Laura GersonyArizona Republic
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Candidate Jerone Davison has carved out an ultraconservative lane in the race to represent parts of Arizona’s East Valley in Congress. He brings a turbulent personal and financial history to his campaign, records show.
Davison, a former National Football League player and pastor, is one of four Republicans looking to take on Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., in Arizona’s 4th Congressional District. He ran for the same seat in 2022 and lost in a crowded Republican field.
He is running on a highly conservative policy platform that sometimes veers into unfounded conspiracy theories. Davison garnered attention for a provocative 2022 ad depicting “Democrats in Klan hoods” and has claimed without evidence that the FBI poisoned him ahead of the primary he lost that year.
He has pledged to represent grassroots Republican leadership, for example, by consulting hyper-local party leaders before taking major votes in Congress. If elected, he would be among the few Black members of the hardline House Freedom Caucus.
His opponents are the 2022 GOP nominee, Kelly Cooper, a restaurateur whose platform focuses on "standard of living" and "security in the community"; Dave Giles, a perennial candidate seeking to curb "government overreach"; and Zuhdi Jasser, a doctor and political commentator who warns against "anti-American" ideologies.
It’s unlikely that Republicans will win the district in the November general election: The nonpartisan political analysis groups Inside Elections and Cook Political Report both consider the district “solid” for Democrats.
Public records from across Davison’s adult life paint a picture of a candidate who, once a professional athlete, has sunk into financial woes — a pattern not uncommon for NFL players in retirement — and legal issues that continued even as he ran for Congress. The past decade of his life has included unpaid child support obligations, bankruptcy, a recent eviction at his Tempe home, and a bitter divorce that spiraled into a physical altercation with another man, records show.
He alluded to some of the personal hardship in a 2014 memoir, writing that his and his ex-wife’s acrimonious separation left him “cast down emotionally and financially,” in a state that took him years to recover from.
Davison and a campaign adviser argued the reporting on his background is an instance of a Black candidate being subject to heightened scrutiny. He likened the story to the sexual harassment allegations against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas during his 1991 confirmation hearings, calling it a “modern-day, public lynching of my character.”
He argued he was unfairly set back by the child support enforcement system, which analysts find disproportionately puts Black men into financial insecurity. Davison and his adviser, R.C. Maxwell, said they believe voters care more about his platform and his moral standards than about his financial history.
“We think voters are more concerned about funding Ukraine, funding wars, the open border,” Maxwell said.
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Turbulence in Davison's life post-NFL
Davison began his career as a professional football player. He played for several teams during the 1990s including a stint as fullback for the Oakland Raiders. He said his highest income while playing in the NFL was around $300,000.
Since then he said he has worked as a public speaker, author, and pastor at a church in Fairfield, California, among other jobs.
Public records show that Davison fell behind on child support payments to his ex-wife in 2011. His unpaid balance and added interest climbed for years, and he filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2014, Davison confirmed. The balance reached a peak of more than $40,000 in 2015.
He owed around $8,000 in mid-2021, the filings show.
Davison said in a June interview that he still owes around that same amount.
He said he has helped pay for his children’s upbringing including their education and weddings,
“We think that the cycle of debt that the child support system tries to trap men in is irrelevant to whether or not he’s qualified for this congressional seat,” Maxwell said.
His ex-wife declined to comment.
The turbulence continued in 2013. Davison and his ex-wife that year filed requests for temporary restraining orders against each other based on “domestic violence prevention." Rising tensions between the two spiraled into a physical altercation when Davison confronted his ex-wife’s new husband at their house.
Davison and his ex-wife have provided conflicting accounts of who threw the first punch. By Davison’s account in his 2014 memoir, he defended himself when the other man tried to throw him to the ground. In the course of the altercation Davison knocked the other man out and left him "snoring," he wrote in his memoir. His ex-wife has said that Davison grabbed the other man first.
In a follow-up statement to The Arizona Republic, he pointed to the fact that he was not arrested as evidence that he was not the one who started the fight.
"I hope the public inquires how a man can go to another man's house, break his molar and knock him out, and not go to jail," Davison wrote. "The only way is if the one who lost the fight started the fight."
He said a police report confirms his account. Local authorities said the report could not be shared with interested media, only with parties directly involved. Davison said he did not have a copy of the report. The other man did not respond to multiple emailed requests for comment.
Davison's account of the altercation has changed over the years. In Davison's memoir, he said the disagreement centered around the other man's treatment of his son. In a more recent social media post he has said it was because the man spanked his daughter.
Asked about the discrepancy Davison said the man had used physical force against both of his children and edited the social media post to reflect that version of events.
Explaining the outstanding child support, Davison said that a judge set his obligations too high, awarding child support based on his past income as an NFL player. He said that neck and back surgery in the early 2010s contributed to his financial problems and noted the child support payments at times represented a substantial portion of his paychecks.
He brought photos of himself at his daughters’ weddings to an interview.
“This is me being a father. And this report coming out just before Father’s Day strips me, as a Black man, of my honor and respect as a father,” Davison said, speaking to The Republic in early June.
He faced other legal issues during his first bid for office in 2022. Maricopa County court records show a justice of the peace ordered an eviction from Davison’s home in Tempe that summer, after he accrued around $3,000 of past-due rent to his landlord. Davison didn’t appear in court for his trial, according to the records.
The eviction was ordered in July, weeks before the GOP primary election that he lost.
Davison claims that though his name is on those documents, he wasn’t actually the one who got evicted. He said that acting out of generosity as a pastor, he had allowed several members of his church, including young children, to live in his home, and they were the ones who fell behind on rent. He said he has no proof of that fact.
He listed the Tempe home as his residential address in paperwork filed with elections officials in March.
Davison didn't file a financial disclosure during his 2022 campaign, according to House Clerk records, and hasn’t filed one for his 2024 bid so far. Those are generally required when a candidate has raised or spent at least $5,000 for their campaign, a threshold that Davison has surpassed during both election cycles. Maxwell said the campaign would be “filing late.”
"I gave my life to Christ when I was 17 years old,” Davison said to close an interview. “I don't drink, I don't smoke. I don't use profanity. And I'm a single guy and I'm not having sex outside of marriage.”
"If (voters) want somebody that's moral, that loves God and loves the country, then they should vote for Jerone Davison."
Laura Gersony covers national politics for the Arizona Republic. Contact her at lgersony@gannett.com or 480-372-0389.
