Being a 6 foot 4 inch All-State football star and massive online personality may not help a candidate get elected to Congress, but it doesn’t hurt either.
Nonetheless, Bill Cotter, 25, maybe better known online as Barstool Sport’s ‘Billy Football,’ announced he is running 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 throwing his hat in the race and how he plans to compete in a district marred with controversy in recent years.
The seat he is running for was held by infamous serial-liar former Rep. George Santos until December, when he was just the sixth House member voted out of Congress.
After a quick special election, Democrat Rep. Tom Suozzi won the seat, someone who – at least in Cotter’s assessment – is more motivated by money than political duty.
In his interview, Cotter did not hold back, ripping several New York lawmakers for conduct he could only describe as ‘sickening.’
Bill Cotter, a Barstool Sports personality, announced on March 25 that he would be running for New York’s Third Congressional District as a Republican. The 25-year-old exclusively spoke with DailyMai.com about his politics and vision for Americans who have gotten ‘a bad deal’
Known commonly as ‘Billy Football’ at Bartsool Sports, Bill was an All-State football player in high school before playing in at Williams College
‘Honestly, if you want to know why I ran for Congress, it’s because Congress is filled with people like Tom Suozzi and George Santos and, you know, individuals who pull fire alarms in order to stop votes,’ he exclusively told DailyMail.com. ‘It’s sickening.’
‘Santos is irrelevant to this race,’ Cotter continued. ‘He’s frankly embarrassed the party and embarrassed America as a whole.’
He then quickly swung his attention back to the Democrat, saying, ‘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 own pockets.’
Suozzi has indeed violated the law surrounding congressional stock trading several times, saying in 2022, ‘I have a lot of other stuff going on’ and some Congressional ‘formalities are not necessarily something I make a priority of.’
As for the fire alarm bit, that was an apparent jab at Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., who was criminally charged after pulling an alarm minutes before a critical vote in September.
‘We need to get back to an America that people can be proud of and we can have confidence in because it’s ridiculous what’s happening.’
‘We need to make a change. We need people to take action. And that’s why I’m running for Congress.’
Former Rep. George Santos was voted out of Congress after improperly spending campaign money on botox treatments, adult content and more
Rep. Tom Suozzi was elected to fill Santos’ vacated seat in February
Cotter, who is still employed by the media outlet Barstool Sports, expressed he was grateful for receiving the blessings of his bosses to conduct a campaign.
And as a voice who influences many young Gen-Z Americans, he believes its his duty to represent them – along with residents of New York’s Third Congressional District – at the federal level.
‘I have the luxury of still being able to work my job and run for office, and I thought that it would be selfish of me to not take the opportunity and not take that next step.’
Young Americans coming of age after the COVID-19 pandemic have ‘been given a bad deal,’ he said.
‘So many young people’s cornerstone American moments growing up, high school kids missed out on a huge part of their life, college kids got sent home and missed out on a huge part of their college lives.’
‘We were sent down into a post-pandemic world where the job market was terrible, inflation was literally robbing us blind of our savings, and cost living so high we have no extra income to save,’ he told DailyMail.com.
The manifest destiny-styled American dream chalk-full of neighborly homeownership, fulfilling community involvement and a unified patriotic zeitgeist seem to have – at least temporarily – slipped out of reach for young voters.
He recalled how his grandparents were married with several kids and a house at his age, something that he said is more akin to a fantasy these days.
Securing that dream for Americans is tough work, he admitted.
And, he added, ‘running for office, it sucks.’
‘It’s a lot of extra work. You’re grinding, you’re trying to get signatures. I don’t have a huge establishment backing. I don’t have, you know, huge donors to help finance me an establishment institutions.’
‘I’m out there, myself and my team, and we’re trying to get this done. And it’s hard.’
‘I didn’t have to do this, but I’m doing it because it needs to be done.’
Cotter has been canvassing his district collecting the necessary signatures to make it into the November ballot
Cotter told DailyMail.com his top priorities are lowering inflation, cutting the deficit and border security
Boasting hundreds of thousands of social media followers, he has posted frequent updates about his campaign, including pictures of him gathering signatures in front of local grocery stores and strip malls.
And the work seems to have paid off.
As of Friday, Cotter’s campaign told DailyMail.com ‘Cotter is on the ballot.’
‘We received confirmation that the state board of elections received more than enough signatures to qualify Bill Cotter for the ballot,’ a campaign spokesman said in a statement.
When asked which politicos have inspired him, he gave a politician’s answer, picking historical popular Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy.
When pressed on his Democrat role model, Cotter shot back.
‘JFK was a Democrat, but you know, today I don’t think he’d even make the ballot in a Democratic primary.’
Despite his affinity for Kennedy, the two have plenty of differences.
The Republican candidate’s top political priorities are very much in-line with the GOP.
The former football star said he is most concerned with tackling inflation, crime, the national debt and improving border security.
‘First off, we need to curb inflation as much as we can. And that means ensuring that the Fed isn’t printing money to pay our debt.’
‘The federal government doesn’t have a revenue problem. They make enough money to run the country. They have an overspending problem. So I wouldn’t vote on any bills that are overspending.’
He said there’s ‘a serious problem at the border’ and that he would work to embolden state’s rights to deal with immigration and ‘will make sure that we have states not aiding and abetting individuals’ who cross into the U.S. illegally.
‘New York State is one of the number one guilty states in aiding and abetting, you know, we’re giving taxpayer money on credit cards to undocumented individuals, and we’re giving more benefits to undocumented individuals than we are to our own veterans, to our homeless and to our own U.S. citizens.’
Summarizing his political views, Cotter kept returning to the refrain that recently Americans have been shortchanged by their representation.
‘We’ve been given a bad deal,’ he said again. ‘And we gotta get something done about it.’
Whether he is the candidate to negotiate a better deal, though, remains up to New York voters.