“All right, I’ve had enough!”
Tracy Patterson’s old-school Brooklyn accent rang out in the bar in Arizona where a New York Jets fan club had gathered to witness its team losing — again. It was the first preseason game, and the offense had already given up back-to-back interceptions.
Same old Jets.
“Here we go again,” Ms. Patterson said as she glared at the TV screens in disgust, paid her bar tab and walked out into the reddish-brown desert landscape of Maricopa County.
The fan club meets for every Jets game at the same bar, a masochistic ritual of perennial disappointment. But this season, the heavy burden of being a fan of the Green and White comes with a twist that is proving to be a welcome distraction from the team’s consistent ranking near the bottom of the league.
It has to do with a different type of Jets contest that was set last month. Two people associated with the team — a retired kicker, Jay Feely, and a former Jets sideline doctor, Amish Shah — won their respective primaries and lined up against each other for a U.S. House seat representing the Scottsdale area, on the edge of Phoenix. Mr. Feely is a Republican, and Dr. Shah is a Democrat.
Some are calling it the doc versus the jock. But the political contest also spawned the type of dark humor that Jets fans rely on as a coping mechanism. “The New York Jets are guaranteed at least 1 win in November this year,” wrote one jaded New York sports fan on social media.
In political terms, the race is no joke. At a time when the outcome in so many districts is all but predetermined by gerrymandering, Arizona’s First Congressional District is widely considered a coin toss and a contest that could help determine control of Congress.
Dr. Shah, who worked for the Jets for five seasons ending in 2012, seems uncertain how much to advertise his connection to such a losing franchise. His time with the Jets was a “job of a lifetime,” he said in an interview.
“But let’s be really clear,” he said. “I’m from Chicago, and that’s my team.” To reinforce the point, he quoted the Bears head coach Ben Johnson: “Good, better, best!”
Mr. Feely, who played for six teams over a decade and a half in the N.F.L., more readily embraced his Jets past. He was the starting kicker in 2008 and 2009, which he said was the “most fun” he had in the N.F.L. It was before the Jets became the punchline of late-night comedy. The last time they reached the NFL playoffs, in 2010, seems like a different era: TikTok was still years from existence and former President Barack Obama was in his first term.
Although Mr. Feely’s tenure with the Jets overlapped with Dr. Shah’s, the two men don’t remember meeting each other. Yet there are subtle hints of sportsmanlike camaraderie in the race. When Dr. Shah won the Democratic primary last month, Mr. Feely called him to praise what he said was his opponent’s civil approach to campaigning and his avoidance of personal attacks.
“I told him I want to do the exact same thing,” Mr. Feely said, “and hopefully you and I can be a model for the rest of the country.”
The civility seemed to have a short shelf life, with Mr. Feely this week accusing Dr. Shah, a moderate, of aligning with far-left Democrats who oppose private property and prisons.
Among the sharpest policy differences between the two men are their approaches to health care. Dr. Shah supports a Medicare option for people of all ages alongside private insurance. Mr. Feely says he is opposed to that idea because costs skyrocket “anytime the government gets involved and guarantees something.”
Mr. Feely says he will “stand unapologetically with Israel.”
Dr. Shah says that “Israel shouldn’t be treated any differently from many of the other countries that we consider our allies.”
In a state famous for producing politicians willing to buck their party establishment — Barry Goldwater, John McCain and Kyrsten Sinema being three major examples — both Dr. Shah and Mr. Feely portray themselves as independent-minded. The district also happens to be the wealthiest in Arizona, with the most college graduates.
Dr. Shah is a state lawmaker who has disagreed with his party on legislation involving crime and cracking down on illicit drugs. He has won the endorsement of two police unions, a rare feat for a Democrat in Arizona. He strengthened his image of independence when the Democratic House campaign arm, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, supported his rival in a bitter primary campaign. Dr. Shah won anyway.
“I’m a guy who stood up to the Democratic establishment and won,” he said.
Republicans outnumber Democrats in the district by around 60,000 voters, but both candidates agree that the large cohort of independents will be crucial in deciding the election.
“It’s a district that voted for Trump and Ruben Gallego in the same election,” Mr. Feely said, referring to the Democratic senator, who appeared on the same ballot as Donald Trump in the 2024 election. “It’s a district that truly cares about the candidate. They are not just going to vote for one party, one side.”
Yet Mr. Feely may have a hard time convincing voters of his independence. He is one of Mr. Trump’s occasional golf partners, and his campaign signs in the district say “Trump Endorsed” in bold letters. That may be a liability at a time when the president’s poll numbers are starting to resemble the Jets’ chances of winning the Super Bowl anytime soon.
Mr. Feely initially planned to run in Arizona’s Fifth Congressional District, where he has lived for more than a decade. He said he had switched to the First Congressional District at the request of Mr. Trump and other party leaders. (Mr. Trump had someone else in mind for the Fifth District, Mark Lamb, a former sheriff who has been embroiled in a scandal involving sexting women outside his marriage.)
So it was Mr. Trump, a man from Queens, who helped set up the contest involving the team from Queens. (The Jets got their name partly from the planes taking off all around them for the two decades they called Shea Stadium, sandwiched between the LaGuardia and Kennedy airports, their home. They moved to New Jersey in 1984.)
Ms. Patterson said she had found out about the Jet-on-Jet political contest when someone mentioned Dr. Shah’s connection to the team in a local group chat for Jets fans: “I said, ‘What doctor are you freakin’ talking about?’ I had to look it up and then I said, ‘You’ve gotta be kidding me.’ From MetLife to Maricopa.”
Ms. Patterson, who works as a nurse, says she has no doubt who she is voting for. “I’m very liberal,” she said.
Everyone in the group dresses in green and white for games, but politically they are pretty evenly divided between red and blue.
Daniel Moskow, a group member who works in finance, is a three-time Trump voter from Long Island who says he favors Mr. Feely.
Mr. Moskow helped set up the fan group, which he jokes is necessary for mental-health reasons. “We have to watch each other and make sure no one does any self-harm,” he said.
Jorge Toledo, who had the misfortune of attaching his football devotion to the Jets growing up in Mexico City, tears up after every loss. “He literally cries,” said his friend, Linda Bader, who shares Mr. Toledo’s loyalty to the team.
As each consecutive losing season wears them down, fans in the group talk about a numbness that sets in. Some say they feel the same way about being voters in today’s political environment, wanting to put paper bags over their heads after watching the news just as Jets fans are known to do to protest a dismal performance.
Sometimes, the despair becomes irrational. Mr. Moskow mused whether the curse of the Jets might actually affect the House race.
“Somehow, they will both end up losing,” he said.
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
