Fact check: Radio hosts should find out why Stapleton left out his squash-playing history at Brunswick School and Williams College
Last month, in a free-wheeling conversation on conservative talk radio, KNUS host Julie Hayden asked Republican operative Dick Wadhams about GOP gubernatorial candidate Walker Stapleton.
“How does he tap his inner populist?” asked Hayden.
“That’s a good question. Ultimately, you can’t make somebody into something they’re not,” replied Wadhams.
Stapleton sounds as if he’d been listening to Wadhams, judging from his subsequent interview with KNUS’ Craig Silverman.
Stapleton was forthcoming about his private school education at the Brunswick school in Connecticut followed by four years at Williams College in Massachusetts.
At Williams, which he described as “politically correct to a fault,” he said he helped bring conservative William F. Buckley to speak, and he wrote articles for the Williams Free Press.
Stapleton told Silverman during the March 10 interview that he “ruffled some feathers” at Williams.
So it appears that Stapleton might be taking Wadhams advice and embracing his past, trying to show that made the most of it.
But strangely, Stapleton got his own background wrong when Silverman asked him, “What sports did you play?”
STAPLETON: “I played baseball. I played tennis. And I was more — I was a rackets guy. Baseball and tennis were my — were my two.”
A search of Brunswick’s website reveals that Stapleton played squash there. The school proudly lists Stapleton among its student athletes that went on to compete at the college level.
The website states: “Brunswick offers a competitive athletic program that prepares our students for participation in college athletics. While many of our students choose to continue sports on an intramural basis in college, Brunswick’s premier athletes have met with considerable success on college varsity teams. Here is a recent overview of our college athletes.”
Stapleton is listed among the squash players.
Maybe Stapleton played baseball and tennis, too, but it appears he was also a serious squash competitor. And he apparently played it at Williams college as well.
An email to Stapleton’s campaign, asking why he didn’t mention his squash history, was not immediately returned.