A Dark Horse Presidential Candidate Mostly Wants To Bring Back The Hartford Whalers

It’s an election year, which means politics will enter into pretty much every part of American society over the next few months. That includes in sports, where sticking to what’s happening on the field is as impossible as turning back the clock to prevent a hockey team from relocating to Raleigh. Still, that doesn’t mean those running for the highest office in the land aren’t concerned about the plight of the Hartford Whalers.

In a story about dark horse presidential candidates in the Boston Globe, we meet a few of those mostly unknown candidates who are extremely unlikely to actually win the presidency. We start with Lorenz Kraus, who wants to dissolve the presidency altogether. But then there’s Mark Stewart Greenstein, who has much more reasonable goals in mind: he wants to bring the Whalers back to Hartford.

Stewart Greenstein, who owns a test tutoring business in Hartford, Conn., and also ran for president in 2016, said he wanted to make sure Kraus didn’t say anything even more ridiculous. That and he didn’t really have anywhere else to go.

Running a campaign the size of Stewart Greenstein’s comes with many limitations. He has no staff and no funding and his presidential campaign signs are printed on the back of lawn signs from another campaign he is running, which is to bring the Whalers back to Hartford and return professional hockey to his hometown.

It’s not entirely clear if Stewart Greenstein is running for president primarily to bring the Whale back to Hartford, but it’s clear that he’s passionate about it and inevitably your passions become part of who you are. He’s also apparently ran for Connecticut governor on a similar platform in 2018, according to the Hartford Courant.

He appeared on the ballot under the “Amigo Constitution Party” line.

Greenstein first ran as a Democrat, appearing at several forums and debates during the Democratic gubernatorial primary. A major focus of his campaign was bringing the Whalers back to Hartford.

“Frankly, I would rather have the Whalers back than be governor,” he told The Courant in March.

It’s safe to say having a huge Whalers fan in the White House could be the break Connecticut needs to bring the NHL back if the league is looking to relocate a franchise. Given that Seattle’s NHL team will bring the league to an even 32 teams, expansion seems off the table. But there’s always hope we’ll have reason to break out the “Brass Bonanza” if things go well in New Hampshire later this year.