Warriors' Steve Kerr on Democrats' rout: ‘I was looking forward to that $5,000 check'

The Golden State Warriors have won five in a row. Regular-season games, to be clear. It's early. Steve Kerr, though, took a different kind of victory lap at a post-practice news conference Tuesday.

"Wow, all right, no questions about the election?" Kerr said, after 10 minutes talking through injury updates and team dynamics. "I'm surprised."

Advertisement

He got up from his seat, before reporters asked if he indeed had more to say. Kerr sat back down, for a moment, and delivered a not-so-subtle jab at President Donald Trump's promise of $5,000 to all American adults if the Republicans maintained control of Congress.

"No, I just – I'm disappointed, because I was looking forward to that $5,000 check that we were all going to get," Kerr deadpanned. "I thought for sure – I already spent it, in fact. I was so excited about it and sure about it that I spent it already. So, now I'm going to have to figure something out."

The Democratic Party seized control of both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate after Tuesday's midterm elections, in what's being commonly dubbed a "blue tsunami" of voter response to Trump's Republican administration. Kerr is a longtime outspoken Democrat who endorsed former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 and spoke at the Democratic National Convention the same year.

Kerr serves on the advisory board of the American Dream Institute, an organization that launched in August 2025 to help Democrats better reach young voters. In October 2025, Kerr – according to Federal Election Commission data – donated $3,500 to the primary campaign of venture capitalist Eric Jones, who is currently locked in a tight race for a House seat in California's fourth congressional district with Rep. Mike Thompson.

Advertisement

Both Kerr and owner Joe Lacob have said publicly that they disagree on political issues. Both, though, have dismissed the topic as any possible matter of contention in Kerr's long-tenured standing as the Warriors' head coach.

"Modern life is just really difficult on people with political differences," Kerr told the Chronicle, in a previous conversation in October. "Because technology and society pit us against each other. People know this, right? Literally, the algorithms are designed to pit us against each other. And so I think it's important to cut through all that stuff in our daily lives, and it's important to be able to have relationships with people who have a different political opinion than you do.

"But Joe and I are a good example of that. We get along great, and we want the same thing for the Warriors, and for the players."

Subscribe

There's more to San Francisco with the Chronicle. Subscribe today for just 25¢.

This article originally published at Warriors' Steve Kerr on Democrats' rout: 'I was looking forward to that $5,000 check'.