Getty ImagesA Republican Senate candidate from Minnesota has taken a winding path from sports to politics, where he has won support from far-right fringes.
He now faces an uphill battle to enter Congress.
Royce White, a former basketball standout, won the GOP primary on Tuesday, garnering 38.5 percent of the vote in an eight-candidate field.
He was considered an outsider before winning the support of ruling party delegates in May. But his fringe views and stiff competition from incumbent Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar mean he has little chance of winning the general election.
From court to politics
Mr. White, a Minnesota native, was a star high school player on two state championship teams before taking the field at Iowa State University.
He was drafted by the Houston Rockets in 2012, even though his intense fear of flying hampered his ability to travel.
Ultimately, he played little in the league, appearing in only three games, and later tried his hand at mixed martial arts and the Big3, the 3-on-3 basketball league co-founded by rapper Ice Cube.
At the same time, his openness about his mental health issues, including anxiety, has given him a wide public platform.
After the killing of George Floyd in his home state in 2020, Mr. White, who is Black, organized and led protests, though he says on his website that they were separate from the larger Black Lives Matter demonstrations that swept the country.
Getty ImagesMarginal views
Since then, Mr. White’s politics have taken an increasingly right-wing and conspiratorial turn.
A frequent guest on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, he occasionally slipped into the host’s chair while Bannon – Donald Trump’s former chief strategist – served a prison sentence for contempt of Congress.
In 2022, Mr. White attempted to challenge progressive Democrat Ilhan Omar for her U.S. House seat in Minneapolis, but he failed to make the first move, losing the Republican primary.
Along the way, Mr. White has racked up a long list of controversies.
While playing Big3 games, he wrote political slogans on his bald head, including “United States of the Federal Reserve,” “deep state,” and “Alex Jones was right” — his campaign website currently includes an endorsement of the conspiracy theorist.
Getty ImagesA watchdog group alleged in a complaint to the Federal Election Commission that his House campaign spent more than $150,000 (£117,000) on White’s personal expenses, including gym fees, clothing and bills at a strip club.
He has repeated conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic and “Jewish elites,” and has also made public statements that have angered people inside and outside his party, such as that “women have become too talkative.”
The Republican Jewish Coalition called him anti-Semitic and opposed him in the primary election after he made comments about Jews and endorsed Kanye West.
Mr White accused his critics of being in a “white liberal ivory tower” and argued he was being attacked because he stood for conservative values.
His campaign – which the BBC has contacted for comment – has published a lengthy rebuttal criticism of him. Mr. White claims to have accounted for most of his campaign funds and rejects accusations of anti-Semitism.
Victory for the outsider
Earlier this year, Mr. White seemed unlikely to win the Republican Senate nomination against his primary opponent, Joe Fraser, a military veteran and businessman.
However, his association with Bannon and his controversial statements “created an explosion of enthusiasm and support for him at the Republican convention among the anti-establishment far right,” said Larry Jacobs, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota.
Mr. White won the state party’s endorsement at that meeting in May.
Mr. Fraser briefly considered dropping out of the race, but he went ahead in Tuesday’s primary with the backing of a number of prominent Minnesota Republicans. The establishment support wasn’t enough, and he garnered just under 30 percent of the vote.
Celebrating his victory as an underdog, Mr. White posted on X: “I am committed to expanding the base, bringing disenfranchised Democrats into the tent, and unifying all conservatives in Minnesota.”
But he now faces a major challenge: trying to unseat Ms. Klobuchar, a popular Democrat who won her last re-election with more than 60 percent of the vote.
The state Democratic Party called him a “far-right extremist.”
And Mr. Jacobs, the political science professor, gives Mr. White “no chance” of winning in November.
“Amy Klobuchar is popular even among Republicans, she has $6 million in the bank, and I doubt Royce White can raise much money,” he said. “There is no aspect of this campaign that is in Royce White’s favor.”
This race, he said, is another indication of how the Republican Party is now dominated by Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.
“Sometimes Trump has been able to rely on candidates who have won,” Jacobs said, citing J.D. Vance’s victory in the 2022 Ohio Senate race. “But there are also a lot of candidates who are very weak and are taking advantage of this moment of chaos on the right.”
