Colin Kaepernick now says New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani inspires him to vote.
The former NFL quarterback, who famously refused to vote as part of his protest against what he called American oppression, is reversing course. Mamdani, the socialist mayor of New York City, has prompted Kaepernick to reconsider his long-held position and to encourage his followers to head to the polls.
Back in 2016, Kaepernick made his stance plain. “I think it would be hypocritical of me to vote,” he said in a media interview that year. He argued that participating in elections would contradict his opposition to what he described as a system of oppression. “The oppressor isn’t going to allow you to vote your way out of your oppression,” he said at the time. That same year, he knelt during the national anthem at an NFL game, the act that first brought him national attention.
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For years, he stuck to that position and stayed away from the ballot box entirely. According to a report citing Breitbart News, Kaepernick has since acknowledged in a new book that refusing to vote may have been an “irresponsible” choice.
“The realization coming out of the 2016 election is how significant the implications can be of not voting, even if you don’t fully think this candidate represents you,” he writes. He points to the Supreme Court and federal judiciary as examples of what is at stake when voters stay home.
Kaepernick also admits in the book that his original approach had a flaw in its logic. “The intention of the perspective was right, but the strategy behind it actually wasn’t,” he writes. He frames his shift not as abandoning his beliefs, but as finding a more effective path forward.
The change in his behavior backs that up. Kaepernick says he voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election and for Kamala Harris in 2024. Both votes represent a significant break from his years of public refusal to engage with the electoral process.
Now, Mamdani’s rise in New York City politics is pushing Kaepernick further in that direction. He says the mayor not only inspires him personally but is also motivating him to urge his fans to participate in elections.
It is a notable shift for a figure who built much of his public identity around rejecting the very system he now appears willing to engage with. Whether his audience follows his lead remains to be seen.
