Manny Pacquiao: ‘I got Jerry Brown and Harry Reid elected’

Did Manny Pacquiao allow the Democrats to keep control of the U.S. Senate on Tuesday? He says he did: that his appearance at a rally for Harry Reid in Las Vegas on Monday made the difference in Reid’s win over Tea Party candidate Sharron Angle in Nevada’s mid-term election. Pacquiao also says that he helped get Jerry Brown elected governor. From the Los Angeles Times:

“[Reid] was behind 4% in the polls before I got out there,” Pacquiao told The Times on Wednesday before a workout at Wild Card Gym in Hollywood, where he’s preparing for his Nov. 13 junior-middleweight title fight against Mexico’s Antonio Margarito. “There’s a lot of Filipinos in Las Vegas.”

Sure, you’re laughing; I am too. But Pacquiao could be right, at least in the case of the Senate race. His ability to motivate the estimated 30,000 Filipinos in Las Vegas — and nearly 100,000 in the state of Nevada — to get out to the polls cannot be discounted. And with Reid beating Angle by 40,000 votes, with three-fourths of Asians reporting at exit polls that they voted for Reid, according to the Times, there may be something to the Pacquiao theory. Of course, the fact that Angle has supported the ending of Medicare and Social Security and abolishing the Energy and Education departments may have had something to do with it as well.

“I also helped Brown here,” Pacquiao said, referring to the governor-elect who defeated Meg Whitman by a more lopsided margin Tuesday. “I helped him campaign. I gave a message to the Filipino community to support Gov. Brown, and they did.”

Of more concern to Pacquiao here should be how he’s preparing for Margarito, whom he’s facing next week at Cowboys Stadium for the World Boxing Council title. Pacquiao is moving up to the 150-pound class for the fight, and his sparring efforts so far have been called “lackluster.”

However, as Pacquiao tells Bob Simon of 60 Minutes in a piece taped for air on Sunday, he’s already looking ahead to a strictly political career.

“I already achieved my goals in boxing, my dreams in boxing,” says the 31-yr.old fighter. “What I want to achieve more is in public service … I want to be a champion there,” he tells Simon.

***
Manny Pacquiao: ‘I helped’ Jerry Brown and Nevada’s Harry Reid win elections [Los Angeles Times]