The Army and the National Guard have both sponsored race teams. Lawmakers wheel on NASCAR

Back when he was still trail boss for Howard and Phil’s Western Wear in California, Buck McKeon was invited down South by Wrangler Jeans to see its factory, take in the local track and meet a NASCAR legend.

“They were sponsoring No. 3, which was Dale Earnhardt Sr.,” McKeon recalled with a touch of reverence. “A few years later, they changed presidents, and the new president cut out NASCAR. It was not a good move.”


Decades later, the affable California Republican has moved past snap-button shirts and cowboy boots to chair the House Armed Services Committee, overseeing a more than $600 billion defense budget. But as the annual Pentagon appropriations bill comes to the floor Wednesday, NASCAR and the Earnhardt family are still players in what’s become a satire on Washington politics and culture and how the military spends its advertising dollars to draw in fresh recruits.

It’s a wildly different world than when the draft guaranteed a steady stream of low-paid, single males without families needing government housing. Indeed, tens of millions of dollars go out each year just to pay for Pentagon sports partnerships to build the military’s image and draw recruits from the same demographic of 18-to-24-year-olds.

These sponsorships run from bass fishing contests to the Ultimate Fighting Championship, a Las Vegas-based martial arts enterprise paid about $1.5 million a year to be a “warrior” partner with the Marines. UFC brings a checkered past of anti-gay, sexist outbursts, but dressed up by the advertising giant JWT, it now stars in stylish videos, pairing cage fight scenes with Marine amphibious landings — even Iwo Jima.

“Some fight in the octagon; others fight in all four corners of the earth,” reads the script. “Some victories are measured in belts and titles. Some are measured in stars and stripes.”

But nothing is bigger than NASCAR with its television audience, logo-bearing race cars and proven appeal to rural males. And the big-dollar contracts have caught the eye of Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), a stern former high school teacher who has waged an uphill battle against what she sees as frivolous military spending.

The Army and National Guard alone have spent almost $174 million in the past four years to sponsor two NASCAR race teams, including the late Earnhardt’s son, Dale, better known as Junior. Rep. Bill Young (R-Fla.), a powerhouse on defense matters, never forgets Daytona International Speedway in his home state. And when McCollum took on NASCAR in the annual defense authorization bill this spring, the House Rules Committee — controlled by McKeon’s friend Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) — denied her a chance to even offer her amendment.

Enter Rep. Jack Kingston, a Georgia Republican from NASCAR’s backyard.

With four military bases, including Fort Stewart in his district, Kingston brings the Southern male moxie that McCollum lacks. And when he offered her amendment in the House Appropriations Committee in May, it passed on a voice vote.

“I’m very pro-military,” Kingston told his colleagues. “But $20 million for one NASCAR race [team]? Have we lost our minds?”

As adopted, the provision allows the military to continue to sponsor amateur and high school competitions much as the Marines do with their Semper Fidelis All-American Bowl, a football program. But spending on professional or semi-pro events is forbidden. And as a backstop, Kingston and McCollum are proposing to take $72.5 million from marketing funds — a symbolic cut meant to approximate the amount spent on sports sponsorships.

The Army announced last week that it will end its four-year contract with Stewart-Haas Racing and will no longer be a primary sponsor of the No. 39 Chevrolet driven by NASCAR’s Ryan Newman. But the National Guard is defiant, digging in behind North Carolina-based Hendrick Motorsports and No. 88, driven by Dale Jr.

“At this time, there are no plans to significantly reduce or change the contract amount,” a National Guard spokesman said, denying reports of big cuts. “With the sport’s most popular driver, combined with a 77-million strong fan base, we will continue to create a fundamental awareness of the National Guard as a career option through our NASCAR efforts.”

NASCAR, which was already represented by Ogilvy Government Relations, has added the well-connected firm Purple Strategies as part of a new counteroffensive with the National Motorsports Council. Former Indiana Republican Rep. Steve Buyer represents Panther Racing of the Indy Racing League. And the International Speedway Corp., owner of legendary tracks like Daytona, Watkins Glen International and Talladega Superspeedway, has Cornerstone Government Affairs in its, well, corner.

A new Sports to Service website hammers Kingston and McCollum. But in its biggest coup, NASCAR unveiled a letter of opposition this week, joined by Major League Baseball, the National Football League and the National Basketball Association.

“It’s not something that I’m going to the mat on,” McKeon told POLITICO. But his staff is.

A June 21 letter under the chairman’s signature asked the Rules Committee to leave the Kingston-McCollum language exposed to a point of order. McKeon insists he knew nothing of the letter. But having blocked the amendment from being offered to the authorization bill, Armed Services essentially wants it stricken — without a vote — as legislation on an appropriations bill.

NASCAR is taking no chances. The defense dollars mean nothing to it financially, but NASCAR’s very brand is at risk because its whole economic model rests on teams being able to draw sponsors to put them on the track.

Football and baseball fans might be loyal to a team because of where the fans live. NASCAR resembles more of a traveling circus: Fans transfer their loyalty not to a place but to the sponsors who put their drivers out there.

This fan-to-sponsor bond is what NASCAR sells: Jimmie Johnson’s legions are more likely to buy a can of paint at Lowe’s — his sponsor — than the Home Depot next door. At some level, NASCAR is one long commercial: cars flying across the television screen, each with its logo, and sophisticated imaging technology measuring just how long each is seen by viewers and how that translates to a more conventional 30-second TV spot.

With his famous name — and high ranking this season — young Earnhardt commands more airtime and more fees.

The Guard has paid Hendricks as much as $135 million over the past five years. In a roughly 38-race season, Junior is shared chiefly with PepsiCo, a second primary sponsor. The Guard’s logo remains on the car, but the familiar red, white and blue colors give way to an alternative paint job with green for Diet Mountain Dew.

“We care about this issue because we strongly believe that the military gets a strong return on their investment,” said Marcus Jadotte, public affairs vice president for NASCAR. “The military should continue to have the flexibility to serve its brand as it decides best.”

NASCAR’s argument is that the pro-sports ban will succeed only in taking a tool out of the toolbox of the military marketers. And for a state-based organization like the Guard, it is a useful tool around which to organize when NASCAR comes to town, as in New Hampshire last weekend.

Nonetheless, the debate is a reminder of just how expensive personnel have become in the modern volunteer military.

In real dollars, annual personnel appropriations — adjusted for the reduced force levels — have risen 84 percent since the height of the Vietnam War in 1968. And with the Pentagon budget under siege, personnel costs consume 27 cents of every defense dollar.

Mindful of this, Kingston recited a long list of .50-caliber machine guns, grenade launchers and M4 carbines that could be purchased with the estimated $80 million spent on sports partnerships this year.

“A typical call we get on this is, ‘I’m a big NASCAR fan, but you’re right,’” he told POLITICO. “We do think the military and recruiters should be at sporting events. But they don’t need to be writing million-dollar checks.”

In fact, the Marine Corps ended its relationship with NASCAR in 2006 and takes pride in its youth sports camps and national football program in which real drill instructors participate. The partnership with UFC, by comparison, accounts for less than 2 percent of the Marines’ marketing budget.

Nonetheless, it is controversial and could yet become a factor in the House floor debate.

UFC insists that it is cleaning up its image, but less than three months ago, Anheuser-Busch, a major sponsor, issued a warning about derogatory statements made by some of the fighters. A long labor dispute between the culinary workers in Las Vegas and the UFC’s casino owners fans the flames with petitions to the Marine commandant and a website posting raunchy videos.

Jim DuPont, who signed up with the Marines as a teenager in 1971, looks back now from his post as the 59-year-old food service director for Unite Here — with which the culinary workers are affiliated.

“Even if I weren’t in this labor fight, this would politicize me,” he told POLITICO. “Three days out of high school, I enlisted. This is not what the Marines are about.”