Standing under four palm trees in the quad area of Calabasas High, Los Alamitos football players have their eyes trained on coach Ray Fenton’s face for more than five uninterrupted minutes.
Looking to see if anyone loses focus when a mother walks by and starts yelling at her daughter, the answer is incredibly no. The players keep listening and keep their eyes directed on Fenton.
It’s tough enough to make teenagers listen for 30 seconds to adults these days, but to see an entire football team not letting anyone or anything disturb their focus while their coach is speaking provides a hint why Los Alamitos is 7-0 and the surprise high school football team in Southern California this season.
“Everyone has their eye on coach,” offensive lineman Braiden McKenna said. “It’s all the little things that keep you disciplined. Wearing your mouthpiece, keeping your eyes on him.”
It’s not true that Los Alamitos doesn’t have any stars. They might not have been mentioned much in preseason hype lists, but players have performed at a high level so far.
Tight end Beckham Hofland, 6 foot 5 and 230 pounds, is a load to cover and also serves as a kicker. Running backs Kamden Tillis and Lenny Ibarra are versatile and reliable. Quarterback Colin Creason, who sat out last season while transferring from Long Beach Poly, keeps improving. The offensive line, led by the veteran McKenna, who plays center, is very good. Ibarra leads the defense with 66 tackles.
Coach Ray Fenton and his 7-0 Los Alamitos football team.
(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)
“It’s so much easier to want to win with someone you care about and they care about you,” McKenna said of the team chemistry.
Los Alamitos has had more talented teams in recent years aided by transfer students. This one is mostly home grown, and Fenton couldn’t be happier.
“They’re friends,” Fenton said. “They’ve grown up together. You play harder with guys you’re friends with. You don’t want to let them down. They’re Los Al kids. They take pride in the community.”
They won in Hawaii 34-31 on tying and game-winning field goals by Ibarra, who practiced kicking the ball between two palm trees at a park. They knocked off Gardena Serra 42-21. They beat a good Granite Hills team 49-42. Seven straight wins came over seven weeks, so now they are on a two-week break to prepare for the daunting task of facing three good Alpha League opponents — Edison at SoFi Stadium on Oct. 16, at San Clemente on Oct. 24 and a finale against Mission Viejo on Oct. 30 at Artesia.
They are serious contenders for a Southern Section Division 1 playoff berth even though some people still can’t figure out how they keep winning.
The answer is simple: they’re hungry. Never underestimate a team where one teammate after another supports each other no matter the challenges, no matter the obstacles, no matter the skepticism of others.
“This is throwback,” Fenton said. “It’s old school. Play for your local school, play for your community, play for your friends. The kids you played Pop Warner with are the kids you’re playing high school football with. It’s the way it was supposed to be.”
SAN DIEGO — Six Democrats running for governor next year focused on housing affordability, the cost of living and healthcare cuts as the most daunting issues facing Californians at a labor forum on Saturday in San Diego.
Largely in lockstep about these matters, the candidates highlighted their political resumes and life stories to try to create contrasts and curry favor with attendees.
Former state Assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon, in his first gubernatorial forum since entering the race in late September, leaned into his experience as the first millennial elected to the state legislature.
“I feel like my experience and my passion uniquely positioned me in this race to ride a lane that nobody else can ride, being a millennial and being young and having a different perspective,” said Calderon, 39.
Concerns about his four children’s future as well as the state’s reliance on Washington, D.C., drove his decision to run for governor after choosing not to seek reelection to the legislature in 2020.
“I want [my children] to have opportunity. I want them to have a future. I want life to be better. I want it to be easier,” Calderon, whose family has deep roots in politics. State leaders must focus “on D.C.-proofing California. We cannot continue to depend on D.C. and expect that they’re going to give a s—t about us and what our needs are, because they don’t.”
Former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, who also served as the state’s attorney general after a 24-year stint in Congress, argued that it is critical to elect a governor who has experience.
“Would you let someone who’s never flown a plane tell you, ‘I can fly that plane back to land’ if they’ve never done it before?” Becerra asked. “Do you give the keys to the governor’s office to someone who hasn’t done this before?”
He contrasted himself with other candidates in the race by invoking a barking chihuahua behind a chain-link fence.
“Where’s the bite?” he said, after citing his history, such as suing President Trump 122 times, and leading the sprawling federal health bureaucracy during the pandemic. “You don’t just grow teeth overnight.”
Calderon and Becerra were among six Democratic candidates who spoke at length to about 150 California leaders of multiple chapters of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
The union has more than 200,000 members in California and is being battered by the federal government shutdown, the state’s budget deficit and impending healthcare strikes. AFSCME is a powerful force in California politics, providing troops to knock on voters’ doors and man phone banks.
The forum came as the gubernatorial field to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom is in flux.
Rumors continue to swirl about whether billionaire businessman Rick Caruso or Sen. Alex Padilla will join the field.
“I am weighing it. But my focus is first and foremost on encouraging people to vote for Proposition 50,” the congressional redistricting matter on the November ballot, Padilla told the New York Times in an interview published Saturday. “The other decision? That race is not until next year. So that decision will come.”
Wealthy Democratic businessman Stephen J. Cloobeck and Republican Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco declined an invitation to participate in the forum, citing prior commitments.
The union will consider an endorsement at a future conference, said Matthew Maldonado, executive director for District Council 36, which represents 25,000 workers in Southern California.
Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa leaned into his longtime roots in labor before he ran for office. But he also alluded to tensions with unions after being elected mayor in 2006.
Labeled a “scab” when he crossed picket lines the following year during a major city workers’ strike, Villaraigosa also clashed with unions over furloughs and layoffs during the recession. His relationship with labor hit a low in 2010 when Villaraigosa called the city’s teachers union, where he once worked, “the largest obstacle to creating quality schools.”
“I want you to know something about me. I’m not going to say yes to every darn thing that everybody comes up to me with, including sometimes the unions,” Villaraigosa said. “When I was mayor, they’ll tell you sometimes I had to say no. Why? I wasn’t going to go bankrupt, and I knew I had to protect pensions and the rest of it.”
He pledged to work with labor if elected governor.
Labor leaders asked most of the questions at the forum, with all of the candidates being asked about the same topics, such as if they supported and would campaign for a proposed state constitutional amendment to help UC workers with down-payment loans for houses.
“Hell yes,” said former Rep. Katie Porter of Irvine, who teaches at UC Irvine’s law school and benefited from a program created by state university leaders to allow faculty to buy houses priced below the market rate in costly Orange County because the high cost of housing in the region was an obstacle in recruiting professors.
“I get to benefit from UC Irvine’s investment in their professionals and professors and professional staff housing, but they are not doing it for everyone,” she said, noting workers such as clerks, janitors, and patient-care staff don’t have access to similar benefits.
State Supt. of Instruction Tony Thurmond, who entered the gathering dancing to Dr. Dre and Tupac’s “California Love,” agreed to support the housing loans as well as to walk picket lines with tens of thousands of Kaiser health employees expected to go on strike later this month.
“I will be there,” Thurmond responded, adding that he had just spoken on the phone with Kaiser’s CEO, and urged him to meet labor demands about staffing, pay, retirement and benefits, especially in the aftermath of their work during the pandemic. “Just get it done, damn it, and give them what they’re asking for.”
Former state Controller Betty Yee agreed to both requests as well, arguing that the healthcare employers are focused on profit at the expense of patient care.
“Yes, absolutely,” she said when asked about joining the Kaiser picket line. “Shame on them. You cannot be expected to take care of others if you cannot take care of yourselves.”
AFSCME local leaders listening to former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra speak at a gubernatorial forum Saturday in San Diego.
There was also an unfamiliar mental strain, as the former MVP slumped like he never had before.
There was a newfound process of having to flush such frustrations, forcing the 12-year veteran to accept failure, concede to a lost season, and reframe his mindset as the Dodgers approached the fall.
“I just accepted failing, so my thought process on failing changed,” Betts said in an introspective news conference on the eve of the playoffs.
“Instead of sulking on, ‘Well, I tried this and it failed, now I don’t know where to go,’ I just used it as positive things, and eventually turned.”
Betts’ full season, of course, will remain a disappointment. He posted personal low-marks in batting average (.258) and OPS (.732). He spent most of the summer with his confidence seemingly shot.
But from those depths has come a well-timed rebirth.
Amid a year of continuous turmoil, Betts finally found a way to mentally move on.
Over his final 47 games of the regular season, he batted .317 and nearly doubled his home run total, jumping from 11 on Aug. 4 to 20 by the end of the term.
During the Dodgers’ 15-5 finish to the schedule, he was one of the lineup’s hottest hitters, posting a .901 OPS that was second on the team only to Shohei Ohtani.
In the club’s wild-card-round sweep of the Cincinnati Reds, Betts’ production was even more prolific. He had six hits in the two games, including three doubles and three RBIs in the series clincher Wednesday night at Dodger Stadium.
And afterward, having helped the team book a spot in the National League Division Series against the Philadelphia Phillies, he reflected on his turbulent campaign again — attributing his recent success to the grind that came before it.
“I went through arguably one of the worst years of my career,” Betts said. “But I think it really made me mentally tough.”
All year, speculation swirled about the root causes of Betts’ struggles, which saw him miss the All-Star Game for the first time in a decade and bat as low as .231 through the first week of August.
His shortstop play was the most commonly blamed public culprit. The correlation, to many, seemed too obvious to ignore.
But this week, he finally granted some credence to the dynamic, putting the difficulties of the transition in a different, but connected, context.
“It’s hard to go back and forth,” he said of the balance between learning the fundamentals of shortstop while also trying to work through his offensive scuffles. “It’s a learned behavior going back [and forth] between offense and defense.”
This wasn’t a problem for Betts when he played right field, where he has six career Gold Glove awards.
“When I was in right, I didn’t have to do that,” Betts said. “I was just playing right. I didn’t have to think about it.”
At shortstop, on the other hand, he “had to think about everything,” from how to attack ground balls, to how to remake his throwing motion, to where to position himself for cutoff throws and relay plays.
“I was making errors I never made before,” Betts said. “I had never been in these situations.”
The Cincinnati Reds’ Spencer Steer is forced out at second base by Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts on a ground ball from Gavin Lux during the first inning of Game 2 of the National League Wild Card series on Wednesday.
(Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)
It hearkened back to something teammate Freddie Freeman said about Betts early in the season.
“It’s a lot to take on, to be a shortstop in the big leagues,” Freeman said in late May. “But once he gets everything under control, I think that’s when the hitting will pick right back up.”
Eventually, that prediction came true.
By the second half of the season, Betts finally stopped thinking his way through the shortstop position, and developed a comfort level that allowed him to simply play it.
“Now when I go out and play shortstop, it’s like I’m going out to right field,” Betts said. “I don’t even think about it. My training is good. I believe in myself. I believe in what I can do. And now it’s just like, go have fun.”
“Once short became where I didn’t have to think about it anymore,” he added, “I could really think about offense.”
Shortstop, of course, failed to explain the full extent of Betts’ hitting problems. Those started with the stomach virus he suffered at the beginning of the season, which wreaked havoc on his swing as much as his body.
Even after Betts regained the weight he lost, his strength remained diminished. It left his already underwhelming bat speed a tick lower than normal. It rendered his usual swing fixes ineffective as he battled mechanical flaws to which he struggled to find answers.
“It’s just hard to gain your weight and sustain strength in the middle of a season, when you’ve been traveling and doing all these things,” he said.
It felt like one domino kept bumping into the next. To the point where everything was on the verge of falling apart.
“My season’s kind of over,” Betts ultimately declared in early August. “We’re going to have to chalk [this] up for not a great season.”
That, though, is precisely when everything started to turn.
Moving forward, the 32-year-old decided then, he would commit himself to a new mindset: “I can go out and help the boys win every night,” he said. “Get an RBI, make a play, do something. I’m going to have to shift my focus there.”
Suddenly, where there was once only frustration, Betts started stacking one little victory after another. He would fist-pump sacrifice flies and ground balls that moved baserunners. He turned acrobatic plays on defense that refueled his once-dwindling confidence.
“When he kind of said that the year was lost, when he made that admission, that’s when I think it sort of flipped for him,” manager Dave Roberts said. “Just freeing his mind up.”
It helped that, down the stretch, Roberts committed to keeping Betts at shortstop; last year, the Dodgers shifted Betts to the outfield when he came back from injury in August.
“I take a lot of pride in it,” said Betts, who wound up leading all MLB shortstops in defensive runs saved this year. “At the start of the season, I wasn’t sure I would end the season there. I thought there may have to be an adjustment at some point, from lack of trust or whatever. I just didn’t know. So I’m just proud of myself for making it all the way through the year, and actually achieving a goal that I kind of set out to do: Being a major league shortstop, and say I did it and I’m good at it.”
His bat also started to gradually come around. Part of the reason was simple. “I was just able to finally get my strength back,” he said. But much of it was the result of hard work, with Betts spending long hours in the cage with not only the Dodgers’ hitting coaches, but former teammate and longtime swing confidant J.D. Martinez as well (who worked with Betts during both an August trip to Florida and a visit to Los Angeles for Betts’ charity pickleball tournament a few weeks later).
“I didn’t really have to try and add on power anymore,” Betts said. “I could just swing and let it do its thing.”
All of it amounted to one long process of Betts learning to move on. From his early physical ailments. From his persistent mental anguish. From a set of season-long challenges unlike any he’d previously endured.
“Slowly but surely,” Betts said, “started to get better and better.”
And now, entering Game 1 of the NLDS on Saturday, it has him back in a leading role for the Dodgers’ pursuit of a second straight World Series title: Starting at shortstop, swinging a hot bat, and having solved the mystery of a season that once looked lost.
“Better late than never,” he quipped Wednesday night. “It’s just one of those things where, you’ve just gotta keep going, man … So now, there’s just a different level of focus.”
As world leaders talked about acting against Israel at the UN General Assembly, more than 360 Palestinians in Gaza were killed, with many more injured, starved and displaced by the ongoing genocide. Israel has killed 66,000 Palestinians since October 7, 2023.
At the heart of the uproar over allegations that Kawhi Leonard of the Los Angeles Clippers received millions in undisclosed payments from a tree-planting startup is a National Basketball Association rule that caps the the total annual payroll for teams.
According to a report by Pablo Torre of the Athletic, bankruptcy documents show that the tree-planting startup Aspiration Partners paid Leonard $21 million — and still owes him another $7 million — after agreeing to a $28 million contract for endorsement and marketing work at the company.
The report claims there is no evidence to show that Leonard did anything for Aspiration Partners, whose initial funding came in large part from Clippers owner Steve Ballmer. Torre alleges that the payment to Leonard was a way to skirt the NBA salary cap and pad his contract.
The Clippers have forcefully denied that they or Ballmer “circumvented the salary cap or engaged in any misconduct related to Aspiration.”
Still, the NBA said it was launching an investigation into the matter.
The salary cap is a dollar amount that limits what teams can spend on player payroll. The number is determined based on a percentage of projected income for the upcoming year. In 2024-25, the salary cap was $140.6 million.
The purpose of the cap is to ensure parity, preventing the wealthiest teams from outspending smaller markets to acquire the best players. Teams that exceed the cap must pay luxury tax penalties that grow increasingly severe. Revenues from the tax penalties are then distributed in part to smaller-market teams and in part to teams that do not exceed the salary cap.
The cap was implemented before the 1984-85 season at a mere $3.6 million. Ten years later, it was $15.9 million, and 10 years after that it had risen to $43.9 million. By the 2014-15 season it was $63.1 million.
The biggest spike came before the 2016-2017 season when it jumped to $94 million because of an influx of revenue from a new nine-year, $24 billion media rights deal with ESPN and TNT.
Salary cap rules negotiated between the NBA and the players’ union are spelled out in the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA). Proven incidents of teams circumventing the cap are few, with a violation by the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2000 serving as the most egregious.
The Timberwolves made a secret agreement with free agent and former No. 1 overall draft pick Joe Smith, signing him to a succession of below-market one-year deals in order to enable the team to go over the cap with a huge contract ahead of the 2001-2002 season.
The NBA voided his contract, fined the Timberwolves $3.5 million, and stripped them of five first-round draft picks — two of which were later returned. Also, owner Glen Taylor and general manager Kevin McHale were suspended.
Then-NBA commissioner David Stern told the Minnesota Star-Tribune at the time: “What was done here was a fraud of major proportions. There were no fewer than five undisclosed contracts tightly tucked away, in the hope that they would never see the light of day. … The magnitude of this offense was shocking.”
Current commissioner Adam Silver is just as adamant as Stern when it comes to enforcing salary cap rules, although the current CBA limits punishment.
According to Article 13 of the CBA, if the Clippers were found to have circumvented the cap, it would be a first offense punishable by a $4.5 million fine, one first-round draft pick, and voiding of Leonard’s contract. However, the Clippers don’t have a first-round pick until 2027.
Leonard, one of the Clippers stars, is extremely well compensated. He will have been paid $375,772,011 by NBA teams through the upcoming season, according to industry expert spotrac.com.
A former Aspiration finance department employee whose voice was disguised on Torre’s podcast said that when they noticed the shockingly large fee paid to Leonard, they were told that, “If I had any questions about it, essentially don’t, because it was to circumvent the salary cap, LOL. There was lots of LOL when things were shared.”
Aspiration Partners was a digital bank that promoted socially responsible spending and investments that, at one point, brought in a star-filled roster of investors that included Drake, Robert Downey Jr., and Leonardo DiCaprio. Founded in 2013, it offered investments in “conscious coalition” companies and offered carbon credits to businesses. The company was valued it at $2.3 million at one point.
But in August, the company’s co-founder, Joseph Sanberg, agreed to plead guilty to charges that he defrauded investors and lenders. Federal prosecutors accused Sanberg of causing more than $248 million in losses, calling him a “fraudster.”
Prosecutors alleged that Sanberg and another member of the company’s board, Ibrahim AlHusseini, fraudulently obtained $145 million in loans by promising shares from Sanberg’s stock in the company. AlHusseini allegedly falsified records to inflate his assets to obtain the loans, and Sanberg concealed from investigators that he was the source for revenue that was recognized by the company.
Sanberg had also recruited companies and individuals to claim they would be paying tens of thousands of dollars to have trees planted, but instead Sanberg used legal entities under his control to hide that he was making these payments, not the customers.
Aspiration, which was partially funded by Ballmer with a $50 million investment, filed for bankruptcy in March.
The company was expected to pay more than $300 million over two decades as a sponsor for the Clippers’ Intuit Dome, which opened in August 2024. But before the new arena opened, the Clippers said Aspiration was no longer a sponsor, just as the Justice Department and Commodity Futures Trading Commission began looking into allegations that Aspiration had misled customers and investors.
During Aspiration’s bankruptcy proceedings, documents emerged citing KL2 Aspire as a creditor owed $7 million, one of four yearly payments of that amount agreed upon in a 2022 contract. KL2 is a limited liability company that names Leonard — whose jersey number is 2 — as its manager.
Aspiration was partially funded by a $50-million investment from Ballmer. It is not known whether Ballmer was aware of or played a role in facilitating the employment agreement between Aspiration and Leonard.
The Clippers issued a lengthy statement Thursday, attempting to explain why Leonard being paid by Aspiration was unrelated to his contract with the Clippers.
“There is nothing unusual or untoward about team sponsors doing endorsement deals with players on the same team,” the statement said in part. “Neither Steve nor the Clippers organization had any oversight of Kawhi’s independent endorsement agreement with Aspiration. To say otherwise is flat-out wrong.”
“The Clippers take NBA compliance extremely seriously, fully respect the league’s rules, and welcome its investigation related to Aspiration.”
In his reporting, Torre noted that Leonard’s contract with Aspiration included an unusual clause that said the company could terminate the endorsement agreement if Leonard was no longer a member of the Clippers.
Mark Cuban, part owner of the Dallas Mavericks, took to X.com to suggest that Torre’s reporting was faulty.
‘I’m on Team Ballmer,” Cuban wrote. “As much as I wish they circumvented the salary cap, First Steve isn’t that dumb. If he did try to feed KL money, knowing what was at stake for him personally, and his team, do you think he would let the company go bankrupt ? “
Gilbert Arenas and Skip Bayless have made news lately for reasons they would rather forget. Now, they will attempt to put an entertaining spin on NFL news in a digital program launching Tuesday and airing three times a week.
Arenas, a Van Nuys Grant High product who played 11 seasons in the NBA, will rebrand his current channel. Bayless, who had long runs on ESPN’s “First Take” and FS1’s “Undisputed,” will be featured on “The Arena: Gridiron” along with former NFL coach Jay Gruden and former NFL cornerback Aqib Talib.
Arenas was arrested July 30 and charged along with five others with conspiracy for allegedly running illegal poker games at his Encino mansion, court records show. Arenas, 43, rented out the mansion “for the purposes of hosting high-stakes illegal poker games,” according to a news release issued by the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.
The three-time All-Star guard — who went by the nickname “Agent Zero” according to federal authorities — was charged with conspiracy to operate an illegal gambling business, operating an illegal gambling business and making false statements to federal investigators.
Among the others charged was Yevgeni Gershman, 49, a.k.a. “Giora,” of Woodland Hills, who the U.S. attorney’s office described as “a suspected organized crime figure from Israel.” Arenas pleaded not guilty and was released on a $50,000 bond.
Bayless has also been sifting through court filings. He is a defendant along with Fox Sports, broadcaster Joy Taylor and executive Charlie Dixon in a lawsuit by former FS1 hairstylist Noushin Faraji, who alleged that Bayless offered her $1.5 million for sex.
Faraji filed a request to dismiss the lawsuit this month in L.A. Superior Court, which legal experts said is an indication that a settlement has been reached.
Bayless told the Athletic that he isn’t bothered by the criminal charges against Arenas.
“I’ve talked to Gil,” he said. “He has no concerns. I mean, he’s obviously concerned, but he believes he did nothing at all wrong, except rent out his space, and I believe in him.”
Underdog, a five-year-old gaming and media firm, will own and produce the show. Arenas’ two digital basketball programs under “Gil’s Arena” have become one of Underdog’s biggest draws.
Shifting to football prompted the addition of Bayless, whose spirited back-and-forth on social media with Arenas grew into a professional relationship.
“I’m back in the saddle in the debate arena,” Bayless said. “I live for this. I love this.”
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — James Dobson, a child psychologist who founded the conservative ministry Focus on the Family and was a politically influential campaigner against abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, died on Thursday. He was 89.
Born in 1936 in Shreveport, La., Dobson launched a radio show counseling Christians on how to be good parents and in 1977 started Focus on the Family.
He became a force in the 1980s for pushing conservative Christian ideals in mainstream American politics alongside fundamentalist giants like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. At its peak, Focus on the Family had more than 1,000 employees and gave Dobson a platform to weigh in on legislation and serve as an advisor to five presidents.
His death was confirmed by the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. He is survived by his wife of 64 years, Shirley, as well as their two children, a daughter-in-law and two grandchildren.
‘Mount Rushmore’ of conservatives
Dobson interviewed President Reagan in the Oval Office in 1985, and Falwell called him a rising star in 1989. Decades later, he was among the evangelical leaders tapped to advise President Trump in 2016.
In 2022, he praised Trump for appointing conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that allowed states to ban abortion.
“Whether you like Donald Trump or not, whether you supported or voted for him or not, if you are supportive of this Dobbs decision that struck down Roe v. Wade, you have to mention in the same breath the man who made it possible,” he said in a ministry broadcast.
Dobson belongs on the “Mount Rushmore” of Christian conservatives, said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, another group Dobson founded. He promoted ideas from “a biblical standpoint” that pushed back against progressive parenting of the 1960s, Perkins said.
Weighing Dobson’s legacy
John Fea, an American History professor at Messiah College in Pennsylvania, has been critical of Dobson’s politics and ideas but recounts how his own father was a better parent after becoming an evangelical Christian and listening to Dobson’s radio program. Fea’s dad was a tough Marine who spanked his kids when he was mad at them. Dobson advocated spanking to enforce discipline but said it shouldn’t be done in anger.
“Even as a self-identified evangelical Christian that I am, I have no use in my own life for Dobson’s politics or his child-rearing,” he said. “But as a historian what do you do with these stories? About a dad who becomes a better dad?”
Possible presidential run
After developing a following of millions, Dobson considered running for president in the 2000 election, following in the footsteps of former television minister Pat Robertson’s surprise success in 1988.
“He had a big audience. He was not afraid to speak out,” said Ralph Reed, a Christian conservative political organizer and lobbyist who founded the Faith and Freedom Coalition. “If Jim had decided to run, he would have been a major force.”
Despite their close association later in life, Reed’s enduring memory is of Dobson’s voice as his sole companion while traveling through rural America as a younger political organizer.
“I’d be out there somewhere, and I could go to the AM dial and there was never a time, day or night when I couldn’t find that guy,” Reed said. “There will probably never be another one like him.”
A political juggernaut for decades
Dobson helped create a constellation of Family Policy Councils in around 40 states that work in tandem with his organization to push a socially conservative agenda and lobby lawmakers, said Peter Wolfgang, executive director of one such group in Connecticut.
“If there is one man above all whom I would credit with being the builder — not just the thinker — who gave us the institutions that created the space for President Trump to help us turn the tide in the culture war, it would be Dr. James Dobson,” Wolfgang wrote in a column last month.
James Bopp, a lawyer who has represented Focus on the Family, said Dobson was able to rally public support like few other social conservatives.
Records compiled by the watchdog group Open Secrets show that Focus on the Family and Family Research Council have combined to spend more than $4 million on political ads and close to $2 million lobbying Congress since the late 1990s.
Opposition to abortion and LGBTQ+ rights
Dobson left Focus on the Family in 2010 and founded the institute that bears his name. He continued with the Family Talk radio show, which is nationally syndicated and is carried by 1,500 radio outlets with more than half a million listeners weekly, according to the institute.
His radio program featured guests talking about the importance of embracing religion and rejecting homosexuality, promoting the idea that people could change their sexuality.
“The homosexual community will tell us that transformations never occur. That you cannot change,” he said in a 2021 video posted on his institute’s site that promoted “success stories” of people who “no longer struggle with homosexuality” after attending a ministry. He said there is typically a “pain and agitation” associated with homosexuality.
Conversion therapy is the scientifically discredited practice of using therapy to “convert” LGBTQ+ people to heterosexuality or traditional gender expectations.
The practice has been banned in 23 states and the District of Columbia, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ+ rights think tank.
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed in March to hear a Colorado case about whether state and local governments can enforce laws banning conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ children.
Ted Bundy interview
An anti-pornography crusader, Dobson recorded a video interview with serial killer Ted Bundy the day before his 1989 execution. Bundy told Dobson that exposure to pornography helped fuel his sexual urges to a point that he looked for satisfaction by mutilating, killing and raping women.
Months after the execution, Bundy’s attorney James Coleman downplayed the Dobson exchange.
“I think that was a little bit of Ted telling the minister what he wanted to hear and Ted offering an explanation that would exonerate him personally,” Coleman said in an interview with the AP. “I had heard that before and I told Ted I never accepted it.”
Catalini and Meyer write for the Associated Press. Catalini reported from Trenton, N.J., and Meyer from Nashville. AP writers Tom Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa; Tiffany Stanley in Washington; Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, N.J.; and Susan Haigh in Hartford, Conn., contributed to this report.
