In June 2021, Las Vegas Raiders defensive end Carl Nassib came out as gay, making history as the first openly gay active NFL player. Given the high-profile nature of his announcement, it was perhaps unsurprising that the episode quickly turned political, with claims that Nassib is registered to vote as a Republican.
On June 22, for example, right-wing activist Brigitte Gabriel tweeted:
"FUN FACT: The first openly gay active NFL player, Carl Nassib, is a registered Republican voter."
Some left-leaning and LGBTQ observers expressed disappointment at such claims, and others posted what appeared to be screenshots of voter registration details relating to Nassib.
In general, readers should be wary of claims about a specific individual's party affiliation and voter registration, which often crop up in the aftermath of arrests, scandals and other controversies. Links and screenshots purporting to contain such details often come from unofficial and unreliable sources.
It should also be noted that Nassib's personal political beliefs and party affiliation are of no inherent interest to the writers and editors at Snopes, and that this fact check is simply in response to widespread and substantive factual claims about a public figure currently in the news.
In any event, Snopes has checked official, reliable voter registration data from Nevada and Florida, and can confirm that Nassib is indeed registered to vote as a Republican, and has been in at least two states, since May 2019 at the latest. We are therefore issuing a rating of "True."
Nassib joined the Raiders in March 2020, and lives in Las Vegas. On June 23, Snopes downloaded voter rolls from the 16th state assembly district, from the official website of Clark County, Nevada.
That database contains an entry for Carl Paul Nassib, born in 1993, with an address in Las Vegas, and shows that he is an active voter who registered as a Republican on Nov. 3, 2020 — the date of the most recent general election. In the screenshot below, we have redacted certain columns which, although public record, contained personal details including Nassib's home address:
Before joining the Raiders, Nassib played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and lived in Hillsborough County, Florida. We checked registration information on the official website of the Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections, and found that Nassib registered as a Republican there on May 15, 2019. We have redacted Nassib's voter registration number, as well as his residential and permanent addresses, from the screenshot below:
Before joining the Buccaneers, Nassib played for the Cleveland Browns. Information found on the official website of the Medina County Board of Elections showed that he voted there in the 2016 general election, on Nov. 8, but did not indicate his party affiliation at that time, if any.
As we have shown, Nassib has been registered as a Republican in two different states — Florida and Nevada — since May 2019 at the latest, and he was registered as a Republican for the most recent general election, in November 2020. The claim that Nassib is registered to vote, as a Republican, is therefore undoubtedly accurate, as of June 2021.