hope that Collins’ visit will inspire local elected officials to continue to push for a “fully inclusive Human Rights Ordinance.”
Collins’ Jacksonville journey is just part of a larger Florida deployment by the Clinton campaign.
He spent Wednesday in Miami and Hollywood.
On Thursday morning at 9 a.m., he will do a voter registration event in Tallahassee, in Room 312 of FSU’s Oglesby Union.
And Friday morning at 11 a.m., Collins will do a voter registration event at the University of Florida’s Turlington Plaza.
