The Chant Returns in Gainesville The University of Florida brought back the “Gator Bait” cheer Saturday during the Gators’ game against the Florida Atlantic Owls at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in Gainesville. The cheer, long known for fans stretching out their arms and clapping them like an alligator’s jaws, had been shelved in June 2020. Video from the season opener circulated on X, showing the UF marching band performing the cheer and fans responding inside the stadium. For many Florida supporters, it was the return of a familiar game-day tradition that had been placed in storage during one of the more tense chapters in recent campus politics. Why The Cheer Was Removed In 2020, then-University of Florida President Kent Fuchs said the phrase carried concerns because of historic racist imagery from the late 1800s and early 1900s, including depictions tied to alligator hunting. At the same time, Fuchs also said he knew of no evidence that racism was connected to the “Gator Bait” cheer at UF sporting events. That was the central tension from the start: the school was not saying the actual stadium chant had racist intent or history on campus, but it still removed the cheer because the…

A Storm Visit Becomes a Campaign Optics Test After a tornado tore through Detroit’s East Side last Wednesday and caused extensive damage, Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed went to the area the next day and posted that he was there to assess damage and check on the community. He also wrote that power would likely be out for a while and argued for burying power lines and strengthening the grid. That is a serious subject. But in politics, the camera is never just a camera. It is also a truth serum for campaign staff, message discipline, and whatever committee approved the outfit before anyone said, perhaps gently, maybe not that. https://twitter.com/AbdulElSayed/status/2095982708950188445?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw The Pink Poncho Takes Center Stage On Saturday, former Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt shared a photo of El-Sayed standing next to a much taller man while wearing the same pink poncho. Pratt claimed there must be a “mole” inside the campaign trying to sabotage him, pointing out that it appeared to be only drizzling and that others nearby were not wearing ponchos. Leave it to modern politics to turn storm recovery into a wardrobe audit. The more useful question is not about height, which no candidate controls,…